Christian Witness: Volume 7

The Gospel by St. Luke Part 1

This Evangelist writes as another witness of the same divine truths, joining in general testimony with those who had gone before him (1:1-4). But we shall find in him, as we do in them, something which gives his Gospel peculiarity and character, and which tells us that, though thus concurring with others in general testimony, the Spirit of revelation still has a special design by him.

But all this different service of the same Spirit, by the different Evangelists, is not (as has been noticed in previous meditations on the Gospels), incongruity, but only fullness and variety. The oil with which Aaron was anointed, and which was mystically the fullness and virtue that rests on our adorable Lord, was made, up of different odors, myrrh, calamus, cassia, and cinnamon (Ex. 30); and it is the office of one Evangelist after another, to produce different parts in this rare and sweet compound of the sanctuary, to tell out different excellencies and perfections in Jesus the Christ of God. For what one could tell out all? Surely it was sufficient joy and honor for one servant, however favored with such near revelations, to trace even one of them. The saint has the sweet profit of all together; and in language prepared for him, can turn to the beloved, and say, "because of the savor of thy good ointments, thy name is as ointment poured forth."

Now in the midst of this various service thus distributed among the Evangelists, we shall find, I judge, that St. Luke occupies his peculiar place, by presenting Jesus to us as "the man, Christ Jesus," or the anointed man. The Lord in St. Matthew, meets the Jew as their Messiah; in St. Mark he meets a needy world as the servant of that need; in St. John he meets the Church or heavenly family as the Son of the Father, to train them for their heavenly home; but here in St. Luke he meets the human family, to speak with them as the one anointed and only sanctioned Son of man. Indeed Son of man may be considered as characteristically his title here, and it is a title of very extensive meaning. It expresses man in his perfectness, or man according to God. It tells us, as it were, that man stands "a new thing" in Jesus; and that in him we see all possible human or moral beauty. He stood, if I may so express it, before the eye of the Spirit, while he was moving the hand of the Apostle to draw that picture of perfection in the human soul, which we see in 1 Cor. 13 But not only is all this moral perfectness expressed by the title " Son of man" applied to Jesus, but all his suffering and all his dignities are likewise connected with him as such. As Son of man, he was humbled so as to wonder that God should have any respect to him (Psa. 8), but as such he is also exalted to the right hand on high (Psa. 80) As such he had not where to lay his head (Luke 9:58), but as such he also comes to the Ancient of Days to take the kingdom (Dan. 7:13). Judgment is committed to him as such (John 5); he is Prophet, Priest, and King as such; Heir and Lord of all things; Head and Bridegroom of the Church, and more than tongue can tell. As Son of man, he has power on earth to forgive sin (Matt. 9:6); and is Lord of the sabbath (Mark 2:28), though as the same he lay three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Matt. 12:40). He was the wearied Sower of the seed, and he will be the glorious Reaper of the harvest, as Son of man. He was crucified and raised again as such; but all the while, as such, had his proper place in heaven (John 3:13, 14). And by and bye, as the Son of man, he will be the center of all things, heavenly and earthly, in the kingdom (John 1:51). For it was in man that God had of old set his image; and when the first man, who was of the earth, had broken that image, the Son of God undertook to restore it; and thus to accomplish in man, the divine purpose by man, setting man in that place of honor and trust which God had of old provided for him.

Thus, this title or name of the Lord is an extensive one, ranging over and linking itself with his person, and with all his sorrow, and all his dignities too, save such, of course, as he owns in himself, being " God over all blessed forever." As the Son of man, therefore, he may be looked at in these three aspects. He is the anointed man,-the undefiled human temple raised at the beginning by the Holy Ghost, and then filled by him (Luke 1:35; 4:1). He is the humbled man, who traveled in sorrow here, down to the death of the cross (Phil. 2) He is the exalted man, crowned now with glory and honor, and by and bye to have all dominion (Heb. 2)

And as Son of man, he deals with man; and in that action, I believe, our Evangelist especially presents him to us. In this Gospel he converses with the human family; he knows man as a creature of certain faculties and passions, being himself, all the while, the anointed man, the heavenly man, who came to exhibit man according to the mind of heaven, standing for the blessed God in the midst of the human family, who had deeply revolted from him. He was the only fair untainted fruit of the human soil; and thus growing up in the midst, he exposes all beside.

This was his purpose, and that he might do this perfectly, and exhibit in himself man according to God, and in all beside, man departed into evil, he is eminently in this Gospel the social one. He is most generally seen here in human intercourse and in places of resort, carrying thus the anointed man every where, to be found and read of all. And sweet indeed would it be, if the saints read the holy lesson better. In walking before the world, their path would be the purer, in walking together it would be more refined and elevated. Not that they would put on the mode and sanctioned order of the world, but they would gracefully wear "the things that are lovely and of good report." And that would be the holy adorning of their doctrine. It would be the saint in the power of that love which behaveth itself not unseemly, but which exhibits the virtue and the praise that suits anointed men after the pattern of Jesus.

As such pattern we have him here in St. Luke. And there is beautiful order in the Gospels as they thus lie before us. The Lord had to enter the scene as to Israel, having a question with the people of his ancient election in the earth; but being refused by them, he takes his own more proper and undistracted paths, which in the Gospels, one after another, are still in order, each rising above the preceding one, and properly following it. For having tried the question with Israel in St. Matthew, he is the servant in Mark, the social Son of man in Luke, and the Son of God in St. John. He is first under us in service, then at our side in converse with us, and then above us in the solitudes of heaven. Being the rejected Heir of the Jewish vineyard in Matthew, he becomes the doer in Mark, waiting on our lower necessities, such as we have in common with other creatures, disease, infirmity, pain and want; the teacher in Luke, serving our higher necessities, such as are peculiar to as human creatures, having human affections and faculties; the divine in John, forming us for heavenly associations as saints of God and children of the Father.

This, I judge, is the characteristic order of the four Gospels. And as in the previous notices of Mark and John 1 have observed the fitness of the penmen to the peculiar task assigned to each of them, so do I judge the same as to Luke. We hear of him in the divine history as the companion of the Apostle of the Gentiles (Acts 16:11, Col. 4:2 Tim. 4 Philem. 1:24). He became associated in labor with one, whose ministry respected neither Jew nor Greek, but addressed itself to man as such. And indeed I believe that he himself had been a Gentile. His name is of Gentile character, and he seems to be distinguished from brethren who were of the circum-, vision, as others have remarked, in Col. 4:14.

And now having thus gathered the general intent of our Gospel, and the person of its penman, I would follow it in its order. I might feel naturally desirous to do this, from previous meditations on the other Gospels. But nothing less than the joy of the Lord in ourselves, and his praise in the thoughts and delights of his saints, should lead a step onward, even in such holy paths as these. But surely it should be the common delight of all his saints to trace him in all his goings. For where are we to have our eternal joys but in him and with him? What, beloved, is suited to our delights, if Jesus and his ways be not? What is there in any object to awaken joy, that we do not find in him? What are those affections and sympathies, which either command or soothe our hearts, that are not known in him? Is love needed to make us happy? if so, was ever love like his? If beauty can engage the sense, is it not to perfection in Jesus? If the treasures of the mind delight us in another, if richness and variousness of knowledge fill and refresh us, have we not all this in its fullness in the communicated mind of Christ? Indeed, beloved, we should challenge our hearts to find their joys in him For we are to know him so forever. And learning the perfections and beauties of his blessed word, is one of the many, many helps which we have to advance in our souls this joy in the Lord. May this present meditation serve this end in us, beloved, through the Spirit, for the Lord's sake!

1-2—I may consider these chapters together. But here I would observe, that this Gospel does not naturally distribute itself into parts, like the others, because the design of the Spirit is a moral design. Our Lord in it being eminently the Teacher, dealing with men as disciples, we shall find in the progress of it, great truths and principles considered in detached portions. It is not accuracy in mere circumstantial detail, or in the order of time and place, that we get here, but varied themes for meditation under the hand of our great Master. And as much that belongs to interpretation of general matter, may be found in the previous papers, I would principally notice here what may strike one as being characteristic of St. Luke.

Now in the opening, I observe at once something which is thus characteristic. St. Luke addresses his friend Theophilus. No doubt he was his friend in a divine sense, his beloved in the Lord, his fellow in the love of God, and he addresses him in the hope that through this Gospel which he was about to publish, this his Christian friend and brother might be established and advanced in all that which had bound him and St. Luke together. But this was all in a style peculiar to Luke. It was according to the grace of human affection, for he would thus draw Theophilus with the bonds of a man. And moreover he tells him of his own personal acquaintance with the things he was about to write, which none of the other Evangelists do, thus bringing something of the human style into his holy task. He appears himself before us, as having the faculties and affections of a man exercised about the things which were engaging him, and addressing another upon them in the same strain.

But though his words take this tone, and seem to flow in this channel, as the communications of one friend to another, yet the Holy Ghost is just as simply and fully in every thought and word of our Evangelist, as though he had been giving out what he had no personal knowledge of whatever. David knew that God had promised to raise up Christ to sit on his throne, yet spake he of the resurrection by inspiration as a prophet (Acts 2) So even though the Lord himself delivered commandments to his Apostles, yet we are told he did so, through, the Holy Ghost (Acts 1:2). And all this helps to let us know and be assured of the equal and full inspiration of the whole scripture of God. Whether it be the Lord commanding his Apostles, or Luke communicating with his friend, the one is not done merely in the personal authority of the Lord, nor the other in the personal knowledge of Luke, but both come to us under the seal of the Holy Ghost.

After this address to his friend by way of introduction, our Evangelist enters on his subject, great and blessed as it is, with all possible simplicity. Nothing can be more perfect in its season. The elevated tone in which the divine John begins his holy task of delineating the Son of God is quite in character with so high a purpose. " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." It gives notice at once of what manner of revelation was coming. But here we have something different altogether in style, but just as perfect in its place. "There was in the days of Herod the king of Judea, a certain priest." It is like a simple tale-telling, a tale of other days when truth was wont to be simple and unvarnished. The mind is held for a moment, charmed with the artlessness of this, and yet with the skill of the, divine hand which thus leads the thoughts,' though into the deepest and most wondrous scenes, so gently by these cords, the strength of which the human heart knows so well. Little might we judge to what this is to lead, but the Spirit of revelation has us surely and firmly by the hand, to take us where his grace and wisdom may please.

And the immediate scene is much of this character also, being laid in the midst of human sympathies and domestic affections. We are told of the circumstances attendant on the birth of the Baptist, and his parentage. But simple as all this is, there are secrets in it.

Zacharias and Elizabeth appear before us as the Abraham and Sarah, the Isaac and Rebekah, the Elkanah and Hannah of other days. They were in the place of righteousness, but they were childless. They were in the very place where the last prophet of Israel had put the righteous remnant, remembering the law of Moses, or walking in the ordinances of the Lord blameless (Mal. 4) But withal, they were childless, and thus witnesses to themselves that all their strength must be found in God, who by the same prophet had promised a Restorer. And all this righteousness in ordinances was as much a preparation for the promised messenger, as the acceptance of the messenger afterward would have been a preparation for the Lord of the temple. To such, accordingly, is the Elijah, the promised messenger, now given; and his birth leads, as we find here, to the birth of the promised Lord of the temple (Mal. 3), before whose face he was now to go as the dawn before the day-spring.

And we notice a difference in the manner of these two births which is according to this. John comes forth, a child of promise, born by a special gift of God enduing the mother with a natural faculty. But Jesus comes forth, a Son of God, born not through any endowment of nature, but by the Holy Ghost, beyond nature altogether. The one is the child of a barren wife, the other of a virgin. But this was a wondrous difference. Elizabeth was the mother of the saved, Mary of the Savior. Elizabeth's child was the sanctified, Mary's the Sanctifier. This was a mighty distance. The child of a barren wife has always been the symbol of the saved, or of the family of God, for it tells us of grace and gift of God towards those who had been found impotent and wanting (Isa. 54:1, John 1:13, Rom. 9:8), but this was the first and only child of a virgin, and he tells us, that though partaking of flesh and blood be-cause of the children, in the fullness of his person he was altogether above nature.

Such is the dawn, and such the day-spring here. These are the prophet of the Highest, and the Highest himself, the messenger, and the God of Israel. Till now all had been but darkness. The dispensation of the law (as a covenant of works), had but proved man to be darkness, and had left him so; and (as a witness of good things to come), it had but dispensed the shadows of them, which while they acted as stars in the night, told that night was still over-hanging the earth. But another season is now approaching,-a season in which God, and not man, was to appear, and "God is light."

Such a season is here introduced, and introduced too with all due solemnities,-solemnities full of gladness and liberty. Such ever wait on the blessed God, when he comes forth. The foundations of the first creation were laid with shouts of joy (Job 38:7). And that joy was the pledge from heaven that it was God's purpose to make his creatures happy. And this indeed is his necessary purpose, for "God is love." And so in these chapters. The foundations of another creation are here laid in the infant of Bethlehem, and again all is gladness, both in heaven and earth. God is reappearing, and there must be joy, for sorrow cannot stay where he is. "Glory and honor are in his presence-strength and gladness in his place." The bread of mourners must not be eaten in his sanctuary, for joy as well as holiness must dwell there. So here all is joy. Hosts of angels celebrate praise-the shepherds repeat the glad tidings of good things-the lips of Mary, Zacharias, and Elizabeth are unsealed to tell out wonders of grace-the expectation of old Simeon is answered-the widowhood of Anna is over, and the very babe in the womb leaps for joy. Old men and maidens, young men and children, all have their share in that moment of richer joy, than when the morning stars sang together. The joy of creation, it is true, soon ceased, and groans were heard instead, for man quickly defiled God's handy-work. But still its foundations were laid with singing. So here, this joy may soon be hushed in this evil world, and the daughter of Zion prove herself unready for it, and we may have to learn that the songs of heaven fall on a heavy heart, and get no response from earth. But still the foundations of this, as of the former work of God, are laid in holy gladness.

Such, then, was the birth of these two children, and such the attending joy of heaven and earth, recorded in these strikingly beautiful chapters. In the progress of them, we get other notices of these holy children. Their growth in stature and in wisdom, while they were yet young, are given to us here, but here only, and this is quite according to that purpose of the Spirit in this Gospel, which I have already noticed. For the man is thus kept before us. These glances at the childhood and youth of the Lord, are all sweet and touching in themselves, and in character fully with our Gospel. He was the anointed child now, as he will be the anointed man by and bye. In each season equally and perfectly well-pleasing to God, consecrating every period of human life. Here we see him in subjection to his parents at Nazareth, in favor too with man as well as with God. For all this was fruit in season. He had not yet been called to witness for God against the world. When the season for that comes, we shall see him to perfection then also,, and getting the due hatred, as now he gets the due favor of men (John 7:7). But as yet he is only the perfect child, at home in subjection to his parents, graced with every goodly ornament that suited such an one, and thus commending himself to the hearts and con-sciences of all.

Holy diligence in attaining all godly wisdom, marks this dear and perfect child also. Every year brought duly with it just its proper increase. But God himself was his study, his only study, for the temple, as we see here, was the scene for the display of what he had been acquiring in this season of holy diligent pupilage. Many will run to and fro and increase knowledge of various kinds, getting it in the busy schools of men. But all the knowledge which this holy child sought or acquired, was knowledge that suited the sanctuary. He did not bring forth the fruit of his diligence in the schools, but in the temple of God.

Man, however, is but little prepared for this, and so we find it here. His kindred in the flesh do not understand this child. They are pleased, perhaps, that he has attractions as a goodly child; and they judge that he is in the company, detained there by the desire of others to see and observe him. A mother's vanity might suggest that. But when they miss him indeed, they look for him where the flesh would have sought him. But he was not there. And in all this poor human nature is exposed. In the vanity, the misdirected search, the amazement, and the ignorant rebuke of Mary, man is shown out. Jesus the anointed child can thus begin to expose the corrupted nature. "Wist ye not," he can say to them. Surely this child might say, "I have more understanding than all my teachers, for thy testimonies are my meditation; I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts." And blessed is the comfort of all this to us. Blessed is it to know that our God has thus had one object, on this earth of ours, in which his whole soul delighted. A Son of man too-the happy pledge to all of us who trust in him, beloved, that our God will find even more than restored complacency in us. "Good will toward men" (ευδοκια εν ανθρωποις) was part of heaven's joy when this child was born to us.

3.-A long interval has now passed before we reach the time of this chapter. Like that of Moses in his youth, as I may call it, the course of Jesus had been interrupted through the reasonings and darkness of nature. Moses had supposed that his brethren would have understood how that God, by his hand, would deliver them; but they understood not, and their unbelief separated him from them for forty years. So Jesus, the second deliverer of Israel, the greater than Moses, was doing his Father's business in the midst of Israel; but his brethren understood not, and he had to go down to Nazareth estranged from Israel for another season. He can but pass it, however, in the same perfectness before God. Man's unbelief may change the scene, but nothing touched the heart of this holy one. He went down to Nazareth to be in subjection there, still as a goodly child, increasing in wisdom as in stature, and in favor with God and man.

But here, in this chapter, we enter on other scenes and times altogether. The children have grown up, and are ripe for their showing unto Israel. And just at this solemn moment, our Evangelist takes a full survey of the world. It was a task which properly belonged to him under the Spirit, for the Spirit through him, as I have said, looks at man, and deals with man. He here shows us how still and at rest the whole earth was sitting, for the Gentile beast had all in order, according to his mind (Zech. 1:11). Tiberius the Roman, was emperor, his proconsuls were in their several governments, Judea itself being a member of his strength, and part of his honor. The priests, too, were in their temple. All in the earth, both as to its religion and government, was just as man would have it. But under the eye of God, all this was a wilderness; and instead, therefore, of his taking a place in it, and owning it as repose to him, the voice of his servant is sent forth to awaken it all, like Elijah in the evil days of Ahab, and to disturb this sleep of carnal contentment in which man and the world were folded.

God's thoughts are indeed thus strikingly declared not to be as man's thoughts. Man's sabbath was now a wilderness to him, and he will act on it as a wilderness. The dispensation of the law, had by this time, tested man, and found him to be hopelessly departed from righteousness. Flesh was found out, and it was proved that there was no good in it; and John is now, according to this, sent forth to call on man to take the place of a convicted sinner. He points to the remedy that was in God for such an one, but he does not reveal it as already accomplished and brought in. He announces the vanity of all flesh, uncovering the very roots of it, but his hand did not carry the seed of a better harvest. He laid the sentence of death in man, but he did not bring in life for him, He put him in the dust, but gave him no power to rise. The life and power were to come in by the Son afterward. "John did no miracle." He challenged the violent to take the kingdom by force, but he did not set before them an open door. "He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness to that light." He stood between Israel and their God, telling Israel on the one hand that they were all flesh, and that flesh was as grass; pointing to Jehovah-Jesus, God of Israel, on the other, as bringing his reward with him, and doing his work before him.

There was a mixture of grace and righteousness in his ministry. He came "in the way of righteousness," standing apart and refusing contact with the world, and thus by his light rebuking its darkness. He mourned to his generation, neither eating nor drinking, because he called on men to know themselves to be sinners, and to take their place as such. But then he came in the way of grace also, because he was the forerunner of Jesus, and went before the face of the Lord to prepare the way of salvation and the kingdom. And thus there was a mixture of grace and righteousness in his ministry, and it was clearly quite an advance upon both the law and the prophets. The law had sought to order man in the flesh according to righteousness; and the prophets had been sent, in one sense, as in aid of the law, to call the people back to obedience, so that every help and advantage might be rendered, and God's abounding patience proved in the trial of this question, whether or not man were able to restore himself and stand in righteousness. But John's ministry assumed the vanity of all expectations of this kind, and took up man as a convicted sinner. But then, such is the holy order in the divine wisdom, it was not so high a ministry as that which has now followed it. The Apostles after the resurrection, called on man to take by faith the place of a pardoned sinner. And thus over us, the light of grace and salvation has reached its noon-day strength, and we are waiting only for the light of glory and the kingdom.

With our God let me here say, there has been from the beginning a work far deeper and more excellent than that of the old creation. The old creation was, in some sense, left at man's disposal. His allegiance or disobedience were to determine its history. But the divine counsel from before creation, had planned and laid a work in, and by the Word, which could never fail, or be contingent on any strength less than his own. And it is this mystery which the Lord has before him when he says, "heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away." Creation was removable, redemption (the work of the Word) is immoveable, because the living God has joined himself with it. And thus the prophet addressing Jesus, the Word, says, "of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hand-they shall perish, but thou shalt endure." And so all things that are made may be shaken (Heb. 12:27). For God himself is not joined to them, he is not their foundation. But to the work of the Word God has joined himself, for the Word was with God, and was God, and was made flesh, and became part and parcel (so to speak of this blessed mystery of everlasting goodness) of the work itself. He is the vine of the branches, the chief corner stone, and head stone of the building. This gives redemption an unspeakably more excellent glory than creation ever had. And thus the Baptist, in the ministry which we have in this chapter of our gospel, says, "the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever." All in this work is incorruptible. The seed of the life which it brings is incorruptible-the body with which it will clothe that life is incorruptible, the inheritance to which it introduces is incorruptible (1 Cor. 15:1 Peter 1) God has entered through the breach which man's sin produced in the old creation, and has joined himself with the mighty ruin, in such a way, and for such an end, as will be to the everlasting praise of his own most blessed name; and also to the sure abiding and imperishableness of this his new creation.

The 90th Psalm appears to be the utterance of a soul that has learned something of this mystery. The prophet there looks to God himself as above all created strength, he then traces the vanity which had attended the old creation, and at last finds his relief from such a sight in God's work of mercy, or the work of redemption by the Word. And this is so with us, beloved. The work of the Word, or of God made flesh, is the relief of our hearts from the painful sense of the universal vanity around us. And John's ministry might lead the soul into that sense of vanity, but it remained for another to give us this blessed and sure relief in himself, and his work, that standeth forever.

Surely we might easily learn to say that blessed was the necessity which thus cast us on God himself, wondrous was the grace which could thus repair the breach in God himself! But all this was worthy of him, and his love can account for it all, though nothing else can.

But this, beloved, only by the way, as we pass on, in connection with the ministry of the Baptist which this chapter gives us. The Lord's genealogy is then traced here, up to the sources of the human family; not to David and to Abraham as in Matthew, but to Adam; and this, I need not say, is quite according to the general mind of the Spirit in St. Luke. And the absence of all such genealogies in St. John, is in the same way entirely consistent. For genealogies recognize human or national relations; and the preserving of them, as is done in the Jewish scriptures (see 1 Chronicles &c. &c.), shows a jealousy for the order and maintenance of the human system. That system will be sustained in the kingdom, when the hearts of the children are turned to the fathers, and the hearts of the fathers to the children. But roe are told not to mind genealogies (1 Tim. 1:4, Titus 3:9), for the Church is not to be the minister for ordering and maintaining the human system, but is taken into heavenly associations, the saints owning as kindred all who love the Lord Jesus Christ, and not knowing any man after the flesh.

But before I enter on the following chapter, I would observe that our Lord's Sonship of God is here owned at the time of his baptism, as in the other Evangelists. The same had been done at the time of his birth before, and is to be done at the time of his transfiguration afterward (1:35; 9:35). But there is distinct value in each. The virgin's child, from the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, was to be called "the Son of God." His person merely was then owned.-Now at his baptism, the same attestation is made a second time, with this addition, "in whom I am well pleased." His ministry was thus owned to be that which awakened the divine complacency, for his baptism was introducing him to his ministry. And this is blessedly comforting to us sinners. The law was never thus approved, for the law exacted righteousness. John the Baptist was never thus approved, for he convicted man without relieving him. But now that the Son was coming forth with grace and healing for sinners, God's mind could rest, for this was the accomplishing of the previous purpose of his own love, and thus it could now be said of the Son and his ministry, or of the Son at his baptism, " thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased." And so by and bye he will for the third time be so attested, when the glory or kingdom shines for a moment on the holy mount. And then this same attestation will come forth with this addition, "hear him." But this is equally perfect in its season, for this owned him in his kingdom, or the glory, for in the kingdom he must be listened to-every knee must bow to him, and the soul that will not hear him shall be cut off from among his people.

Thus on the three occasions-at his birth, his baptism, and his transfiguration, his Sonship of God is divinely attested; in other words, his person, his ministry, and his dominion, are all owned of the Father; the full pleasure of God resting on him, and the full subjection of the earth demanded for him. God is well pleased in him, and the earth is to hear him. And after these attestations by the voice from heaven, the resurrection comes to verify and close them all by act and deed, and to declare Jesus to be the Son of God with power..

4.-But Satan could not allow all this. Jesus owned as Son of God, and that too, in connection with the human family, as Adam had been (3:22, 38), Satan could not allow. He could not let this claim be revived without contesting it, for through his subtlety the first man had lost this dignity. God had created man, and in his likeness made him, but man had begotten children "in his own likeness" (Gen. 5:1, 3), defiled as he was, and not as a race worthy of being called "sons of God." But Jesus had now appeared to re-assert in man this lost dignity. The devil must therefore try his title to it, and with this purpose he comes now to tempt him, saying, "if thou be the Son of God." And this was a crisis between the anointed man and man's great enemy. And surely he stood, stood in the loftiest attitude of a conqueror. Everything that had surrounded Adam the first man, might well have pleaded for God against the enemy. The sweetness of the whole scene, the beauty of that garden of delights, with its rivers which parted hither and thither, the fruits and perfume, with the willing service of ten thousand tributary creatures, all had a voice for God against the accuser. But Jesus was in a wilderness which yielded nothing, but left him an hungred, and the wild beasts were with him, and all might have been pleaded for the accuser against God. All was against Jesus, as all had been for Adam, but he stood as Adam had fallen. The man of the dust failed with all to favor him, the man of God stood with all against him. And what a victory was this! What complacency in man must this have restored to the mind of God. To achieve this victory Jesus had been led up of the Spirit into this place of battle, for his commission was to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). He stood now as the Champion of God's glory and man's blessing, in this revolted world, to try his strength with the enemy of both, to make proof of his ministry, and to the highest pitch of praise he is more than conqueror.

But he was conqueror for us, and therefore at once comes forth with the spoils of that day to lay them at our feet. He had been alone with the enemy, but would not enjoy the victory alone. He that soweth and he that reapeth must rejoice together. It was an ancient statute of David, that he that tarried by the stuff, should share with him that went down to the battle. And it was a decree worthy the grace of "the beloved." But a better even than David, one not only of royal, but of divine grace, is here; and accordingly Jesus, the Son of God, here comes forth from the wilderness to publish peace, to heal disease, to meet all the need of those who were the captives of this enemy, to let them know that he had conquered for them.

And this tells us the character of the blessing which we sinners get from the hand of the Son of God. We get it as spoils of conquest. By sin we have forfeited all creation blessing. All such was once ours in Eden, but we lost it there, and now all blessing is the fruit of the victory of Jesus. And this gives the heart assurance while enjoying it, for we read our title to it, while we take it. The blesser has entitled himself to bless, for he has won the blessing before he confers it. We know our right to be blest in Jesus as surely as Adam knew his to be happy in Eden. And what doubt could he have had? It is not stolen waters that we • drink, nor bread eaten in secret that we feed upon, but meat won from the very jaws of the eater, and sweetness gathered from the strong. This is the character of the blessing which the Lord is giving to us sinners. It is his own well-earned spoils. And such do we get here. Full of the Holy Ghost (ver. 1), he met the devil in conflict to withstand and overthrow him; full of the Holy Ghost still (ver. 14), he meets sinners with blessing to heal and to save them. And since this day in the wilderness, he has been with the devil on Calvary, and there by death destroyed him, and has come forth in resurrection, again to part his spoils with sinners all the world over. His title is our title, and this gives us certainty of heart while we survey the glorious blessings which are ours.

But where is the sinner to value the blessing, and to array himself with the spoils of the conquering Son of God? That is the question, the only question now. Man has no mind for the blessing, and cares not about a victory and its spoils, in which the god of this world has been judged. The synagogue at Nazareth now shows us what man is, as the wilderness has just shown us what Satan is, and the stuff that we have tarried with is better in our esteem, than the fruit of victory which our David brings with him. This is now seen at Nazareth. Human desire is stirred for a moment. The people in the synagogue wonder at the gracious words of Jesus, and they fasten their eyes on him; but this current of human desire is soon met by a stronger current of human pride which sets in against it, and all this delight in the grace of Jesus goes. They hang on his lips for a moment, but the pride that suggested "is not this the carpenter's son?" overpowered the attraction after a very short struggle, and their goodness was found to be as the morning cloud or early dew that passeth away.

And so it is, beloved. Enmity to God and his anointed must win the day in the heart of man, whenever such a conflict as this is fairly raised. 'Where it is simply between mere human delight or admiration of Jesus, and the strength of nature, this scene in the synagogue at Nazareth, tells us what the end of the struggle will be. The stuff in the heart or in the house, is more heeded than the blessing of God. Indeed before now, man has sold that blessing for thirty pieces of silver, and even (if anything could be more worthless) for a mess of pottage. And this is a solemn thought. He that trusteth his heart is a fool, for God cannot trust it. There is nothing in man that God can trust. Some believed when they saw the miracles that Jesus did, but he would not commit himself unto them. Nothing of the natural man will do. "Ye must be born again." "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." Resolutions will go before temptations, and the bonds of man be broken by Satan, and communion with God in the truth through the Spirit, will alone stand the soul, when the native strength of the stoutest will go to pieces.

But this chapter shows us also that the love of the Son of God, was not to be wearied or worn out, for leaving Nazareth he goes down to Capernaum with the same blessing and spoils of war. For his love was stronger than all repulse then, as since then it has proved itself stronger than death. " Love" surely we may here say, "never faileth;" and the Son of God is still going through this world of sinners with these same spoils, as fresh as though they had been gathered yesterday, to know who will rejoice with him in them.

Such is this chapter which opens the ministry of the Son of God according to St. Luke; and as in this Gospel he is especially dealing with man, we have here at once strikingly displayed to us what man is. Like the drawing by the preacher, " there was a little city and few men in it, and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it; and there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man." The synagogue of Nazareth proves all this against the citizens of this world.

5.-We now enter on the 5th chapter, the materials of which generally we find in other Gospels, and therefore I would notice only what is characteristic. But here I may observe again, that our Evangelist is not very careful about mere historic circumstances (as the order of time and the like), because he deals rather with men and with principles. And so would it be among ourselves. If one were narrating to another some events in order to acquaint him with the events, he would be careful to note accurately the details of time and place; but if he were using the events only for the purpose of illuminating principles or enforcing truths, he would be less careful as to such things. Thus we have in this chapter, a scene which in point of time preceded much that we have already had in the previous chapter. The call of Simon to be a fisher of men, for instance, actually preceded the healing of his wife's mother, but here it follows it (see Matt. 4:8; Mark 1) But that is nothing to St. Luke. His purpose is not to determine which came the first, but to give us principles, to give us God and man, and accordingly while he is careless as to circumstances here, he discloses great moral principles in the call of Simon, which the other Evangelists had not noticed.

And striking indeed is this disclosure. It gives us a view of man brought really under the power of God. There was nothing in a draft of fishes, let it have been as large and unexpected as it might, that in the way of nature connected itself with conviction of sin. But in the way of God there was. For it is ever the discovery of God that leads to repentance or true conviction of sin. It is only in God's light that we can duly know ourselves. It was the common judgment of all those who in old time owned the fear of God, that they could not see him and live. They had carried that conscience with them ever since Adam had retreated from the presence of God among the trees of the garden. Manoah judged that he must die because he had seen God. Gideon looked for the same. Ezekiel fell on his face, and Daniel's comeliness was changed into corruption, when they came in contact with the glory. Isaiah learned the uncleanness of his lips, when he saw the King, the Lord of hosts. This was rightly learning themselves, and it was acquired in God's light. These measured themselves, not by themselves or among themselves, but by God, and thus they measured themselves duly.

And so is it now with Peter. The glory had come very near him. Others might not have perceived it. What was a large draft of fishes to ordinary fishermen but a lucky cast? But a little matter will speak great things in the ear of a soul that God is leading. A hole in the wall is enough to show a prophet great abominations; and to such an one a cloud no bigger than a man's hand is full of God's works and praise. A draft of fishes is now the glory to a heaven-led sinner; and the glory is no sooner at his side, than like others of old, Peter learns himself. His eye sees God, and he abhors himself in dust and ashes.

This knowledge of ourselves by the light of God, forms the principle of repentance. We may read many a blotted page in our own history, and be sorry and ashamed of it; but to read ourselves in the light of the glory and presence of God, leads to that repentance which the Spirit works. We learn that we are black, when the sun looks upon us (Cant. 1), when the burning brightness of the glory rises upon us, as here upon Peter.

And let me add, that as we learn ourselves in this way, so do we learn God. As my trespasses and follies may tell me much of myself, but as I shall not know myself duly and thoroughly till I see myself in the light of God's glory;, so God's works may tell me much of him, his power and Godhead, but I shall not know him really as he is, till I see him by the darkness of my own iniquity. Then it is I learn God indeed, when I see him in the face of Jesus Christ providing for me a sinner, and rolling my darkness and shame away forever in the abounding riches of his grace. It was thus Adam learned God. The six days' works of God's hand did not give Adam all that God had for him, or tell Adam all that God was. It was his transgression that drew out the full treasure. The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head, was the word that fully told Adam what God was. The woman's seed was a secret which creation had not declared; it was a treasure richer than all the fruit of Eden, and which grace abounding over sin, and not the labor of creating hands had made Adam's. Adam then learned God indeed, and the sinner so learns him now. And this is the sequel of the mystery of death and life,-we learn ourselves, all darkness as we are, in the light of the divine glory; we learn God, all goodness as he is, by the evil of our own sin.

Blessed truths these are which our Evangelist here leads us into. The scene is peculiar to him, but quite in the way of the Spirit, who would by him trace our Lord as the Great Teacher, who was dealing with men's hearts and consciences, and with truths and principles. And upon this scene, I would further observe, that the sinking here was no occasion of alarm to Peter as it was afterward (Matt. 14) Here he does not feel it, or think about it, for his soul was big with other thoughts, and his eye with other objects altogether, so that he had no place for thoughts of himself, or for fear. And this is the true healing of doubt and fear and all confusion. And what a pity it is, that this fresh sense of the fullness that is in Jesus should ever cool. It was after this that Peter feared the waters, because it was after this that his vision was less occupied with Christ. O the shame and the sorrow of all this! But have not the brightest in our company failed, dear brethren? Even David who stands among us (the redeemed of the Lord), in so dear and honored a place, when a stripling in the fight, could say even to a giant, " this day will the Lord deliver thee into my hand;" but afterward said in his heart, "I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul." Well for us indeed that one has stood through life and in death, to the perfect good pleasure and praise of our heavenly Father. Saul's hand which David feared, was not so big as Goliath's hand which David despised; but then Christ was not so large and full before the eye of David's faith afterward, as it had been before in the valley of Elah.

But into the further details of this chapter I do not enter. We have them generally in other Gospels. But there are at the close of it a few words which are peculiar to our Evangelist, and which I would therefore notice, "no man also having drunk old wine, straightway desireth new, for he saith the old is better."

This is still in the character of this Gospel, for here is disclosed another great secret in human nature, the power of man's habits and associations, and which, humanly, so hinders the power of God in his soul. We have been feeding upon the old wine (that which the flesh has been providing for us from our birth), and our appetite for the new wine (that which the Son of God has brought with him since nature and the flesh) is spoiled. We are all conscious of this. How can ye do good, says the prophet, who are accustomed to do evil? Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? And here the great prophet, in like wisdom, warns us that "no man having drunk old wine, straightway desireth new."

And it is, beloved, a solemn warning. All things are possible with God, it is most true, and he giveth more grace. But still we do well to take heed against relishing the old wine. Every thought that we follow, every desire that we indulge, savors of either the old or the new. It is a draft (small it may be), but still it is a draft of one or the other. And this leaves a solemn word behind it, on the heart and conscience of each of us. What are you thinking of, what are you tasting now? we may say to our souls through the day. Is it provision for the flesh you are making, or is it a walk in the sanctuary? Comes it from heaven or from hell? And oft-, times, beloved, the saint has to learn to his sorrow and shame at the end, the provision he had been making by the way. The patriarch was not drunk at the beginning, but he became a husbandman, planted a vineyard, and then drank of the wine. "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" the soul may indignantly reply; but if the hidden tempers of the dog be allowed, his active fury will break out in time. "Walk in the Spirit," that is the divine security, " and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. And surely, beloved, a little of that walking should enable us to change the speech and to say, the new is better. That is what our blessed Lord would have. The holy watchful habit of denying the flesh, its tempers and its lusts, will keep the appetite fresh and ready for this new and better wine, and into all this may the gentle and yet strong hand of the Spirit, lead our souls daily!

6.-Here we again have what we have already read in Matthew and Mark, and therefore generally, I would refer as above to previous papers. But I observe that the appointment of the Apostles is here made after prayer, and this is not noticed by the other Evangelists, as also on other occasions, the same notice of the Lord in prayer is peculiar to Luke. But this still shows us that the Lord is here before us rather as a man, than either as a Jew, or the Son of God. For a Jew under the law was not properly called to pray, for the law put him on his own strength; but prayer being the expression of dependence, is the first duty of a creature, like man, who should learn to wait on God as all his sufficiency and strength.

The holy instructions which we get in the progress of this chapter, are found in the sermons on the mount in Matthew. We need not determine whether the Lord delivered them on two different occasions, one of which is given us by the one Evangelist, and the other by the other, or whether the very same occasion is thus recorded differently by them. The Spirit, I am assured, designs to serve a more general purpose by our Evangelist, than by St. Matthew. In St. Matthew the Lord's words are recorded, as though he were very particularly addressing himself to a Jewish ear. There are instructions there which would exclusively, I may say, reach the conscience of a Jew, awakening in his mind recollections of the law and the prophets. These are omitted here, and the Lord speaks as having man before him, The sayings " of them of old time," that which was "the law and the prophets," errors in fastings, alms-deeds and prayers which so prevailed among the Jews, get no notice here, but all that was moral, applying itself to the heart and conscience of man does.

And this is so according to the mind of that perfect Teacher, whose instructions are here and there thus variously delivered. He was sent of the circumcision, it is true. He could not, in actual ministry, pass the Jewish boundary, but he could see man through the Jew; and it has been the good pleasure of the Holy Ghost, to chew us by St. Luke, the Lord's mind reaching out and apprehending man in this way, dealing with the human, and not merely with the Jewish, conscience and affections. In Matthew, he sees the Jew in the land; in Luke, he looks outward to man on the face of the earth; in John, he looks upward towards the Church, whose place is in heaven.

7.-This chapter opens with another instance, in our Evangelist, of disregard of mere circumstances and order of time; for the place which the case of the Centurion fills in this Gospel, is not according to that which it holds in the others. And there are other touches in this narrative peculiar and characteristic. Thus we learn here of his sending the Jews to the Lord in his behalf, a circumstance which Matthew does not notice. Because Matthew, writing more immediately for Jewish converts, would not record that feature, in the case which might have nourished the old national pride; but Luke, writing more for the Gentiles, would keep in their mind the ancient favor in which the others once stood with God. Both of these things had their moral value, which the Spirit would surely consult. So, our Evangelist does not notice the Lord's comment on the faith of this Gentile as Matthew does, for the same moral purposes,-the Jewish Evangelist noticing this, as it might help to check the rising of a Jewish boast; the other not noticing it, for it might have helped to raise a similar feeling in the mind of a Gentile.

These distinctions appear to me, to be thus perfect in their place. And then we get (and only here) the case of the widow of Nain, a case so tenderly affecting the human heart, that it properly lay under the notice of the Spirit in St. Luke. For in the style of one who was looking at man, and his sorrows and affections, our Evangelist tells us, that the young man who had died, " was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow;" and again, when the Lord raised him to life, that "he delivered him to his mother." These are strokes and touches quite according to the human tones, which have their happy and gracious current through the mind of the Lord in this Gospel. And the little word "only," is peculiar to Luke. It is used in the case of Jairus' daughter, and of the man whose child was possessed with an evil spirit, and here in the case of the widow of Nain; and such a word would appeal to the tender heart of the Son of man, and is lovely and touching in its place. Would that we caught more of the same tender spirit, while delighting at the discovery of it in Jesus! It is well for us, beloved, that he has it more largely than we; but we should seek it and cultivate it, for he loves to find it in us, and what pleases him should be our care.

And I cannot refuse to notice here, in connection with this chapter, what has struck me in these Gospels,-the ease with which our blessed Lord allowed the vail to fall from him at the bidding of faith. In old time when a king of Israel was asked to heal a man of his leprosy, he turned in a rage, and said, "am I God to kill and to make alive." But Jesus, the despised Galilean, in all the repose and certainty of conscious glory, turns at once only to say, "I will, be thou clean." The glory of the God of Israel shone out then without distraction, when faith rent the vail. So here the faith of a Gentile appeals to him as the Lord of heaven and earth, who had once said in a word, " let there be light, and there was light," and could now just " say in a word, and his servant should be healed," and immediately with the same ease the divine glory again breaks forth.. No disturbance, as though some strange thing were doing, it was only looking through the cloud again, it was only letting the vail drop, that " the life-creating Sun," the countenance of God himself, might appear in his power and grace. Anything that belonged to God was nothing too great for Jesus to take, when faith discovered him. But save to faith, he vailed himself, for lie came, the emptied Son of God, to atone for sin, and bring us home to him from whom we had departed in pride. Faith, as it were, entitled him to know himself again for a moment, and that must have been a blessed moment to him. But otherwise, through love to us, he refused to know himself in this evil and apostate world, saying, "my goodness extendeth not to thee." But faith could draw aside the vail and let him see himself for a passing moment in this dark place. What mystery of goodness was all this! and upon all this he claims our love, and the heart is dead indeed that refuses him.

This chapter then introduces the mission of John the Baptist to the Lord, which I believe to be a matter of great interest and meaning.

John had long before this testified to the person of the Son of God. As to that he had no doubt; but it seems that he was not prepared for all the results of being the Lord's witness. Like Moses in his day. Moses was the minister of God, and had the conduct of the camp through the wilderness, but he became impatient under the charge, and says, " have I conceived all this people, have I begotten them, that thou shouldst say unto me, carry them in thy bosom." The weakness of his hand to hold the glory betrays itself, and seventy others are made to share it with him. But though he is thus rebuked in the secret place of the Lord, yet before others his Lord will vindicate him, so that immediately after-wards Aaron and Miriam are put to signal reproach for not being afraid to speak against him (Num. 11, 12) Just so here with John the Baptist. John betrays the common weakness, and is offended in Christ. Like Moses he becomes impatient, not being prepared for all the cost and change of being the Lord's prisoner as well as minister. He knew Jesus to be the Son of God, as Moses had known Jehovah to be the Redeemer of Israel; but as the murmurings of the camp had been too much for the one, so the prison and injuries of Herod now prove too much for the other, and John, like Moses, must listen to the rebuke in secret, "blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me;" but before men, also like Moses, he shall stand graciously approved by his divine Master, " among them that are born of women, there has not arisen a greater than John the Baptist."

This is the constant way with the blessed Lord, as here with Moses and John. Thus he smote Israel again and again in the secret places of the wilderness, but before their enemies he was as one who had not seen iniquity in them. Many a question was settled between the Lord and the camp when alone, but into the judgment of the ungodly they were not to enter. And so are the saints now under the judgment of the Father, but the future judgment does not await them. In that day they are to have boldness. Their actions may be weighed in the place of the children and heirs of God, and the glories parceled out according to that, but their persons are never to be called into judgment. In the blood they stand accepted, and rise not to judgment but to life. Salvation in their history occupies the very place which judgment once filled (Heb. 9:27, 28).

In this way John here proves the faithfulness and grace of his blessed Master. And after the Lord has thus vindicated and honored him before that generation, he turns to give them the character they had earned by their treatment both of John and of himself. And what is this, but a telling us that man is a creature whom God cannot cure? God had now been making full proof of him, addressing him by different ministries, but man had no answer for God. When he mourned to him, man had no tears; when he piped to him, he had no dancing. The human heart was found to be no instrument for the finger of God. All was out of tune where God tried it. Intelligence, and zeal, and action, are there at the bidding and awakening of other influences, but nothing was there for God. He would have raised a solemn tone by the Baptist, who came neither eating nor drinking, and then a more joyous one by the social Son of man; but there was no music in the heart of man for God. This was now proved after the trial of the most skilful hands, for all these attempts had been so proving the skill of the player, that wisdom stood "justified of her children." For what could have been done more than had been done? "I have piped to you, and ye have not danced; I have mourned to you, and ye have not lamented."

But after this solemn word, our Evangelist leads us to another scene; the house of a Pharisee where the Lord had gone, upon invitation to dine. For our Lord, in this Gospel, is eminently the social one; not social, however, as a servant in order to meet objects for his care and tendance, but social as a man in order to converse with men. Therefore we find him here as I have already noticed, more frequently than in the other Gospels, seated at meat in the houses of others, be they who they may, for there he could find the mind more relaxed and free to show itself.

Now this scene in the Pharisee's house is one of great moral value. It shows us that nothing rightly or really introduces us to Jesus but our sin. Admiration of him as a Teacher, or as a doer of miracles, will never throw us across his path according to God. It is only sin and the sense of it that can really introduce us to the Son of God, for he is a Savior, and sent to us of the blessed God as such. Nicodemus was led to him as a doer of mighty works; but Nicodemus must be born again, must get other thoughts of him, ere he can duly go to him. So here, this Pharisee. It is clear that it was not as a sinner he knew him. He had been attracted, amiably attracted too, by something which he had seen or heard in him, and he prepares him a feast. But there is another in the house who reaches him by a different path altogether. She is a sinner of the city, and her sin brings her to him, and she prepares another feast for him, and it is at her feast and not at the Pharisee's that the Lord really seats himself. Her tears and ointment and kisses are the feast at which the Son of God here sits, while all the costlier provision of the host is past by.

This is very blessed. It is the sinner who really provides the feast and the company for Jesus. Neither the table nor the friends of the Pharisee were quite the thing for him. It is only the faith of a sinner apprehending him as the Savior, that can spread a table for the Son of God in this wilderness world. And I observe that in every place where the conversion of Levi the publican is recorded, we are told immediately afterward, that he prepared meat for the Lord in his own house. For he was one of those whom Jesus came down from the bright heavens to visit. He was a publican, an owned and published sinner in the world, and Jesus was the Savior. The faith of such therefore opened the door and entertained him, made him welcome in his own proper character, while everything else could really but keep him outside still.

It is indeed our joy to know this and believe it. And when we begin as sinners with a Savior, our journey is wonderful and glorious beyond all thought, for our sin leads us to Christ, and then Christ leads us to the Father. And what a path that is! It stretches all along from the darkest and most distant places of creation, where sin and death reign, up to the highest heavens where love and glory dwell and shine forever. Angels have their own untainted sphere to move in, but they have never trod such a path as this. The Church passes from a sinner's darkness into God's marvelous light, and there has been nothing like that, and none but a sinner conscious of the value of the Son of God can understand it. And I see from this striking scene, that this character of a sinner saved by the grace of the Son of God is remembered to the very end. This woman loved much, but her love did not serve her as a sinner at all, for at the end, the Lord says to her "thy faith (not thy love) hath saved thee, go in peace." This is much to be observed by us all, for it is very comforting. The fruit of our love may be honored before others, as here this poor woman's tears and ointment are owned before the Pharisee. A cup of cold water shall not lose its reward, if given for love to Christ. But before the conscience of the sinner nothing is owned, but the blood and the faith that rests in it, as here. It is faith and not love that sends us on our way with the Eunuch rejoicing, or bids us with this poor woman to go in peace. And sweet it is thus to be cast on Jesus and on him only. Let the soul be as elevated, the walk as bright and unspotted, and the love as glowing as they may be, let the experience be as rich and various as David's or Paul's, yet Jesus, Jesus, is the only Savior. He first sends away in peace, and the first confidence and joy is to be kept firm to the end.

But I cannot close this part of our Gospel or quit this house of the Pharisee, fruitful spot as it is, without another look at it. For it seems to me to have been a place where the great conflict which has been often fought, the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit, or between the two wives, the bondwoman and the free, was again witnessed.

By transgression, such as Adam's, the creature assumed strength independent of God, and therefore in restoring him, God must teach him that he alone is sovereign, and that all creature strength must fail. And this is the lesson which the law and the Gospel together teach: for the law, testing man, showed the vanity of confidence in flesh; the Gospel revealing God, shows the safety of the soul that trusts in him. And the mystery of the two wives teaches the same. Hagar had strength in the flesh, but her seed was not the heir. Leah had strength and title in the flesh, but her son did not excel, but lost the birthright. Peninnah had strength in the flesh, but no child of hers delivered Israel out of their misery and oppression. But on the other hand, all blessing and honor lay with the children of promise. Isaac caused laughter, and was he in whom Abraham's house was established. Joseph got the birthright, and as soon as he was born, Jacob spoke of returning to his inheritance, for "if children, then heirs." Samuel filled the mother's heart and lips with a song, and was nourished up till he lifted Israel from the dust, regained the glory out of the hand of the enemy, and raised the stone of help in the midst of the camp. And all these things teach us, as the law and the Gospel teach us, that "by strength shall no man prevail." The rich are sent empty away, the bows of the mighty are broken, but the poor handmaid is remembered, and she that was barren bears seven.

This is the lesson which God is teaching us; the necessary lesson in a world like this of ours, where the creature has departed from God in pride; in the assumption of strength, affecting to be God. The Lord God is ever therefore saying, "not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit."

But man refuses to learn this needful lesson. In the strong assertion of the truth of it, the Lord says by his prophet, "I loved Jacob, and hated Esau, and laid his mountain and his heritage waste." Esau then in the pride and confidence of the flesh answers, "we are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places." But God will by no means allow this in the flesh, or let man boast himself, and therefore he replies again to Esau, " they shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them the border of wickedness, and the people against whom the Lord hath indignation forever" (Mal. 1)

This is the conflict in this world of ours; and that which is of flesh or of man has ever struggled with that which is of God or of the Spirit. And this struggle we have had exhibited to us from very old time, and have it still. The house of the two wives, to which I have referred, constantly presented it. That of Abraham witnessed it. There Hagar and Sarah for a season dwelt together, but in sad discord and strife.-Again the family of Jacob presented the same. Leah had the right of the flesh or of the first-born, but

Rachel was the object of election and delight; and they two, the wives of the same husband, dwelt together, but between them there was again the same disturbance, upbraidings, and annoy.—Elkanah's house was the same. Peninnah and Hannah were the Hagar and Sarah, the Leah and Rachel, again-pride and provocations from the one, and constant sorrow of heart from the other. And all these scenes were the expressions of the way in which the flesh persecutes the Spirit. And of the same struggle the Church in Galatia was the scene; and the heart of each believer is likely still to be the same every day of our journey here; and nothing heals the house, the Church, or the heart, but strengthening the freewoman, giving fruitfulness to the seed of God, the Spirit of adoption, the principle of child-like holy liberty in us and among us. Bring forth Isaac, and then send away Ishmael, and dwell in an undivided house. "Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."

Now the Lord found Israel very much the same scene. That which was born after the flesh, persecuted that which was born after the Spirit. The poor barren woman was found there again, the tainted sinner or the publican, weak and lost in themselves, receiving the gracious visitation of the God of all power and love, but suffering the scorn and persecution of those who had strength in themselves, as they judged, the Pharisees, the Hagars and Peninnahs of that day. This was all in principle the flesh and the Spirit again, the bondwoman and the free; and this house which we have now been visiting was a sample of this. But, O beloved, may our faith be strengthened to do justice to God's love. That love claims our full and happy confidence. To render it only a diffident and suspicious trust is to treat it unworthily. May all such spirit of fear and bondage be gone. May the true Sarah in our hearts from henceforth cry out, and cry till it prevail, "cast out the bondwoman and her son." For when the Lord does his work, he does it in a way worthy of himself. When Israel came out of Egypt, they came out not as though they were ashamed of themselves, but harnessed and full handed. They came out, as the host of God should go out. Not a dog dared to move his tongue at them, nor was there one feeble person among their tribes. And so with us sinners going forth from under the power of darkness with our Redeemer. We are not to go forth with fear and suspicion, as though we could hardly trust the arm that was saving us; but in such a way as will give all reason to know, that the work is the work of him, "whose love is as great as his power, and neither knows measure or end." We are to leave the Pharisee's house behind us, like this poor sinner, not minding what the company there say, but bearing the sweet echo of the Lord's voice which tells us of peace still upon our heart and ear. Then we shall go forth, like Israel from Egypt, as the redeemed of the Lord ought to go, letting hell and earth know, in our joyous and perfect assurance of his salvation, that he who is higher than the highest is on our side, and that we are feeding upon "the Mighty's meat."

(To Be Continued, if the Lord will)

THE GOSPEL BY ST. LUKE

(Continued from p. 32, vol. 7)

It was not that we reached any distinct section of our Gospel, that I broke off in the previous paper with the 7th chapter, for as I have observed, it is not the character of it to preserve distinct order as to circumstances. It was rather for convenience that I did so, and would now resume our meditations with the 8th chapter, hoping for the good hand of the Lord to lead us together, beloved, along these ways of our divine Teacher. And if we but follow him, in the spirit of communion and with obedient hearts, we may by faith see him turn round on us in love, and hear him say, "I lead in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment, that I may cause those that love me to inherit substance, and I will fill their treasures."

8.—This is the first of a series of chapters, in which we see the Lord, the twelve, and the seventy, in succession going forth to minister (see 8:1, 9:1, 10:1). And this extended exhibition of ministry is all according to the grace of the Spirit in this Gospel; and as a further expression of the same grace our Evangelist here tells us, that the Lord went "throughout every city and village"-no. spot was unvisited by his light and goodness. And this divine minister of grace is here attended by a suitable train. A company of poor sinners, who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities and cleansed of devils, follow him now to witness his grace, as by and bye when he comes forth in power, he will have behind him an equally suited train of shining ones to reflect his glory (Rev. 19:14).

Our Evangelist then records the parable of the sower, given to us also, we know, by both Matthew and Mark. No doubt it has the same general character and purpose in each Gospel, but I observe that the Lord here is not so careful, by directly quoting the prophet Isaiah, to apply the judgment of God to Israel, as he is in the other Evangelists, and this is still according to his mind in St. Luke.

In the progress of this chapter, we get the case of the Gadarenes, of the woman with the issue of blood, and of Jairus' daughter, combined in the same way in St. Mark also. But I would meditate a little upon them as thus combined, for I judge there is much teaching in them.

Gadara was a portion of the Jewish or sanctified earth. It was within that land on which the eyes of the God of heaven and earth would fain have rested from one end of the year to the other (Deut. 11) But the unclean had long since entered that land and defiled it, and there we find them at this time in herds, as also the full display of the enemy's unbridled strength. Legion and the swine were in Gadara, to tell us what the place of Jehovah's choice had now become. It was indeed the very palace of the strong man, but the Son of God now enters as the stronger man to do his proper work, to show himself the redeemer of the captive, and the destruction of the power of death. But the feeders of the unclean swine in that place are not prepared for this, it was a trespass on them, and they would have Jesus depart from their coasts. Nothing that we see in all the history of the Gospel, gives us such an expression of the dark and unclean region of Satan as this. With such a display of the grace and power of the stronger man in the midst of them, still they desire him not, but would sell all their interest in the Son of God for a herd of swine.

This was very awful, and Jesus has but to leave them and to return across the lake of Galilee to pursue his way in other scenes. A Jewish ruler seeks him that he would come to his house in behalf of his little only daughter who there lay a dying. He goes onward with the purpose of proving himself, in the house of the Jew, the resurrection and the life; but his path thither is interrupted by the faith of a needy stranger who touches him in the crowd. She had a plague in her body. It was a kind of fretting leprosy, a fountain of uncleanness in her very flesh, which no skill of man could heal. But in her extremity she hears of Jesus, and now by a single touch gets all that she needed.

But no one knew her or cared to know her. Both herself and her touching the Lord would have remained a secret in the busy crowd, but that he who heals her knows her and owns her before them all. The multitude was thronging and pressing him, but it was not need' or sin that urged them, and therefore he feels it not. But her fainter touch was felt, because it was the touch of a consciously needy and defiled one who had learned to believe that there was virtue in him. Her sorrow introduces her to him, and he knows her because he healed her. This was the ground and the character of their acquaintance; and the Son of God and the healed sinner thus meet together to be alone in the crowd,-she a stranger to all but him, and he treating as strangers all but her.

But this progress of the Lord through these scenes is very significant. It tells us what we know the path and action of the Son of God to be. For he has before him in the distance the day of his power in Israel, the house of the Jew, where he will make the dry bones live, and call his people from their dark and long sleep, as prisoners from the pit; but on his journey there, or during the present season by the way, a stranger engages his sympathies, a poor unnoticed one, save by himself, whom conscious deep necessity had thrown in his way, like the Church of God, which alone occupies the Son of God, while on his way to display his power in resurrection and life in Israel in the latter day.

This, I judge, is the character of what we get here; and thus this chapter which opens with the Lord going forth to his ministry, in the progress of it gives us these samples of the varied fruit of his toil both in the Church and in Israel, showing us also, as in Gadara, what a world it was into which he came to toil, that all his blessed travail might close in his own praise both in heaven and earth, the world's conviction and judgment, and the comfort of every poor sinner who will trust in him.

9.-In the opening of this chapter, we get, in order, the mission of the twelve. But the Lord does not here as in Matthew, limit their labors to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel," this distinction being still according to the general character of the two Gospels.

The exercise of Herod's conscience is then noticed here, and perhaps a little more largely than in either Matthew or Mark, and is again referred to in chap. 23. This is still according to our Evangelist, but the martyrdom of the Baptist, on the other hand, is not so fully detailed, for that was a fact in the course and history of the Jewish apostasy, and lay, therefore, less within notice of the Spirit in him.

Touching the Transfiguration which our Evangelist then gives us, and a little more particularly too than either Matthew or Mark, I desire to say a little. There is an intimation in verse 37, that this vision was witnessed at night, and that circumstance appears to me to give increased interest and significance to it. For this scene was the place of the heavenly glory, and as by and bye that place will need neither the sun nor the moon to shine in it, but the glory of God will lighten it, so this mount was lighted, as it were, by the body of the glorified Lord.

Again I notice that this journey up the hill was expressly under promise that the disciples should see the glory (ver. 27), but that the Lord was in prayer before that promised glory broke forth, and that during that season of prayer, the disciples had become heavy with sleep. Now all this is precisely the call and history of the Church in this dispensation. The Church has been withdrawn from the world by the hand of the Son of God under promise of the kingdom, but there has been decline and slumbering. The virgins have all slumbered, there has not been due watching with Christ, the spirit is willing, but the flesh has proved itself weak. But in due season, the glory appears; for though it tarried it came according to promise, and then they slumber no more, the weakness of nature, the burden of the flesh, are gone. And then too the glorified family appear also, when he who is our life shall appear, "then shall we also appear with him in glory."

But I further observe, that when the glory awakens Peter and his companions, Peter at once cries out, " Lord, it is good for us to be here"-this telling us where his heart and desire really were, though through the weakness of the flesh he had fallen asleep-like the wise virgins, who though they slumber and sleep, still have oil in their vessels, which tells us, like Peter's cry, that they were indeed, though in weakness, waiting for the Bridegroom.

This is another point of interesting instruction; and further I notice that at the close of the vision the excellent glory appears, and that too, for a very distinct purpose. A voice from it approves the Son of God, and the value of that voice I have already sought to interpret (page 15). But what I now notice is this, that this cloud of the excellent glory here gathers up and takes home the heavenly family. Peter, James, and John have to stand without, while the Lord and his companions enter within, those garments of light. That cloud was thus the true vail separating the holy from the holiest; and it is the peculiar honor of the Church, the changed and risen saints, alike transfigured or glorified, to have their place in it, while Israel and the honor of the nations only walk in the light of it. And thus this part of the vision was somewhat beyond the present thoughts of the disciples, and they therefore fear as Jesus with Moses and Elias are enfolded in that glory. For the heavenly places, or the top of the mystic ladder, up to which this cloud was now separating these glorious strangers, had not as yet been disclosed to Jewish faith. Jacob had been at the foot of it, and Jacob's people knew the God of Bethel, and lived in the hope of the promise then made touching the inheritance of the land. But neither Jacob nor they knew of anything at the top of the ladder but the voice of Jehovah who addressed him. The Transfiguration now discloses the secrets of that glorious place, and shows a family of shining heavenly ones to be there with Jehovah-Jesus. This was the mystery, a secret even to prophets and righteous men of old, that the God of their fathers was to have a family in the place out of which the blessing was to flow, and the glory was to shine, as well as a restored people and a subject -creation at the foot, to enjoy the blessing and to dwell in the light of the glory.

Thus this vision was an advance upon that of Jacob's ladder, filling out the revelation of " the purpose of his will," that God will gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth (Eph. 1:10). Indeed so glorious a vision as this had never been then enjoyed. Abram's passing lamp was glorious, and the ladder of Jacob was glorious. The sight of the burning bush was full of blessing, and also that of the armed captain under the walls of Jericho. Angels were welcome visitors from heaven to patriarchs and rulers of old, and the passage of the Lord himself before the Mediator (Ex. 33) and the prophet (1 Kings 19) at the mount of God, were both perfect in their season. But this vision of the Church on the glorious top of the bill is beyond them all. That which perhaps the most nearly approaches it, is the rapture of Elijah in the presence of Elisha, for that was the conducting of the glorified ones up to the place where they are now seen. But still this surpasses it, giving us to see the heavenly family, not merely on their way to their glory, but peacefully at home in it; no terror making them afraid, no surprise as from light that was beyond them, like Isaiah, Daniel, and others; but all is perfect calm in the consciousness of being at home, though in the very midst of the brightness of it all.

But even this perhaps, had still to yield to something more glorious afterward. The 7th of Acts becomes Stephen's mount of Transfiguration after this. And then the martyr himself is stamped with the heavenly glory. He shines with the light of the children of the resurrection who are to be as the angels. It is not that like the disciples here he sees that light reflected in others, but he bears it immediately himself; let down on the mount that he might see it here, but the heaven itself is opened and he sees it there, and one waiting to receive him into it. His eyes behold him for himself, and not for another. And his word before the council is a comment on all this, showing a line of strangers and sufferers, among whom he there was taking his place, led by "the God of glory" up to "the glory of God" (Acts 7:2-55).

This was indeed blessed; but whether there with Stephen, or here to Peter, James, and John, heavenly secrets are disclosed, and the Church is shown to be at the top of the ladder, in the glory of the Son himself. There is the celestial, as well as the terrestrial. The heavens declare the glory of God. Heaven and earth are both to have in them the witness of redemption. Redemption is too excellent a work to remain uncelebrated either here or there. It is a work that has called forth the full flow of the divine love, and power, and must be known, therefore, in heaven and on earth. The Church is appointed to tell of it there, and Israel with her attendant nations to speak of it here; and this heavenly witness of it-the Church, is here for a passing moment, seen in her place on the top of the hill. But what a grace and calling that is. The very conception of it is divine. None but God could have conceived such a purpose, nothing less than infinite love could have formed the thought of a family drawn from among sinners to be loved with the love, and glorified with the glory of the Son, to dwell in one house, and sit on one throne with him. But 0 how little do our wretched hearts value either him or his glory. What is it all to us, is the dark whisper of our souls.-May the Spirit within, silence this unbelief of nature, dear brethren.

After the vision had passed, and they were descending the hill, the Lord in the other Gospels talks to them of the ministry of Elias. But that is unnoticed here, for being Jewish ministry it was less suited to the Spirit in St. Luke. But beyond this there is nothing characteristic in this chapter, till we reach the close (ver. 51-62). But there we have a very strongly-marked path of the Lord indeed.

The recent vision on the mount may have led to it, but whether that be so or not, we find our Lord here addressing himself to his journey in the consciousness of its leading him to glory. The time had come, we read, when he was "to be received up,"-words which express his ascension to glory. And he acts according to this consciousness, sending messengers "before his face," as though it were to prepare for him a way suited to this anticipated glory. The chariot of God would be in readiness to attend him, from Jerusalem upwards (24:51), but it was now for the children of men to prepare his previous way from the place where he then was, to that city. And he was thus as it were, trying whether the world would own his claim to be "received up," as afterward he tried whether Israel would own his royal place in Zion (chap. 19:28). But neither would the world know him, or Israel receive him. The world was not ready for his claims, as is here expressed by the conduct of the Samaritan village. The earth did not care for his heavenly glory. "Go up thou bald head, go up thou bald head," an infidel world was again, in the spirit of it, saying.

But the disciples who had caught the tone of their Lord's mind on this striking occasion, look on him as another Elijah traveling on to meet the chariot of Israel, and they move him to do what Elijah had then done, by resenting this indignity of the Samaritan villagers, as of the captains and their fifties. But the way of the Son of man for the present must be different. He will pass to glory rather through sorrow of his own than through judgment of the world. He will "suffer thus far," and therefore he here restrains this motion of his disciples, bows his head to this scorn of men by seeking another village, and that too, not with preparation before his face, but as the rejected Christ of God.

In such a character he accordingly now resumes his journey. No sense of glory now fills his soul, as it had done when he set out, the Samaritans had changed its current altogether, and he goes on consciously despised and rejected of men, who had now in full deliberation hid their faces, and shut their doors upon him.-And if,. beloved, it be to the praise of grace in St. Paul, that he had learned how to be abased and how to abound, how to be full and how to be hungry, do we not here see all this to perfection in our blessed Master? He knew how one moment to act in the sense of his fullness or glory, and the next to become the despised Son of man. He takes the place which the scornful villagers of Samaria give him without an effort or a murmur.

And in this place of rejection we see those persons brought into intercourse with him, that we, beloved, through them may have some good lessons read to our souls. Two of them are introduced in Matthew (chap. 8), but not in the same moral connection as here, for the value of the cases here lies altogether in those lessons which the Lord himself teaches us by them.

The Lord speaks on each case in the full sense of his present place of rejection in the earth. The whole bearing of the instruction proceeds from that. It is the Lord's rejection that has given his saints a new place, new duties, and new attachments, and these are here brought out for our contemplation, that we may count the cost of being his. It is this rejection which tells us that there is a home for us, but that it is outside the earth altogether; that there is service or ministry for us, but beyond that which human obligations would suggest; and that there is kindredness and affection for us, but different from that which human relations would supply. Something of the new condition of those who are "in Christ" (2 Cor. 5:17) is therefore traceable here. The fullness of that is of course, more presented after this, when the Apostles through the Holy Ghost, open the mystery of the Church; but we have the principle of it here. From these three cases the Lord suggests to us the place, the duties, and the attachments, which now, since the earth has refused him, belong to us; and in those severally we see old things passed away and all become new. Nothing brings the saints into these new things, but the total rejection of their Lord by the world; but let the Lord be apprehended in his rejection, and then these new things will be entered into by the soul at once. No "looking back," no knowing of man " after the flesh," by those who have gone forth to the Son of God outside the camp; and it is only when we in spirit stand there with him, that we now understand him rightly.

Thus these holy and solemn lessons are read to our souls by our divine Teacher from his present place-" despised and rejected of men." He would still teach us, even in and through his own sorrows, that we might be kept in constant company with himself and his thoughts, as we pass on from scene to scene across this evil world.

10.-This chapter gives us in order the mission of the seventy, but it is only here that we get this, for the Lord, as I have already observed, in this Gospel looks out to man beyond the Jewish boundary; and thus we are here given to see a ministry more extended in its character than that which properly suited itself to Jewish arrangements. It intimated a departure from strict primitive order in Israel, as did a similar appointment of seventy elders in the days of Moses (Num. 11) But this is all according to St. Luke.

This mission is sent forth with a message of peace from God, to every house and every city; but withal no man was to be saluted by the way. This has great value in it. Jesus proposes, beloved, to settle not the mere intercourses of men in their social order, but the connection between God and sinners. That is the great circumstance, and which the Lord therefore must first provide for. So with our Apostle afterward. With Paul it mattered little whether the saints were bond or free; for if bond, they were still the Lord's freemen, if free, they were still the Lord's servants. Their relation to the Lord was the great thing (1 Cor. 7); as here we see it was also in the judgment of the Son of God. There was to be no saluting of any man, while there was to be the publishing of peace to every house and every city. It was not the courtesies of human life the Lord's messengers were to bear on their lips, but a happy, holy, and weighty message from God to man.

This was the mind of the blessed Lord on now sending out his messengers; and on their return with the report of their labors, he anticipates the fall of Satan. A little sample of power in the hands of the seventy, hints this result to him. But after expressing it, he turns to check in his disciples the looking chiefly at power, telling them that there was something deeper and richer than that for them, even a name in heaven, a memorial with a Father there; and how-ever excellent authority over devils might be, or power in the earth, yet that memorial was happier still. It is not that he undervalues power, or withdraws it from them. Nay, he rather rejoices in it and confirms it in their hands, saying " I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions." But the home in heaven of the children, is to be still more precious than the power in earth of the heirs of God.

And it has interested me very much to notice this, that it is just here (and in the corresponding place in Matt. 11), that the mind of the Lord in those Gospels, approaches the most nearly to what it afterward is in St. John. In St. John the Lord is in connection with the Father and the heavenly family, and it is just in this place of our Gospel that he looks out to those objects beyond all that was then surrounding him in the apostate cities of Israel. It is as though our Evangelist had just laid hold on the skirts of St. John, or rather perhaps as though this mantle of our Prophet, that energy of the Spirit which clothes him here, were taken up by that other Prophet to do by it greater wonders, and bring out richer revelations still. The Father, the Son, the headship of all things in himself, and the family who have their names written in heaven (the Church), Heb. 12: 23, these are the objects which are here present to the thoughts of the Lord, as he looks onward to what none then saw but himself, through the unbelief of the Jewish cities, and this little sample of power in the hands of the seventy. And in Spirit he rejoices in all this, and takes afresh his complacency in the person and the purpose of the Father, Lord of heaven and earth, and also in his own place in the blessed mystery, turning too in all personal intimacy towards his disciples, as meaning to identify them with all this blessedness which here passes before his mind, which prophets and kings of old had not attained, but which this communion with himself was bringing them into.

But here we have a painful instance of the way in which the Lord's Spirit was liable to be intruded on in this low-thoughted world. He was at this moment, as we have seen, happy in thought of heavenly things, when a lawyer proposes an inquiry to him, which came from other sources and springs altogether. But he bows his head to the intrusion and comes down to man's level. And in many other places, as here, we may notice the ease and patience with which he ever turned himself towards man. I have already noticed the way in which he occasionally comes forth in divine glory at the bidding of faith (page 25), but his ease as a teacher or a healer coming forth at the call of man's ignorance or need, is equally lovely in its place. Nothing was too glorious in God for Jesus to assume when faith unveiled him, and nothing too little in man for him to wait on, when necessity or ignorance appealed to him. And in all this he was never in haste, as though he felt he was meeting a difficulty, but always turns in the graceful as well as gracious ease of conscious power, telling the occasion, let it be what it may, that he was equal to it.

But this only by the way, beloved, if haply the Spirit would give us some delight in marking the ways of Jesus. This inquiry leads the Lord to the parable of the good Samaritan, which is peculiar to our Evangelist. The purpose of it was, to show this lawyer who his neighbor was; but in the usual way of the Lord, this instruction is conveyed in a body of larger doctrine. So that we get not only an answer to the inquiry, but other and larger principles of truth. I see the same in the character of the Apostle's teaching afterward. And this is always the way of power, and the way of God. God in his dispensations has done this. He does not merely restore what we had lost, but he brings in other glories and blessings which carry with them the full restoration. And so in divine instructions. The spirit of revelation not only answers the anxiety of an inquirer, but conveys that answer through truths and principles which unfold wider thoughts still. As here the law of neighborly love is taught and illustrated by a beauteous exhibition of the grace of the Gospel of the Sod of God brought in upon the complete inadequacy of everything else to answer the need of sinners.

The case which the Lord suggests in this parable, was a defiling of the land; and all that the law could do in it was to find out the wrong doer, and exact eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. Nor could the ministers of the altar under the law, provide for the case. They had their service elsewhere. But a stranger, in the liberty of his own love, may attend to it if he please. And so with us sinners. God must come forth in the activities of his own love to meet our sad condition, for it lies beyond all other help. The services of a temple will not do for those who have no cleanness fit for a temple. Man is not there by nature, his heart is no sanctuary for God, but he lies in an unclean place defiled in his blood, and what he wants is to be sought out and brought home by one who will lade his shoulders with him, as a shepherd does with his sheep. For man has been made the prey of a strong and a cruel enemy, and it is that love which will go, and at a great cost bind him up, that he needs. And such an one has met him in the Son of God in the Gospel. Under the law God was in the holy place, and the unclean must be removed, and the priest and the Levite attend that sanctuary. But in the Gospel, God is in the unclean place, seeking the ruined ones, Jesus is going about doing good, the stranger from heaven has come where man lay in his blood, and has looked on him and had compassion. The priest and the Levite, the ministers of the temple, must pass by on the other side, for this blood would defile them; but the Son of God can go and meddle with all that pollution untouched by it, and wash the wounded sinner from his blood, and anoint him with oil (Ezek. 16) And he has done all this, and changed places with the wounded sinner also. For though rich he has become poor, that we through his poverty might be made rich-though without sin he was made sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him-as the good Samaritan here changes places with the wounded traveler, getting down from his own beast and setting him on it. And he has even done more than this, for he has told us that he has his eye upon us forever, that whether present or absent he thinks of us, as here the stranger charges the host to take care of the poor helpless man, and that when he comes that way again, as surely he will, he will as surely repay him.

All this love, this costly and needed love, we have in the Son of God, the stranger from heaven, the true good Samaritan. He kept the law of love to his neighbor, but only he, and we must go to learn the way from him, "do likewise," kindle our heart at his heart if in anywise we hope to answer that end of the law. This lawyer was making his boast in the law, but he had evidently reduced and qualified it, as everyone must who seeks like him to be justified by it. "Who is my neighbor," said he, little judging that he was about to hear such a tale of love to one's neighbor as was coming forth. The law was too high, too noble for this man's thoughts-and so is it for us all-we see nothing worthy of that word, "thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself," till we trace the well-spent life of Jesus. He would have stood on the law, and refused Jesus, but he has to learn if his ears could hear it, that Jesus alone upheld the law or gave it efficacy on the hearts and consciences of others.

It is thus our salvation to know Jesus as the stranger that met us in our wounds with his oil and wine. Our Evangelist alone gives us this parable, but this is quite according to the largeness of the spirit of grace which fills his Gospel throughout.

The little scene which then closes this chapter, is also peculiar to Luke, serving his general purpose of instructing us in great principles of truth. For the two sisters here introduced, were differently minded; and being brought to the trial of the mind of Christ, we get the judgment of God on matter of much value to our souls.

The house, which we now enter, was Martha's. The Spirit of God tells us this, as being characteristic of Martha; and into her house with all readiness of heart she receives the Lord, and prepares for him the very best provision it had. His labors and fatigue called for this. Martha well knew that his ways abroad were the ways of the good Samaritan who would go on foot that others might ride, and she loves him too well not to observe and provide for his weariness. But Mary has no house for him. She was in spirit, a stranger like himself, but she opens a sanctuary for him and seats him there, the Lord of her humble temple. She takes her place at his feet and hears his words. She knows as well as Martha that he was wearied, but she knows also that there was a fullness in him that could afford to be more wearied still. Her ear and her heart therefore still use him, instead of her hand or her foot ministering to him. And in these things lay the difference between the sisters. Martha's eye saw his weariness, and would give to him; Mary's faith apprehended his fullness underneath his weariness, and would draw from him.

This brings out the mind of the Son of God. The Lord accepts the care of Martha, as long as it is simple care and diligence about his present need; but the moment she brings her mind into competition with Mary's, she learns his judgment upon all this, and is taught to know that Mary by her faith, was refreshing him with a sweeter feast than all her care and the provision of her house could possibly have supplied. For Mary's faith gave Jesus a sense of his own divine glory. It told him that though he was the wearied one, he could still feed and refresh her. She was at his feet hearing his words. There was no temple there, or light of the sun, but the Son of God was there, and he was everything to her. This was the honor he prized, and blessedly indeed was she in his secret. When he was thirsty and tired at Jacob's well, he forgot it all in giving out other waters which no pitcher could have held or well beside his own supplied, and here again she brings her soul to the same well, as knowing that in spite of all his weariness it was as full as ever for her use.

And O, dear brethren, what principles are here disclosed to us. Our God is asserting for himself the place of supreme power and supreme goodness, and he will have us debtors to him. Our sense of his fullness is more precious to him than all the service we can render him. Entitled as he is to more than all creation could render him, yet above all things does he desire that we should use his love and draw from his treasures. The honor which our confidence puts upon him is his highest honor, for it is the divine glory to be still giving, still blessing, still pouring forth from unexhausted fullness. Under the law he had to receive from us, but in the Gospel he is giving to us; and the words of the Lord Jesus are these,-" it is more blessed to give than to receive." And this place he will fill forever, for "without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better." Praise shall it is true, arise to him from everything that hath breath, but forth from himself shall go the constant flow of blessing, the light to cheer, the waters to refresh, and the leaves of the tree to heal, and our God shall taste his own joy and display his own glory in being a giver forever.

11. 1-13.-It is the Lord's way in this Gospel, as I have already noticed, to bring his mind into contact with all the exercises of the hearts and consciences of men, that thus we may get the judgment of God (for that he ever carried in him) on all that concerns us. These verses illustrate this. And the subject here is prayer, one of deep interest to our souls. May the Lord guide the counsels of our hearts upon it!

The law generally did not require prayer, for the law was testing man, and calling on him to use his strength, if he had any; while prayer on the other hand, comes forth on the sense of our weakness and dependence. I remember, however, two forms of prayer provided by the law; but one is on the ground of innocency, the other on that of obedience, and thus both were suited to the dispensation with which they were associated (Deut. 21, 26) John's ministry advanced beyond the law, convicting flesh of being but grass; and as we learn here, that he had taught his disciples to pray, we cannot doubt but that, like the law, he provided an utterance for their hearts, suited to the standing in grace and knowledge up to which his ministry was leading them. So in the same wisdom here with the Lord. He provides a prayer for them suited to the condition of faith and hope to which he had conducted them. And all this is perfect because seasonable, because suited to them who had just said, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples."

But it would not have been thus perfect or seasonable, had it been an utterance altogether according to the increased light into which the Church has been since brought. The Lord had not then entered, as the High Priest of our profession, into his heavenly sanctuary, nor was the Holy Ghost then given. Thus his own name is not pleaded here, as the Lord himself says after this, " hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name." But shortly after saying that, he adds, "in that day ye shall ask in my name"-thus plainly telling us that there would be an advance in the character of the worship of the saints. And so indeed we find it. The prayers which the Apostles, through the Spirit, make for the saints, entertain higher thoughts and deeper desires than what this prayer (perfect doubtless in its place) of our Lord expresses (see Eph. 1:3 Col. 1 &c. &c.)

And from all this, I do indeed judge that we may easily admit the perfectness, because of the seasonableness, of this holy form of prayer, and discern spiritually that the Lord was not providing it as the abiding utterance of the Church. I do not at all say that the soul may not still use it, and find its desire at times expressed by it. But I believe the soul, fully aware of its new place under the Holy Ghost with Jesus ascended on high, is doing no despite to the Lord's holy furniture of his own sanctuary not to use it. He is the Lord of the temple still, it is most true, and our joy to own him thus; but the Holy Ghost he has now given to be the living power there, and he fills it with true and spiritual worship, with groanings which cannot be uttered, with supplications, prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks, with the spirit of adoption which ever cries "Abba Father." For the same Lord of the temple has thus so now ordained it, and it is obedience to walk onward with him. What was once the beauty of his house is now beggarly elements, because the Lord has gone onward, leaving Jerusalem and its worship behind; and it does not become us to look back on the goodly stones with admiration, if Jesus have gone forth to the Mount of Olives.

But the Lord knows our frame; and when faith is weak he is gracious, ever gracious. As one, beloved in the Lord, observed to me, when the Israelites refused to go forward, though invited by the bunch from Eshcol, and had then to travel for forty years in the desert, the cloud became a wanderer in their company also. The Lord of Israel would go back even with his faltering and unbelieving people, and still wander in a tent or tabernacle with them.. "Gracious Shepherd," the soul may indeed breathe out. The Apostle only reflects the mind of the Lord towards us, when all the coldness of the disciples towards him drew out this word,-"though the more I love you, the less I be loved." Hard to believe it, but still so it is, full, unchanging, everlasting love-a love that can stand every trial. As we sing together, "nothing changes God's affection, Abba's love will bring us through." And so towards us his poor weak children. He waits to be gracious. The saint should be far on in the desert, having seen and tasted Eshcol; but if faith be weak, the Lord does not refuse to meet us in the more southern parts, even such as border on Horeb again.

But these things, beloved, I rather suggest in connection with this subject of prayer. He himself further shows us here, in the parable of the friend asking for the loaves at midnight, the value or success of prayer; and then in his contrast between the human and heavenly Father, the warrant or securities of prayer. And these securities he shows us to be two-fold,-one drawn from the love of the relationship, the other from the positive goodness of God himself, that we may have strong assurance of heart, when we seek the Lord and his blessing.

But I cannot pass on from this, without asking, does not the little expression "from within" carry much moral value with it? I think it does. It seems to tell us that being " within" has a necessary tendency to indispose us to enter into those sympathies, into which we should at all times allow ourselves to be called. Moses, it is true, though in the midst of the pleasures of Egypt, went out to look on the burdens of his brethren; and Nehemiah, though in the Persian palace and all its delights, still wept over the desolations of the city of his father's sepulchers. They were both "within," but faith thrust them out. But their circumstances made this trial of faith the severer, and its victory more excellent and unusual. For it is indeed, beloved, dangerous to get much or far " within," lest the soul surveying its condition should say, " my children are with me in bed, I cannot rise and give thee"-then the need of a brother " without" will scarcely be heard, the burdens of Israel or the desolations of Zion will be scarcely looked at or inquired after.

This is indeed a fruitful spot in our Gospel. The lessons which it reads us are weighty and various, as all is which we get from our great Teacher, had we fervency of heart to hang over it, as in the sanctuary of our God.

14—54.-These verses give us other scenes, still illustrating, according to the way of our Evangelist, matter of value to our souls.

The Lord here listens to two challenges from his enemies, for in this world of ours, reproach was ever breaking his heart. But in the holy power of a great Teacher, as he was, he returns both these challenges on the head, or rather on the conscience, of his accusers. One said that he was allied to Satan in what he was doing; another, that at any rate he had not sufficiently proved that he was allied to God in it.-" He casts out devils through Beelzebub," said the one,-"show us a sign from heaven," said the other. But the Lord exposes such thoughts, and then lays open to them their condition, that they might learn that it was not in him, but in themselves this evil and this obscurity were to be found, for that he was " the finger of God," and " the candle set on the candlestick." In St. John's Gospel, he takes the title of "the light of the world;" but in the other Evangelists, as here, that of the candle set in the candlestick-not at all so lofty a style as the other, and this is still according to the different Gospels. But from either of these titles we learn that the Lord himself is now the light. The sun in the heavens lighted Adam in paradise, but darkness came in, and it is the Lord who now runs his course for us. "O house of Israel, come ye and let us walk in the light of the Lord."

The Lord in his answer here to the second challenge, leads us to these thoughts about him; but in the progress of all this, we notice an interruption. What he was saying bore with such force on the heart of one, who was listening, that "as he spake," she lifted up her voice and said, " blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the papa which thou hast sucked." This was a testimony to the power of the words of our divine Teacher, which is his glory in this Gospel. And a like testimony is given to him in the next stage of this same scene, for again "as he spake, a Pharisee who was present besought him to dine with him." He had evidently been moved by the power of his words, but not perhaps with the same affection as the poor woman, and he invites him to his house. And so again, when he enters the house, he continues to act as the great Teacher still, rebuking the religious pride and dark hypocrisy which he found there, until a Scribe who was present, feeling the righteous rebukes, interrupts him in like manner, and says to him, " Master, thus saying, thou reproachest us also." But the light abides faithful to its work, and goes on still making manifest the darkness that was surrounding it, till the enmity of that darkness is fully raised, and Scribes and Pharisees together begin so to urge him, that he has to withdraw the light, the power of which had thus become intolerable.

12.-It is, however, to pursue his way as a Teacher, though in other places, that the Lord thus retires from among the Scribes, the lawyers, and the Pharisees. He here enters the multitude, and at once resumes his teaching, taking for his subject what was suggested to him in the house of the Pharisee,-hypocrisy, and the persecution which a righteous remnant might count upon.

And here again, as in the previous chapter, we have a testimony to the power of his words, for " one of the company," judging, as it seems, from the current of the Lord's discourse, that he was set against oppression and the assumptions of the rich, seeks him to entertain his charge against a wrongful and injurious brother of his. But the Lord has only to act still as the light that rebukes darkness wherever it finds it, and he now among the multitude addresses a word against covetousness, as just before among the rulers, he had been addressing another word against religious pride and hypocrisy. For the world was but the place of man's darkness, and the light of heaven was therefore in all places where it entered, a reproving light (Eph. 5:13). The rich and the poor, the rulers and the multitudes, were alike exposed by it. As Jeremiah in his day visited "the poor," and found that they knew not the way of the Lord, and "the great ones," and found that they had altogether broken the bonds (Jer. 5:1-5).

Thus we have the light here, the great Teacher, as in the preceding chapter, doing his holy work. But I observe that though much of the matter of this chapter is found in St. Matthew, yet that it is given to us in a different manner. There it is simply as a discourse of the Lord, but here it comes forth in reply to others. But this distinction is still in the character of this Gospel; because in it, as I have already noticed, the Lord is dealing with man, and drawing forth his thoughts and conscience and affections into exercise, that they may be corrected and formed by the mind of Christ according to God. The Lord's teaching, therefore, is often here, as in this chapter, in the way of answer to the inquiries and thoughts of others.

13.-The teaching of the previous chapter was all very important to our souls, and now at the opening of this, we are in "the same season" as we read, and so I believe upon the same truth also.

The man who had accused his brother to the Lord, learned from the Lord, that he himself was on the way with another accuser to another judge; for those words in verses 58, 59, were, as I understand them, addressed to him. So here some tell the Lord of the special sufferings of certain Galileans, as though they must have been sinners above others (John 9:2), and thus they were bringing up their brethren in like manner for judgment. But the Lord would have them also know that they were in the same condemnation, and if they repented not would all likewise perish.

With the same thoughts of the sin of Israel upon his mind, the whole nation being ripe for the judgment of a mightier slaughter than that of the Galileans, the Lord indites the parable of the barren fig tree. This fig tree was planted in a vineyard, as Israel was set in God's house, in the midst of ordinances and privileges, watered and tended with all diligence and care, but without fruit. Israel had no root in itself to yield God anything, and the ministry of Jesus, the patient dresser of this vineyard, had now nearly proved this. By that ministry the goodness of God had been leading them to repentance (Rom. 2)-it had been the digging about and dunging of this barren tree-but withal there was no fruit. And we then see in the next little scene, that there was no sense in Israel of their real state. The sick was there, and thus the need of a physcian; but they seem unconscious of it. A daughter of Abraham is found to be in disease, but the rulers of Abraham's house reject with pride the attendance of the good Physician.

In all this way the corrupted state of the nation passes before the mind of the Lord, and he seems to utter thoughts according to all this, reflecting on the great tree where the unclean had found their rest, and on the whole lump which had now felt the leaven. And in this mind he enters afresh on his journey, the proved sin and the coming judgment of Israel being only before him, he pursues his way to the city.

But here let me notice, that in St. John the Lord is seen frequently at Jerusalem, for Jerusalem had no higher character in the esteem of the stranger from heaven, than any other spot on the earth. But in the other Gospels, the Lord is not seen to enter that city which was the ordained seat of his government as son of David, till he enters it, when his ministry was closing, in royal state, offering the kingdom to the daughter of Zion, and when he is fully and formally rejected by her. In this Gospel by St. Luke, his gradual approach to the city for this purpose, is more distinctly traced than in either Matthew or Mark (see 9:51, 13:22, 31, 17:11, 17:31, 19:1, 11, 28). He seems to linger, as it were, from stage to stage, not willing to hasten the doom of the nation, because what was to happen to him there was to fill up their sin, and leave them for judgment. He was waiting to be gracious, as now in this age the long-suffering of God in not sending Jesus is salvation, not willing that any should perish. And this reserve in his movement towards the city, reminds me of the departure from it of the glory in Ezekiel (1-11.) The glory there lingers from stage to stage, as loath to depart, though the pollution in the city would not allow it to stay. And so here, the Lord lingers, in the same way delaying the hour of Jerusalem's judgment, journeying still towards it throughout this Gospel, but not reaching it till his ministry was closing.

It is, however, with strong and clear thoughts upon his heart, that he makes these approaches to the city, and eyes it in the distance. In chap. 9:51, as I have observed already, he moved onward as though his journey were conducting him to glory. In Mark 10:32, he has the city before him as the place of his suffering. But here in chap. 13:22, he is looking toward it as though his presence there was to close " the day of salvation" to Israel, and bring forth the judgment of God. It was this thought that was now on his mind, all the previous scenes of this chapter, the report of the Galileans, the parable of the fig tree, and the hypocrisy of the rulers in Abraham's house, with the disease of Abraham's daughter, all led him to these thoughts, as he is now approaching the city. And it may be that this mind is so expressed in his whole manner, that one who was observing him, somewhat understanding his thoughts, says, "Lord, are there few that be saved;" and then the Lord speaks of the Master soon rising up to shut to the door.

But in the course of this reply of the Lord, I think we must apprehend that the "striving," and the "seeking," are not merely different measures of intensity in the same action, but that they are morally different actions. The " seeking" comes upon the alarm of the Master's rising up, and it is fear that awakens it; the " striving" is an action of the heart and conscience before God, ere the Master of the house had risen up, an action, therefore, not resulting simply from the fear of being left on the outside. And how often is this description of "seeking" exhibited among ourselves. Sudden alarm will call forth religious affections, but they live only while the danger passes. As says the prophet, "O inhabitant of Lebanon, that makest thy nest in the cedars, how gracious shalt thou be when pangs come upon thee, the pain as of a woman in travail"-yet will the Lord give him into the hand of them that seek his life (Jer. 22)

This passage is thus one of very important admonition to all. O that thousands of the unalarmed ones would turn to the blessed Jesus, while unmingled grace in his countenance invites and encourages them. Indeed, indeed he waits to be gracious.

But as the Lord pursues his way, it is still not of himself, either in his suffering or glory, that he is thinking upon, but of Jerusalem, and her sin and her judgment. Some tell him of Herod, and of his purposes against him; but the Lord simply tells them that Herod and all his purposes could not prevail against him, for that unimpeded by him and everything else, he must walk on till he reached. Jerusalem, which as eminent in privilege under God, was eminent in wickedness against him also, and had to fill up the measure of her guilt by slaying the last and chiefest of the prophets. Herod's rage was not therefore to be considered, for Jesus must walk through his jurisdiction. Jews alone must crucify him. And thus it is that Jerusalem is the object which the blessed Lord still has on his mind, as when he set out in verse 22. And to all this with which his soul had in this way been laboring, he gives expression, saying, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." Jerusalem "would not." The care of the hen was refused, but the fox was already within; and therefore nothing but present scattering instead of gathering. Herod and Rome were boasted in, and God and his Christ refused. "Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it." And the Son of God has but to leave his mountain for the present in their possession; until in the spirit of repentance and faith, the people should welcome him back and say, " blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."

14-16.-In these chapters we have the Lord's characteristic way in this Gospel very strongly marked. Throughout them he is the Teacher, the social Son of man, addressing himself to all around him, whether in the power of one who was convicting the conscience, or in the grace of one who could bind up the heart.

The contents of these chapters are very generally peculiar to this Gospel. Several parables are delivered here which we find nowhere else. And I may here observe that there are more parables in Luke than in either of the other Evangelists; and this still shows the special mind and action of the Lord in this Gospel.

But beyond this I do not mean to speak of these chapters, but refer merely to a previous paper in the Christian Witness upon them (see vol. 3. page 244), judging that what our brother has said there has much more than anticipated me. May the holy truths and admonitions found there be impressed by the Holy Ghost on all our hearts more and more.

17. 1-10.-The admonition of the Lord which opens these verses, appears to me to have been suggested to his mind by the previous scenes of chap. 14-16. All that had been passing under his eye and ear there, had led him to thoughts of offenses; and such thoughts find their utterance here in secret with his elect. He found hindrances to the display and settlement of his kingdom, where all should have been prepared for it; and he is led thus to pronounce woe on the offender.

But the demand which he makes on the hearts of his disciples, in order thus to keep them from being offenders, they find to be quite beyond them, and leads them to know that they must needs get strength out of another for it. Under this consciousness they say, "increase our faith,"-for faith is that which takes us into the resources of one who is greater than ourselves, and draws virtue out of that which has been divinely ordained to meet our necessity. And the Lord here, in answer to their desire for an increase of it, describes it to them in its two chief attributes, its sovereignty, so to speak, and its self-renunciation, being that which can command the sycamore tree into the sea, but then will come back to God and say, that all is nothing. These are its necessary excellencies. It takes all blessing from God, but leaves all glory with God (Rom. 4)

11-19.-These few verses form another distinct portion of our Gospel. The Lord is again looked at as on his way to Jerusalem, passing now through Samaria and Galilee; and in this scene, simple in its materials as it is, he takes a place before us which may well fill our souls with joy and praise. He takes the place of the altar, God's ordained place of sacrifice, and this leads our thoughts to something of blessed interest to us. I mean the place of God's altar, or the character of worship, which indeed I shortly looked at before under chapter 11.

All knowledge of God must flow from revelation, for man by wisdom knows not God; and true worship as well as divine knowledge, is always to be according to such revelation as God has at the time, or in the dispensation, given of himself.

Abel was a true worshipper, for he worshipped in faith or according to revelation (Heb. 11) The firstling of his flock was according to the promise of the bruised seed of the woman, and according to the coats of skin with which the Lord God had covered his parents.

Noah, followed Abel, and worshipped in the faith of the woman's bruised seed. He took the new inheritance only in virtue of blood (Gen. 8:20). He was therefore a true worshipper also.

Abraham was a true worshipper, worshipping God as he had revealed himself to him (Gen. 12:7).

Isaac, precisely in the track of Abraham, worshipped the God who had appeared unto him, not affecting to be wise and thus becoming a fool, but like Abraham raising his altar to the revealed God (Gen. 26:24, 25).

Jacob was a true worshipper. The Lord appears to him in his sorrow and degradation, in the misery to which his own sin had reduced him, thus revealing himself as the one in whom "mercy rejoices against judgment;" and he at once owns God as thus revealed to him; and this revealed God of Bethel was his God to the end (Gen. 28:35) Here was enlarged revelation of God, and worship following such revelation, and that is true worship.

The nation of Israel was a true worshipper, for God had revealed himself to them, and established his memorial in the rnidst of them. They knew what they worshipped (John 4:22). But in the midst of this worshipping nation, there might still be true worshippers who did not conform to the divinely established order, provided their departure from it was still according to new revelation from God. As in example Gideon, Manoah, David, were all true worshippers, though they offered sacrifices on rocks or in threshing floors, and not in the appointed national place, just because by a new and special revelation the Lord had consecrated those new altars (see Judg. 6,8; 1 Chron. 21)

The healed Leper, in this passage of our Gospel, exactly on this principle, was a true worshipper, though like Gideon, Manoah, or David, he departed from the usual order, just because he apprehended God in a new revelation of himself. The healing which he had felt in his body, had a voice in the ear of faith, it being only God who could heal a leper (2 Kings 5:7).

The Church of God is now in this age, a true worshipper on exactly the same ground; worshipping according to enlarged revelation, having fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And this is still, like the other cases, worship "in truth," because according to revelation. But it is " in spirit" also, because the Holy Ghost has now been given as the power to worship, enabling the saints to call God " Father," and Jesus Christ " Lord" (1 Cor. 8:6). For there is now communicated power, as well as revelation, for the purpose of worship.

This subject of worship is indeed a blessed one for further meditation to us all. The faith of the Samaritan leper, who turned from the priests at Jerusalem to lay his offering at the feet of Jesus, thus using him as God's anointed altar, has suggested it to me here. He heard the voice of healing-he owned the God of Israel in the mercy that had met him—this was revelation to him, and he believed it, and was led by it into the sanctuary. As the hymn says, beloved, looking to Jesus-

"Is he a temple? I adore
The in-dwelling majesty and power;
And still to this most holy place
Whene'er I pray, I'll turn my face."

20-18:8.-In this portion, we again get another subject for our thoughts, as disciples of the great Teacher who was ordering all for our edification. "The kingdom of God" is here treated by the Lord, in an answer to an inquiry from the Pharisees. We do not learn the circumstances of this scene, where it was, or when it was, such notices are beside the purpose of the Spirit in our Evangelist, as I have said, but we have largely our Lord's teaching upon the matter itself.

The expression, "the kingdom of God," describes a dispensation in which God or power is brought in. As the Apostle says, "the kingdom of God is not in word but in power." It is, I judge, as another has said, "the exercise or exhibition of the ruling power of God under, any circumstances."

Now this kingdom has different exhibitions; and it is this truth which our Lord here considers for our instruction. He teaches us that this kingdom of God is now "within"-as the Apostle says of it, "it is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost"-but by and bye it is to be, "the days of the Son of man," or manifest glorious power. In St. John the Lord speaks of these two forms of the kingdom also, only under different expressions from those which we have here. I mean in his confession to Pilate, where he owns himself " king of the Jews," but lets the Roman know also, that that character of his kingdom or power could not then be manifested, but that for the present it was to take another form under him as " the witness unto the truth" (John 18) So here it is now the kingdom "within," and by and bye it will be the kingdom of " the days of the Son of man." The glories belong to the same Jesus, but they are diverse. It is hidden glory now, glory within, in the Holy Ghost, the glory of a sanctuary known only to God and the worshippers,-it will be manifested glory by' and bye, or glory in the world, known from one end of heaven to the other.

And having thus testified these two forms of the kingdom, the Lord goes on to teach what was to take place ere it could pass into its second form. He tells the disciples that he himself was " to suffer many things;" that they, his Jewish remnant, were to be in " desire," to " always pray and not faint," and to dwell in the separated places, the house top and the field, which are morally the places of prayer and solitude, as Isaac and Peter witness (Gen. 24, Acts 10) And then as to all beside, he further tells them, that just on the eve of the kingdom taking thus its worldly or manifested form, or when " the days of the Son of man" should begin, the world should be found in all the surfeit and intoxication of the times of Noah or Lot, and that consequently those " days of the Son of man" should break in upon them with the surprise of lightning, but with a just discerning also between man and man-between those who are in the appointed "desire" and "prayer," and those who have found in planting and building, in buying and selling, the spoil of their hand, and are satisfied.

It is "the kingdom of God" thus taking two forms, which our blessed Lord here instructs us on. And in neither form is it subject to the "lo here or lo there" of man. It comes not with (παρατηρησεως) scrutiny. It is not the object of search, but rather manifests itself. It is the property of power to do so. Whether the kingdom be within, or abroad in the world, it will make itself known. As the Lord says of the Comforter within, "but ye know him, for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you." And I may instance St. Paul as being thus conscious of its presence. As soon as it filled his soul, as soon as he had "the Son revealed in him" (Gal. 1:15, 17, and that was the kingdom within), it had power at once to separate him to God. With this new and wondrous joy in him, he could go forth with Abraham from home and kindred. He did not want man's seal to be set on his title, nor man's supplies to be opened for his happiness. He neither conferred with flesh and blood, nor did he go up to Jerusalem to them that were Apostles before him, as though he needed their countenance in any wise. He went down to Arabia where sands and solitude awaited him, instead of the pillars in the Church and the city of solemnities. For the Son was revealed within,-his title was sealed and his resources were opened there by the hand of God himself, and he was independent of man's sanction and man's supplies. God was both his witness and his portion.

But this may well humble us, beloved. For how little have we learned this divine independency of the creature. Even to look to Arabia with our back upon Jerusalem, would it not be something too much for us? Have we such a kingdom within, such light and strength and joy in God, that "flesh and blood" are no longer our resources? What would our hearts feel if only sands and deserts were before us? But the first joy of adoption in Paul, gave every place on earth the same character to him, and that first joy should be ours to the end.

9-30.-Here we find another subject in like manner distinctly considered. There are three scenes in this portion of our Gospel; two of which we have in Matthew and Mark. Our Evangelist does not notice the circumstances of them in time or place, but he appears to present them here together as illustrating one great moral subject, according to his usual manner.

The subject is our approach to God, or entrance into the kingdom, and it fitly follows the previous scene, in which the nature of the kingdom was considered and taught by our Lord. He here, teaches us in order, what is needed to our making that happy journey, or entrance into the kingdom, with certainty. In the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, in the case of the little children, and of the young ruler, we are taught what are the characteristics of those who thus enter and have their welcome in the kingdom.

And it is the entire forgetting of self in every form, that is here taught us. And this is our calling, our perfection, to forsake all that is of man, or of the flesh, or of the world, that we may be established certainly and happily in God himself and his rich provision for us.

This perfection the Spirit largely unfolds in the scripture of the New Testament.-St. Paul had wisdom for the perfect, for those who had renounced the wisdom of the Greeks, and were willing to be fools among " the princes of this world" (1 Cor. 2) He speaks also of a godliness for the perfect, for those who in like manner had renounced the righteousness of the flesh (Phil. 3) And this is the believer's perfection, thus to renounce all that is short of God himself, whether wisdom, or strength, or righteousness, to have done with all by treating them as dead things, which have no claims upon us, who have found our happy way in Christ to God himself.

And it is faith alone that does this. That is the transcendent excellency of faith, doing what nothing else can do. Love is exalted among the virtues to the chief place (1 Cor. 13) But faith does what it was never committed to love to do. It is that which lays hold on the salvation of the sinner. And till we get into God, our best thing only keeps us the further from him. Paul's zeal, a good thing in the flesh, led him to persecute the Church. The wisdom of the princes of this world led them into darkness and ignorance of the mystery of God (1 Cor. 2:8). They were princes it is true, the most exalted of their generation, but they were princes of the world; and therefore their being princes there, only strengthened them against the Lord of the true glory. For with such the world is the object, with God the world is judged.

May the gracious hand that has redeemed us as sinners, beloved, still lead us safely onward as saints; and the good Shepherd who once laid down his life for us, feed us in the pastures of his holy word for his name sake!

The Gospel by St. Luke Part 2

I have, through this Gospel, been noticing our Lord as the Teacher, dealing with the thoughts and consciences and affections of men, as the one only anointed and sanctioned Son of man in the midst of them. But another thing connected with this can scarcely have failed to strike us, I mean (though Jesus was thus the great, the divine Teacher) the great ignorance of scripture or the mind of God, which even the Apostles themselves betray continually. It does not appear that it was acquaintance with the prophets which had beforehand prepared them for the claims of Jesus of Nazareth, nor afterward in their intercourse with him, do they seem to grow into knowledge. They wonder at one thing after another that he was constantly either doing or saying, though all was "according to the scriptures," or "that the scriptures might be fulfilled."

Their hearts, as Lydia's afterward, had been opened. The attractions that were in Jesus had entered their hearts, and separated them from their fishing nets and kinsfolk or publicans' tables. So their consciences more or less, like Peter's, may have been entered by a convicting ray of his glory. But their understandings had generally remained unopened.

That grace and blessing, however, comes in due season. After he rose from the dead, when all the comfort of his own personal intercourses with them were about to cease, then "opened he their understandings, that they might understand the scriptures" (Luke 24:45). And the first chapter of the Acts, before the Holy Ghost was given, affords a sample of the fruit of this new endowment, this opened understanding to understand the scripture. And great comfort all this was in the increasing sorrow and darkness of their condition. Their Lord had gone, and the enemy was still alive and in power, therefore the light of God now began to shed its beams on opened eyes, that thus by nothing less than God's light, they might walk through the world's darkness. Their gracious Teacher was personally withdrawn, and their understandings are, accordingly, opened to know the treasures, the comforts and strengthenings of his word.

And there is another thing in this that has struck me. When the Lord gave them the opened understanding, it was that they might understand the scriptures. He did not open their minds to let in the lights of this world's wisdom, nor even to endow them with faculty, like Solomon, to discourse with the hyssop and the cedar. That was good and excellent in its place. Solomon had a heart as large as the sand upon the sea-shore (1 Kings 4:29), and nature was disclosed to him. But the risen Lord gives his disciples a higher faculty, and a more blessed volume to exercise it. He gives them understanding hearts to learn the revelation of' God. The opened understanding of God's elect converses with the revealed treasures of God's mind. The sympathies are there. Just as with Jesus in his childhood. He grew in wisdom, but it was a wisdom that found its exercise only in the temple of God. There too, were the sympathies then (see page 10).

We should indeed bless our God for these suited provisions. It is ever our necessity that his grace meets. It is for us to use it in faith—obediently, wisely, and thankfully, and we shall find it abundantly, when and where we little counted upon. The disciples going to Emmaus little thought, when they set out on their walk, that " the things which had happened at Jerusalem," were all for them instead of against them; but the Stranger who joined them on the road, proved this to them out of the scriptures, and thus what was shaking their faith was made to confirm it.

And yet, beloved, let me add, this Stranger, this divine Teacher, went for an unlettered man in this world. That reproach was part of what he bore for us, for there was nothing of degradation in the presence of a misjudging world, that he would not consent to for our sakes. "He had never learned," they said. Not only a carpenter's son, in their best esteem, but an unlettered man also. And indeed it was so. His doctrine was not his, but his who sent him (John 7:15, 16). This reproach of being an unlettered man, he endured for us, but in other scenes of still deeper sorrow and shame we shall now see him, beloved, as we pass through the closing chapters of our Gospel.

18. 31-43.-In this portion of our Gospel, which I separate to itself, there is nothing, perhaps, characteristic. The Lord here, as in the corresponding places in both Matthew and Mark, addresses himself to his journey, in the full anticipation of the sorrows and death in which it was shortly to end.

But there is in the Lord, all through this journey, the expression of a greatness of soul, that is perfectly blessed and wonderful. He has Jerusalem, and his cup of sorrow there, full before him; he finds no sympathy from those who were his own-he gathers no admiration from the world; it is the cross and the shame of it too that he is called to sustain, all human countenance and support being denied him; and yet he goes on without the least possible abatement of his energy in thoughts and services for others. We deem ourselves entitled to think of ourselves, when trouble comes upon us, and to expect that others will think of us also. But this perfect sufferer was thoughtful of others, as he was going down every step of his way, though it was ever conducting him to still deeper sorrows; and he had reason to judge that not one step of it all, would in return be cheered by man. Thus his own little band here understand not his sorrows about which he was speaking to them, and yet the blind man by the way side fixes his thoughts and sympathies, as afterward in their turn, the publican of Jericho, the servant with the wounded ear, the daughters of Jerusalem, and the dying malefactor.

19-20.-The stages of the Lord's journey are here very distinctly marked. He is seen, as in the preceding chapter, approaching Jericho, and now passing through it. Then on his road from Jericho to Jerusalem, just outside of which he pauses for a moment, and then formally enters it. And here, as also in Matthew and Mark, the closing scenes in the trial and conviction of the city, are also very exactly noticed, this being the subject of these two chapters, like Matt. 21-23 and Mark 11,12. But they have their peculiarities. Thus, the conversion of Zacchaeus, a little narrative that strikingly exhibits the work of God in the soul of man, is peculiar to St. Luke. And the parable of the talents, or of the nobleman who went into the far country, here follows that little narrative, though given by St. Matthew in another connection; for here these two scenes are made to illustrate the several purposes of the first and second coming of the Lord, it being the way of the Spirit in our Evangelist, as I have noticed, so to combine circumstances and matters of instruction together, that moral ends may be answered to the heart and conscience, and principles and truths of the kingdom, stand illustrated before us. But the parable of the marriage of the king's son is omitted here, being introduced more suitably with the design of the Gospel, in the 14th chapter. For there it takes a more general character; whereas had it been introduced here, it would have had a stricter application to the Jews. So the curse on the barren fig-tree is not here, nor is the sentence on Jerusalem so largely and fully pronounced.

But the tears of the Lord over "the city of peace," which are noticed only by our Evangelist, lead to thoughts which I desire for a little to follow.

It is very blessed to see that the place which the Lord chose for his dwelling on earth, was Salem, the city of peace. There, in very early time, his holy witness and minister showed himself (Gen. 14) And so when he himself really descended to the earth, he came as " the prince of peace," seeking Jerusalem; his heralds proclaiming " peace on earth" (Luke 2) But man was not ready for this. Man had previously built "a city of confusion" (Gen. 11), and builders of Babel could scarcely be prepared for a king of Salem. " The son of peace" was not on earth to answer the salutation of " the prince of peace" from heaven. Jerusalem in her day knew not the things that belonged to her peace. He had therefore only to weep over her. Her citizens had refused him,-had said he should not reign over them, and he has to return to the "far country" (the seat and source of all power and dignities) to get his title to the kingdom sealed afresh.

But all this tells us, that when he returns, it must be in a new character,-that his return will be in "a day of vengeance," seeing that this visitation in peace was refused. And as promising him this day of vengeance on the citizens, the Lord says to him on reaching that "far country," "Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool." The visitation in peace has been changed into "a day of vengeance," because no son of peace was in Israel, when the prince of peace appeared. The Stone that was first offered as a foundation stone, sure and precious, was disallowed by the builders, and therefore now, ere it can reach its destined place and honor, that is, fill, like a great mountain, the whole earth, it must first smite the image. The kingdom that is to be taken by the returned nobleman, is, first to have all things that offend taken out of it. The unbelief and rebellion of man have thus shaped the course of the Lord of heaven and earth, and he has now to travel up to his glory and kingdom through " a day of vengeance."

But he will (let the earth be for awhile never so angry) still take the city of peace for his dwelling, and Salem shall still be true to her name. As he says by his prophet. Haggai, "and in this place will I give peace." For that alone is his "strong city" (Isa. 26), and its walls will be salvation, and its gates praise. Man " strong city" will then have been made a ruin (Psa. 108 Isa. 26) The day of vengeance will have accomplished that, for the city of confusion, and the city of peace cannot stand together. And when he has thus on the overthrow of man's confusion, established his own peace, the earth will learn to answer the salutation of heaven, and to say "peace in heaven," of which the acclamations here give us the pledge and sample (see chap. 2:14; 19:38).

It is easy to apprehend this, and the course of these two chapters presents it all to us very simply. Jerusalem being unprepared for Jesus of Nazareth, accounts for the need of two advents, and for the nobleman returning in a day of vengeance, as we learn here. But we may remark that in the midst of, all this, denied as he was everything for the present by the sons of men, still does he act in the consciousness of his Lordship of everything. He claims the ass from the very owner of it, because he could say speaking of himself "the Lord hath need of him." And it is very striking, that in the course of his life and ministry, though he was the rejected Galilean all the time, there was no form of the ancient glory that he did not assume. I have before observed (page 25), how faith at times drew aside the vail and disclosed his glory. But now I ask what glory? all glories of Jehovah known and recorded of old, all glories which had taught Israel that their God was the one only Lord of heaven and earth. Thus, he healed leprosy, the well-known peculiar honor of God (2 Kings 5:7), he put away all sicknesses, the ancient Jehovah-rophi of Israel (Ex. 15:26); he fed the multitudes in wildernesses again-he stilled the waves, as though he could again divide Jordan and the Red sea-and he made the fish to bring him tribute, as here he claims the ass, treating the earth and its fullness as all his own. The judicial glory of Jehovah he would also fill, when the occasion demanded it, pronouncing woe on the people or leaving the city for desolation, as of old he had again and again judged and chastened his people both in the wilderness and in Canaan. All the ancient forms of praise and honor known in Jehovah to Israel, he would thus put on; the Redeemer, the leader, the healer, the feeder, and the judge too of his people. And as led forth by the faith of a Gentile, he could show himself one with him who at the beginning by his word had made the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them (chap. 7)

21.-Thus have we seen it, the Lord of Israel, the Lord of the earth and its fullness, rejected by his citizens; and he who once visited them with a day of peace, taking his seat at the right hand of power, waiting to visit them with a day of judgment (20:42). This was the bearing of the preceding chapter, and this present chapter shows us more fully all the results to Israel and Jerusalem of this rejection of their King, that is the times of the Gentiles, the season of Jerusalem's depression, with the close of those times in the return of the Son of man.

It has often been observed among us, beloved, with what propriety the Lord, when quoting Isa. 61, breaks off with the words " to preach the acceptable year of the Lord" (61:19, 20); because the words which immediately follow in the prophet being, " and the day of vengeance of our God," the Lord could not, of them as of the preceding words, say, " this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears," his ministry being one of grace and not of judgment to Israel. But now in this chapter, the Lord, as it were, continues his quotation from the prophet, and goes on to reveal " the day of vengeance" in order, as he tells us in verse 22, " that all things (not some merely as before) which are written may be fulfilled." But this day of vengeance upon Israel as a nation, extends, in some sense, all through this present "times of the Gentiles." The crisis in the latter day, is of the character of the whole period. They are all " days of vengeance!" as the Lord here calls them, though there is to be a special season and visitation at the close,-" the day of vengeance," as the prophet calls it (Isa. 34, 61) And it is the whole period which our Lord here, I judge (rather than in the corresponding chapters in Matthew or Mark), gives us to look at,-that dreary and evil season, the portion of Jerusalem during " the days of vengeance" or " the times of the Gentiles." And accordingly instead of pointing at "the abomination of desolation" (as is done in Matthew and Mark, and by which is described the last enemy of Jerusalem), our Evangelist has the more general expression, " when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies"-and he introduces " all the trees," in the parable, in connection with " the fig-tree"-these being still marks of the more general character of his Gospel, and of the more extended view of Jerusalem's sorrows which the Lord is here taking. Indeed it is only St. Luke who has the expression, " the times of the Gentiles."

And this being so, the Lord here looking through the long vista of all Jerusalem's griefs, the strong impression left on the mind, after reading this chapter, is this-that the Lord's great purpose was, to guard his Jewish saints against the thought, that the kingdom of Israel was to be entered at once or in quietness. He tells them that they were to count on no such things at all, for that before the kingdom could arise, there were to be judgments and sorrows. " The time draweth near," some would say; " I am Christ," others would say; or the same seducer might utter both (v. 8); but the Lord here warns them against such seductions. The citizens had already hated their offered King; and as enemies they must be slain, ere the kingdom could fully appear. And to leave on the hearts of the disciples the clear and full impression of all this, that they might stated in an evil day, and not be seduced by any prophet of peace, was the great, purpose of the Lord in this discourse with them.

I believe that Daniel, in like manner, looks through the whole time, " the times of the Gentiles," as one in character, and calls it " the war" (9:26). The end it is true, will be special, and will be manifested "with a flood," as he speaks; but the whole is a war, and desolations are determined, till that which is also determined be poured upon the desolators.

But it is very significant that while Matthew or Mark give us more particularly the last great Jewish sorrow, or " Jacob's trouble," and St. Luke more widely the whole age of "the times of the Gentiles," John does not notice this remarkable prophecy at all. The Lord's solemn entry as the King into Jerusalem, goes off quite in another direction from what it does in either of the previous Gospels. The Greeks as representing the attendant and obedient nations in the latter day, come desiring to see him, and this leads him out at once to prospects of the distant kingdom. His soul then passes through a trouble; and shortly afterward he forebodes not the judgment of Israel, according to this prophecy, but the judgment of the world and of the prince of the world. And at length, in the riches of his grace as Savior of the world, the Son of the Father (which he is in that Gospel), he tells of himself being lifted up on the cross, and of his being the light of the world, and the one who spoke according to that commandment which the Father had given him, and which is life everlasting (see John 12)

This is all strikingly characteristic of the four Gospels, and aids the conclusion that this prophecy, thus not found in John, is all about Jewish matters, and does not give us events in which the Church are immediately and personally interested. It is all connected with the return of "the Son of man" to the earth; and that is not the Church's prospect, but the descent of " the Son of God" from heaven to the air (1 Thess. 1:4) It is the Jewish election, who by and bye will have to wait here for the days of the Son of man.

The lamentations of Jeremiah are the proper utterances of the heart in sympathy with Jerusalem and her children all through these times of the Gentiles. The city still sits solitary. The mountain of Zion is still desolate. The crown is fallen, and the joy of the heart is gone. The punishment of iniquity is not yet accomplished in that land and among that people. Rachel still weeps. But the Lord will not cast off forever (Lam. 3:31), and Rachel has been told this,-" refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears, for thy work shall be rewarded, and they shall come again from the land of the enemy" (Jer. 31:16).

But there is another expression, also peculiar to our Gospel, which happily leads to other prospects. Speaking of the consummation of these Jewish sorrows, the Lord says, " when these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh."

To say " the time draweth nigh," as we have seen, before any trouble could come, would be deceit; but now when the day of vengeance is at its height, to say " your redemption draweth nigh," would be holy and seasonable comfort to the faithful. And in like manner, the prophets connect "the day of vengeance" with " the year of my redeemed," as the Lord here does (Isa. 63:4). Judgment on the apostate nation, deliverance and joy to the remnant, are both to be looked for. For though the Lord make a full end of all nations, yet will he not make a full end of Israel. The promised " times of the restitution of all things," are surely to follow the ' threatened " times of the Gentiles." And those promised times of restitution, called here by the Lord "your redemption," will be the true Jewish or earthly jubilee, which pre-eminently was the time of restitution or redemption (see Lev. 25)

In Israel, the land and the people both belonged to the Lord, and in the year of jubilee, he dealt with them as his own. For forty-nine years he allowed confusion to prevail. Lands might be sold, and the people themselves go to the creditor; but this was to be only for a season, for God's claim was paramount, and every fiftieth year he would assert it. Israelite might traffic with Israelite, and so corrupt the primitive order, or God's world, making the whole system man's world; but all this corruption and disturbance was to have an end, and this end came in the returning year of jubilee. Then the Lord arose, as it were, to act on his own principles, and assert his own rights; to undo all the mischief which man's trafficking had introduced, and to replant the land and the people according to their beginnings under his own hand. His hand was then uppermost, and his order and purpose would show themselves openly. And what joy it is to see this, that the moment we get things again under God's hand-the moment we find ourselves in his world, it is a jubilee we are keeping, a season of joy, a time for the restorations of grace, a time for making a happy return,-everyone to his family, and every one to his possession.

How blessed (to speak according to the figure or symbol of this ordinance) thus to have the Lord, the Landlord of the earth again. "Happy are the people that are in such a case." And this jubilee was introduced by the day of atonement (ver. 9). That was the day that was to open the millennial age. For it is nothing but the work of the Lamb of God that can lead to any joy or deliverance among us. The precious blood is all our title. And thus it is that the jubilee and redemption are connected; so that where the Lord here says " your redemption draweth nigh," it was as looking out to this jubilee of Israel and the earth. The jubilee was God's redemption of his land and people. Supposing that no kinsman could be found able or willing to do this previously, God himself, in the fiftieth year, would be found both. He would then exercise both his rights and his resources in behalf of his poor ones-his oppressed land and bondaged people. And thus this jubilee was " the year of my redeemed," as spake the Lord by the prophet, or the season of " redemption," towards which the eyes of the expectant suffering remnant are here directed by their blessed Master.

Thus, then, we here learn that " these things will come to pass;" these days of vengeance, these times of the Gentiles, will run their course, but " redemption" is to be behind them all. The smoking furnace will pass first, because the Lord's rights and claims have been denied by the rebellious citizens of this world, because there was " no son of peace" in man's " city of confusion," but then as surely the burning lamp will follow. A cry from the citizens that they would not have him, followed the Lord, and thus on his return he must visit them in his sore displeasure, ere he will proclaim the jubilee. But the jubilee as surely waits, to crown and close all the work.

21-23.-These chapters find their likeness, to a general intent, in Matt. 26, 27, and in Mark 14, 15. But still, as ever, there are distinctive marks and notices.

In the opening of these solemn scenes, the Spirit, in St. Luke, accounts for the act of Judas, as he does afterward for the denial of Peter, by disclosing Satan as the source of both. Neither Matthew nor Mark do this, but John does it even with more exactness, noting the progress of the power of Satan over the traitor. And these distinctions are quite according to the mind of the Spirit in the different Gospels. Matthew and Mark do not touch the secret spring of wickedness, for it had not been much noticed in Israel; Luke does, for he was looking out to larger and deeper principles of truth; and John still more fully, because he reaches still further into God and spiritual power than any of them. And this might give us some recollections of Job, for in his history the source of the trials of the saints is strikingly opened also, the accuser there appearing before God against that righteous man, as here he is shown desiring to sift the disciples like wheat. But here, too, the sources of security are also opened, the Lord saying, "I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not."

Again: I observe that the words with which the Lord seats himself at the paschal table; the inquiry among the disciples at such a moment as this, which of them should be the greatest, and the marvelous grace of the Lord's reply; the notice about buying a sword, or of the militant state into which the disciples were now to count on entering; the healing of the wounded ear; the look at Peter; and the reconciliation between Pilate and Herod; all these are peculiar to St. Luke, and quite of the character of his Gospel, giving us the exercises of his grace, and also the workings and affections of nature in others.

So, as we advance still further, it is here only that we see the affections of "the daughters of Jerusalem,"-a sight quite within the Spirit's proper vision in St. Luke. And this company of women hold a very peculiar place. They do not take part with the crucifiers, but at the same time they are not of one rank with " the women of Galilee," who, as disciples, left their distant homes and kindred to follow Jesus. They melt, as with human affections, at the sight of his sorrows, and return from it smiting their breasts. But they do not appear to receive him as the hope of their own souls, or of the nation. And yet, in all grace, he appears to receive them as the sample of the righteous remnant in the latter day. But

indeed, dear brethren, one feels too sadly in their own hearts, that it is one thing to render Jesus the tribute of admiration and even of tears, and another to join one's self with him for better or for worse,-• through good and through evil, in the face of this present world;; one thing to speak well of him, another to give up all for him. And these sympathies of the daughters of Jerusalem may lead to such thoughts; and may the Lord, through such thoughts, lead us into deeper truth of heart, and more fixed fidelity of soul to him who has loved us and given himself for us!

In like manner it is only our Evangelist who gives us our Lord's desire for Israel on the cross.-" Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." And so (as is well known among us) it is only here that the repentance and faith of one of the malefactors is recorded. And suited characteristic expressions of grace these are, for while the exercises of the human heart are especially called forth in this Gospel, so are the ways of that divine goodness which had all their utterance and current in the midst of us through the Son of God's love. For as our Gospel abounds in discoveries of man, so does it in the grace and priestly actings of the Lord, that the evil and the darkness of the one may find its blessed remedy in God himself through the other.

So, though they are but slight additions, St. Luke is the only one who calls Golgotha by its Greek, or Gentile name, Calvary; and while in Matthew or Mark, the Centurion's testimony is given to Jesus as " the Son of God," here it is to Jesus as " a righteous man."

But beyond all that strikes me as characteristic in these chapters, is that other utterance of the Lord on the cross,-" Father, into thy hand I commend my spirit." This is peculiar, and shows us that the Lord's mind, while passing through his last hours, is not given to us in the same path in the different Gospels. In Matthew and Mark, we have the cry of conscious desertion,-"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,"-the cry of the Lamb of God, the bruised and smitten lamb. In John, he passes on without reference to God or the Father at all, but simply with his own hand sealing the accomplished work in the words, " it is finished." But here it is between these paths that his soul is kept. It is not the sense of desertion, and its due attendant, appeal to God; nor is it the sense of divine personal authority, but it is communion with the Father, the utterance of a soul that depended on him, and was sure of his support and acceptance. And this is quite according to our Gospel. It is that central path, so to speak, which the mind of the Lord has been taking all through it. It is God as absent from him, that he feels in Matthew or Mark; the Father as with him, that he knows here; Himself that he is divinely conscious of in John. All these thoughts had their wondrous and holy course through the soul of the Lord in these hours. Perfect in every exercise of heart, though various; and none could trace them thus, by the pen of one Evangelist after another, but the Spirit that awakened them. -" When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path."

And here it is that the independent life of the Spirit is fully and formally owned. The Lord, in dying, commends " his spirit" to the Father, as Stephen afterward, in dying, commends his to Jesus. A happy witness to us, beloved, that both the Lord and his servant looked for something prior to, and independent of, the body. They looked to a condition of the spirit. This was not what the dying thief looked for, but what, through surpassing grace, he got. As a Jew, he looked for a future kingdom, but his dying Lord promises him present life with himself in paradise. For " life" as well as "immortality" (incorruption for the body) are brought to light through the Gospel (2 Tim. 1)

Death bounds the empire of sin and Satan.-" He that is dead is freed from sin." The judgment that follows death belongs to God. The enemy may follow up to that point, but he goes no further. Pharaoh might pursue to the Red Sea, or the king of Jericho's messengers might search through the mountains which lay on his side of the Jordan, but beyond the two rivers, the two kings had no title to go a step. Let the river be passed, and Joshua's men were at least within the influence of the camp of the saints. And let death be passed, it may not be the glory, but it is the precincts of the kingdom that we reach.

"This day shalt thou be with me in paradise," was the word here to one who was then just passing the gate of death. The kingdom that he looked for, and of which he spoke, was not yet; but the gracious hand of Christ was alone entitled to lead him, and though it will not lead directly and at once into the promised land, where the tribes of the Lord are to share their desired and abiding inheritances, yet it will lead in paths worthy of itself, and such must be paths of light and life, for he is the God of the living only, and in him is no darkness at all. God is the "Father of spirits," and the ghost given up, or death past, we are alone with the living God. The spirit returns to him who gave it, and it is said to us " fear not them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do."

Have we not the fullest testimony that it was so with the Lord? Did not the rent rocks, the opened grave, and the riven vail, tell that he was Conqueror on the other side of death, and that he was in the power of the hand of God; death had no more dominion over him.-" In that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God." And we may trust the single hand that meets us there alto. It may lead to paradise first, and not to the kingdom till the resurrection, but every path will be according to the hand that opens it. It was to lead the dying thief that day-but where but to paradise, the place where Paul had such visions and revelations as he could not utter when he returned to earth? And into that paradise, a dying malefactor, and the dying Lord of life and glory (wondrous company) were to go that day.

Paul counted it better to depart and be with Christ. And this he did, it may be especially, because he had thus already experienced paradise. And so we can trust the hand that opens paradise. It may have been by a surprise that Paul was taken there. He had no time, it is likely, no warning to prepare himself for such a journey, and an untried journey too. But there was a hand that could conduct the spirit safely without amazement. And so with us, beloved. We hear of the sudden, unexpected death of saints. But he who is principal in the scene, and who holds the keys of hell and death, cannot be surprised. And therefore though we learn from the

Apostle that the visions and audiences which he got there filled him with his only occasion for glorying, they were so exalted, yet never does he intimate that they were too big, or too high for him. His spirit was attempered to them, for the one who had prepared the scenes in the third heavens for him, had in the same moment got him ready for them.

And still of further comfort to our souls, the Lord himself was there that day with his dying believer. For every stage of the journey has he sanctified to us by his presence. He went across this world in the life and service of faith; he walked through the valley of the shadow of death, as from Gethsemane to Calvary; he passed the gate of death itself; and then, while his body lay in the tomb, as ours may, his Spirit went into paradise. Thus has he gone the whole way of even his dying and departed saints. And then he showed himself in resurrection to his chosen witnesses, the first-fruits of them that sleep, and, lastly, in ascension, to Stephen and to Paul, the firstborn among glorified brethren.

And I judge that dreams, or the visions of the head upon the bed, as scripture speaks, are the pledges and symbols of these joys of the Spirit. For human life and its history, and the ways of the world around us, do so largely, as we know, illustrate the better life and the world in which we believe. And so in this instance. The body is asleep or dead, but the wakeful living spirit has its visions and revelations in other regions. And thus every lying down at night, and every rising in the morning, with its intervening rest and visions of the head, is testimony. The clothing is taken off and the body laid in sleep, nor will they be resumed till the morning breaks. But thoughts and delights in other scenes are opened, as real to the spirit, as the scenes of the day around us are to the senses. The clothing has been taken off, " whether in the body or out of the body," it matters not; but the visions of the head upon the bed, the visions and revelations of the living Spirit, are known and enjoyed. And the scene is paradise. So that the Apostle could say, that to depart and to be with Christ was far better.

Thus the Lord committing his Spirit to the Father, tells us of the separate life of the Spirit; his promise to the dying thief then tells us that that life has its place in paradise; and then the history of " the man in Christ," further tells the character of that life in that place. The consolation is thus both sealed and made known to us. It is the spirit, that which is born of the spirit, the life of " the man in Christ," that we speak of. As one has asked, can such a principle as that sleep? The body sleeps it is true, whether by night or in death, but can the spirit sleep? He that hath wrought us for the resurrection in glorious bodies, is none less than God himself, and he has given to us the earnest of the Spirit; "therefore we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord,-we are confident and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5)

And our meeting death (entrance to this paradise as it is to us, beloved) is altogether different from Christ's meeting with it. We have to find God for us and not against us, in it,-on our side, against the enemy. We are to meet it as any pain or trouble in the flesh, the enemy using them all for our mischief, if he may, but God bringing blessing and praise. No three hours of darkness is there before us, but the sense of a love that is stronger than death. But he had to know that time as the hour of the power of darkness, as he speaks in this Gospel. And he had to know the full righteous exaction of that penalty (of old incurred by us), " in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt die." That was the cup he drank,-the bitter, bitter cup tasted at Gethsemane, and exhausted at Calvary. Blessed for us who love him to know, as he speaks in the book of Psalms, that the cup of salvation" is also his. And he will take it by and bye in the kingdom, leading the praises of the congregation in the sanctuary of glory. And a thought full of joy arises here, beloved, that everything is heightened and honored by the hand of the Son of God. Everything that has been spoiled and broken by us is taken up by him, and in his hand raised to a character which we could never have given it. The law broken by us has been magnified and made honorable by him; all human grace, all fruit of human soil (as we see especially in this Gospel), has been presented to God by him, and in him more fresh and lovely than we could ever have offered it; all service has been rendered to perfection, and all victory gained gloriously, by him to God's well-satisfied praise forever. And so, worship. What prayers and supplications were those which Jesus once made in the day of his grief and bruising; and what praise will that be which Jesus will hereafter lead, when he thus takes the cup of salvation! Where could have been the temples that would have been filled with such incense of prayer and praise as the Son thus brings! What sacrifices has our God thus accepted in his sanctuary! Surely it is our comfort to know this, for it is in the midst of our ruins these temples are raised. Man has rendered to God that offering in which. he takes. his fullest and most perfect complacency. And what an economy was that which could thus magnify' and make honorable, and raise to highest excellence, all fruit of human growth, from out of that bed of thorns and thistles (the accursed earth, Gen. 3) which we had produced and witnessed!

These thoughts arise here, while thinking on that cup which Jesus drank here, and on that other cup which he refused for the present, waiting to take it in the kingdom. These cups express his sorrow and his joy,-his worship as with prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears," when he was here; and his worship as with songs " in the midst of the Church" by and bye. But I will now pass on, just again observing that wherever we have noticed anything peculiar to our Evangelist in this portion of his Gospel, it is still, as we have now seen, according to the design and the manner of the Spirit in him. The great materials are, of course, the same in all, for all is fact and truth; but the Lord's mind through it all is thus variously given out to us.

24.-We have now reached the closing chapter of our Gospel, and there, as in the corresponding place of each Gospel, we find the Lord in resurrection.

In resurrection the Lord breaks forth, laden with the full fruit of complete victory over all the power of the enemy. It is, in his per-son, the burning lamp after the passage of the smoking furnace. The previous season had been the hour and the power of darkness (22:53), Satan's time for the putting forth of all his strength.

But wherein they dealt proudly; the Lord was above them, and this is our comfort, that the enemy has been met in the height of his strength and pride. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus, was the second morning in the history of creation. When the foundations of old were laid, "the morning stars sang together." But that workmanship was spoiled. Adam betrayed the kingdom he had received from God into the hand of Satan, and death entered. The Son of God, however, entered also; and as it was appointed unto men once to die, so Christ was once offered (Heb. 9) He took on himself the penalty, the death deserved by us, and thus the grave of Jesus is seen by faith, as the end of the old creation. But his resurrection is the morning of a new and more glorious one, and the saints, the sons of God, sing in spirit over it. It is the day in the hand of the potter a second time, to bring forth a vessel that can never be marred. It is the foundation of an enduring kingdom; and that kingdom, thus to be received by the risen Jesus, the second man, he will not, like Adam, betray into the hand of the enemy; but in due season deliver up without taint to God, even the Father, that all may end, not in the usurper being the prince of this world, but in " God" being "all in all" (1 Cor. 15.)

And how blessed this is-how satisfying and encouraging, thus to see the Lord undoing all the mighty mischief of the rebellion of the first man, and in the way of righteousness repairing the breach. And who can tell the glory of that economy, where mercy and truth so meet together? Who can understand the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God in such a mystery! And it is that by which he shows himself. His glory is seen "in the face of Jesus Christ." In the work of grace and in its fruits in glory, God is revealing himself; so that to know him and be happy in the assurance of his love through Jesus, is the same thing. "He that loveth not knoweth not God."

It was on this very ground, that of old, God sought to be known as God by the Jews. He claimed to be worshipped by them as the one only God, because he had shown himself their Redeemer. "I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." "Thou shalt have none other Gods but me." In this action he had made himself known as God, for God is that blessed one who is full of grace and power for poor bondaged sinners; and if we know him not as such, we know him not rightly. Any thought about God at variance with this, is but the act of the mind of a darkened creature busying itself about its own idolatry. The true God is he who reveals himself in redeeming grace and power; and, blessed truth, to know God is thus to know myself a sinner saved by grace.

By the primitive order of creation, glory was secured as God's portion-blessing as the creature's. The serpent beguiled the man, so as to lead him to seek the glory for himself.-" Ye shall be as Gods." And by this the whole divine order was disturbed, for man righteously lost his place of blessing, in this attempt to take God's place of glory. The work of redemption restores this order. It puts things in their due position again. Faith or redemption through grace; does this, for it excludes boasting and secures blessing. It reserves the place of glory for God, and that of blessing for man; and that is the way of God, all according to the order of creation, as it came forth in Eden from his hand. He cannot own man in his pride, his old attempt to be as God; but having humbled him, and asserted that glory is his alone, he will then show that blessing is man's. For indeed, through his own goodness, blessing is as much the creature's due place, as glory is God's. His love, which is himself, has made it so. He has as surely consulted for man's joy as for his own praise. He will show himself just, thus providing for his own glory; but he will also then show himself a justifier, thus providing for the sinner's blessing. And the resurrection of the Lord tells us all this. It tells us both of God's glory, in his destroying the very head of all the offense, and of man's blessing in imparting all grace to the offenders. This is the lesson it reads to us. Of course hard to be learned by those who have sought to exalt themselves, and affected to be as God. But a lesson which if redeemed, we must learn; for redemption must restore God's own primitive and unchangeable principles, and put him into the place of unrivaled, unquestioned, glory, while it gives the creature equally the place of sure unquestioned blessing.

The subject of this chapter suggests these things, as general truths, to the mind. But in our Evangelist's account of it, wherever there is anything peculiar, it will, I believe, be found to be characteristic also.-Thus the journey to Emmaus, which in detail we get only here, presents our Lord in the grace of the Teacher still, dealing with the thoughts and affections of men.

When the Lord was in the world before, he showed himself equally to all, for he was beseeching men to be reconciled, attracting their confidence by services of unwearied grace. But now, in resurrection, he is known only to his own. The world had refused his goodness, had seen and hated him and his Father, and were not entitled to see him now in his exaltation, on his way to the highest heavens. But they who loved him in the world shall see him now. Five hundred such, unnamed and unknown though they be, shall look on him as well as Peter or John, and look on him, too, with as full appropriating a faith as they. And all his visits to them now that he is risen, are still in love and peace. But love will express itself differently according to the condition and need of its object. If its object be in sorrow, love will soothe; if walking in light, love will gladden and approve it; if gone astray, love will lead again into paths of righteousness. And so it is with the risen Lord who loves forever. Thus he visits Mary to refresh her desirous heart with his presence; he visits Thomas to restore his unbelieving soul; and here the two disciples, to lead them back by the way in which they came, as they had taken their journey under the power of unbelief. All was, thus, the same love, though suiting itself differently to its different objects. These two needed restoration, and their Lord restores them. At first he makes himself strange to them, rebukes them for their slowness of heart, and then leads them as the great prophet of God, and the teacher of men, through all the scriptures, till the light and power of his words warm their hearts.

This was full of divine grace. And in his way of communicating it, there is also so much of human loveliness as is still according to his path under the tracing hand of our Evangelist. "He made as though he would have gone further." How perfect that little movement was. What title had he, a stranger as he seemed to be, to obtrude himself on them? He had only joined them by the way, in the courtesy of one who was traveling the same road. What right had such an one to cross their threshold? If Jesus be but a stranger in our eyes, beloved, he will still walk outside. Till we know him as the Son of God the Savior, the lover of our souls, surely he asks for nothing. We may dwell in our own houses, and furnish our own tables, till then. But when indeed he is known by us as Jesus, as the Son of God who has loved us and given himself for us, then he claims a place in our hearts and our homes; and then will he dwell with us and sup with us, as it were, unbidden; entering, in the person of some of his little ones, either to get a cup of cold water, or to have the feet washed, at moments that, perhaps, we looked not for him.

And may we be ready, dear brethren. Indeed it is a blessed state, though hard to our hearts at times. Ever ready, and at the disposal of the need of each other, thus entertaining not angels merely, but the Lord of angels, the brother of his saints, and the friend of sinners. But as yet, on this occasion, to these two, he was but a stranger, and therefore he would leave them to their rest and repast alone, though it was now growing dark, and he had spent himself much in talking with them. But O the adorning that was upon him! The ornament of a perfect spirit indeed graced every little passage of his life. What dignity, when dignity was the thing; what tenderness, when that in its turn was called for. If man had had but the eye for them, what forms of moral beauty would ever have passed before him in the doings and goings of this perfect Son of man. Never for a single moment the least disturbance in the moral bearing of all that was about him But man had no eye or ear for him. When we saw him there was no beauty that we should desire him. It was not that there was no beauty in him. All was moral perfection, the true beauty. But there was no beauty for man's eye in him. None of this perfection was according to man But at times, through grace, there was the burning of the heart. And so it is here. These two happy ones own the power of his presence, and find their souls restored, and their feet led back to the city, the way by which they had come, and which to them was the path of righteousness again.

This is the way of the grace of their risen Lord to those two disciples, and quite his way in this Gospel. So in what follows in the larger company at Jerusalem, we have the marks of our Gospel still as fresh as ever before us. For there the Lord is especially careful to verify his manhood, to show that he was none other than the Son of man risen from the dead. He establishes that first, by showing them his hands and his feet, and then by taking of a broiled fish and of an honeycomb and eating before them. And thus we see him the man before us still, once the anointed man, and now the risen man. And having thus approved himself, he deals with them as men, acting as their teacher, according to his accustomed place in this Gospel, both opening the scriptures to them, and their understandings to the scriptures.-And having thus sealed to them this fruit of the resurrection, the opened understanding, he promises them " power from on high," in order that they might be competent witnesses of the things which they had now learned.

This " power from on high" is, of course, a description of the Holy Ghost, called also " the promise of the Father." But it intimates the Holy Ghost under a special manifestation, and such an one, too, as is still according to the character of our Gospel. In neither Matthew or Mark is this divine gift of the ascended Lord, here at the close, spoken of. But in Luke he is spoken of thus, as "power from on high," that is, power in the Apostles and others, to minister and testify. In John, in a still more blessed sense, he is promised as "the Comforter" or " the Spirit of truth," that is, the witness in the saints of grace and glory, the things of the Father and the Son. These distinctions are quite characteristic. The day of Pentecost brought this divine gift from the glorified Son of man, and that gift at once manifests his presence according to the promise here made; St. Luke's Gospel which is our Evangelist's first letter to Theophilus, thus ending with the promise of the Holy Ghost, the book of the Acts which is his second letter to the same friend, opening with the gift according to the promise.

And that book has been properly called "the Acts of the Holy Ghost." It comes after the four Gospels; and as they, or the ministry of Jesus which they record, had given the full formal manifestation of the Father and the Son, so this book, which records the ministry of the Apostles and others, in order gives the same manifestation of the Holy Ghost. The persons in the Godhead are thus in due season declared, for the full light and comfort of the Church. Notices of this divine mystery no doubt there had been from the beginning, but the name of God-" Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," was now fully manifested and published. Thus at the very opening of that book of the Acts, we read that it was "through the Holy Ghost" the risen Lord commanded his Apostles. So strikingly is he thus acknowledged at once, and that, too, in connection with the ministry of the risen Lord himself. Then the Savior twice speaks of him in his short discourse with his disciples; then Peter owns him in David; he is then himself given, and he imparts his powers, and Peter promises him (ministerially of course) to all who would repent; then he fills the Apostles for testimony; then he is owned as God, against whom sin was committed; resistance of him is publicly declared to have been, and still to be the way and the transgression of Israel; and his guidance of his minister in his labors, as well as his wonted presence in the saints, is likewise fully acknowledged. All this we get in the earlier chapters, but at length in the 13th we have the Holy Ghost sending forth the Apostles to the Gentiles, revealing his purpose and himself personally by a voice in the midst of the Church; and afterward, in the 20th and 21st chapters, owned as setting overseers in the Church, and announcing beforehand the sufferings of the ministers of Christ.

Thus is he prominently and continually brought out in personal action. By sending out the Apostles to the Gentiles, we may say that he rules the whole ministry without; and by setting forth the overseers of the flock, that he is personally engaged in the whole ministry within: thus filling the place of the great director and spring of the whole subsequent movement, according to which he acts, hindering ministry in certain places (see chap. 21) And thus it is indeed the book of the "Acts of the Holy Ghost,"-the manifestation of his person and ways in that divine plan of everlasting love, which is to issue in the salvation of the Church of God which he has purchased with his own blood. And let me add, that according to this, at the close of the book, we get that distinguished prophecy of Isaiah, contained in his 6th chapter, and so much used in the New Testament, again referred to; but referred to for the first time as being the language of the Holy Ghost.

All this, as everything of our God, is perfect in its season. The incarnation and ministry of the Lord was the manifestation of the Father and the Son; the present age is the manifestation of the Holy Ghost; the age to come, when the golden city is to descend, or the Bride to take her place with the Lamb in power, will be the manifestation of the Church. All is perfection in the ways of his wisdom as in the works of his grace. The Lord tells out one secret after another, bringing forth each in due season, and leading the soul to say, "0! the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!"

But this only as we pass on. I have already observed that the notice which we get here of the Holy Ghost, is still according to this Gospel, keeping it, as it were, between Matthew or Mark on the one hand, and John on the other,-the former giving us no such notice of the Spirit at all, the latter giving us still larger and richer notice of him, under the titles of "the Comforter," and " Spirit of truth." But so after this, down, as it were, to the last syllable, the Gospel is still according to itself. I mean in what now happens at the closing moments in Bethany.

To that well-known spot, a retreat for the poor of the flock at "the back side of the desert," the fold of those whom he loved in Judea (John 11:3), the Lord now leads forth his disciples. And there while blessing them, he is parted from them and carried up into heaven. But this is quite himself in this Gospel. This is still " the man Christ Jesus," for this is the action and attitude of the Priest, the Mediator, and there is but one Mediator between God and man, and that is, " the man Christ Jesus." Every high priest is taken from among men, and this action was just that of the true Aaron, the priest with the uplifted hand to bless (Lev. 9:22). Like Aaron he had now been anointed, and was giving proof of his ministry. He was presenting, as it were, the first-fruits of his priestly services. The resurrection had declared him to be the Son of God, and called him to the priesthood (Heb. 5), and he was be-ginning to fulfill its duties of holy love.

But here let me say that a priesthood thus linked with resurrection, entirely meets the mind of God, and is suited to his own sanctuary in the 'heavens. The priesthood of Aaron had not such a quality in it, for it was according to "the law of a carnal commandment," being successional or transferrable, because no one could continue in it by reason of death. And such could not please God, for he is not the God of the dead, but of the living. The actings of such priests could not reach God, not having the savor of life in them. But the priesthood of the risen Jesus is established in " the power of an endless life." In his person, that office is connected with victory over all the power of death, and thus the living God finds all his satisfaction in the living Priest. Death, it is most true, must be gone through. Death was the wages of sin; and when man became a sinner, he became a debtor to death, and God could not treat with man thus a sinner, but on death being suffered somewhere. " Where a covenant is, there death must be brought in" (Heb. 9:16). So that Jesus, the sinner's surety, died. But not being personally debtor to death, he rose with all the virtue of life in him. His blood had this virtue in it, for it was offered without spot, no savor of death, because no taint of sin was there; it was indeed living blood which carried no seed of death in it. His priesthood had this virtue in it, as dealing with this living blood, and being entered on through resurrection the sure witness of all victory over death. And thus all in Jesus, the believing sinner's victim and priest, is suited to the living God and so to our necessities.

And this was the honor of Melchizedek. He was a living priest. I speak of him, of course, typically. But it is this which sets his order above that of Aaron's. There is no record of either the beginning of his days, nor of the end of his life; and in this he has been made like unto the Son of God, in whom there is neither actual beginning nor end, as in his type Melchizedek there is neither re-corded beginning nor end. The silence of scripture as to the person of the latter, sets forth the truth or mystery as to the person of the former. But it is not only as " over all God blessed forever," that Jesus has now "no end of days," but it is as having in our nature by death destroyed the power of death, and by resurrection been made known as the living Son of man. And that is Christ's " own eternity," in which we are equally interested. As our hymn says, " Jesus will our treasure be, through his own eternity." He fixes his own eternity on all that he has gained for us. Sin sought to fasten death on him, but could not. The Lord, ill his life here, came into contact with all that might have tainted him, and laid the seed of death in him. But nothing of it entered. And he has now fixed the sure and indestructible virtue of his resurrection on all that he communicates to his saints. He is able to subdue all things to himself. Wonderful and blessed words-to himself! His risen mercies, are sure mercies; his risen life, is eternal life; his risen glory, an unfading glory; and his inheritance, an incorruptible inheritance; his risen body, too, a glorious body. And these things in us and for us, as in and for himself.

This subject of the priesthood of the risen Son of man is indeed blessed. It is quite true that he had not at the time of this chapter formally entered upon it, because his temple was 'n the heavens. But ere he leaves his people he gives them a sample of his actings as the ascended heavenly Priest. He lifted up his hands and blest them. And as soon as he had done so, and sealed to them this further fruit of his resurrection, he was parted from them, and carried into the temple itself, where he sits as " the man Christ Jesus," till all have come to the measure of the fullness of the stature of Christ; till all who are of his risen flesh and bones have been brought in to form the new man, the fullness of him who filleth all in all. Our Gospel had opened with the priest of the family of Levi, in the temple at Jerusalem, and now closes with the Priest, the risen Lord, as in the temple in heaven. It was the man Jesus, in his infancy, his human relationship and place here, that we got at the beginning, and it is the man Jesus still, risen and glorified, and about to be seated in his honors and place in the heavens, that we get now at the end.

In this character of the priest, and of the risen man, thus so according to the mind of the Spirit in our Evangelist, we now lose sight of our Lord. And the closing view which we thus get of him in each Gospel, does indeed strike me as very distinguishing and characteristic. In Matthew (just to look at it again for a moment), the Lord does not change his place. He is still here, still on the earth, as it were, simply saying, "all power is given to me in heaven and in earth, go ye therefore and teach all nations: lo, I am with you." As though he were simply the Lord of the harvest, ordering and strengthening his Jewish husbandry. In Mark, he is received up into heaven, but still on the Apostles going forth to preach, he is spoken of as present and working with them. In John, neither he ' nor they remain on earth. But here he is carried up alone, and there abides as their High Priest within the vail, sending down the. Holy Ghost to be with them here as power from on high.

This is all quite in character. In our Gospel, the Lord ascends as the Priest to be alone in the sanctuary in heaven. It is his ascent, true Solomon or royal Priest as he was, by which he went up into the house of the Lord (2 Chron. 9:4). In Mark, it is the ascension of the Lord to the right hand of power, in order to preside over and share in the ministry of his servants. In John, it is the Son of the Father ascending, in order to introduce the children to the Father's house.

When, therefore, we are thus preserved, we should seek to go out in testimony to the world, the Lord helping us, by leading us in the truth by his Spirit, and giving us utterance and an open door. But if, as in John, we are sinking in the flesh, still we may know that we are following Jesus where lie has gone."

He was " carried up" (ανεφερετο). The expression implies that some conveyance waited him. And indeed he had been thus waited on from very old time. When exhibited and spoken of as " the Glory," " the Angel of God," " the Angel of his presence," or " the Lord" (Ex. 14, 23, 32 Isa. 63), the cloud conveys him hither and thither. It first took him at the head of his redeemed people to lead them in the way (Ex. 13) It then carried him between the camps of Israel and Egypt, that he might be light to the one and darkness to the other, and out of it so look as to trouble the Egyptians, and take off their chariot-wheels (Ex. 14) At times it brought him to take his seat in judgment upon his trespassing and murmuring congregation (Ex. 16 Num. 14, 16, 20) And after all this, it took him to fill his place in the temple (2 Chron. 5), as indeed it had before, in like manner, borne him to fill the same place in the tabernacle (Ex. 40)

Thus did the cloudy chariot wait on him of old (Psa. 104:3). But when the sin of his people had disturbed his rest in the midst of them, it is the cherubim that he uses to bear him away (Ezek. 1); and the cherubim was called "the chariot of the cherubim" (1 Chron. 28:18). There may or may not be a distinction between this cloud and the cherubim. But it matters not. He was attended on all these occasions, by his appointed chariot. And so is he now. He is "carried up." But on all these former occasions he is spoken of variously, as I have noticed, or indefinitely, as "the Glory," " the Angel of God," " the Angel of his presence," and " the Lord." And in the last place that I have mentioned in Ezekiel, his likeness is "as the appearance of a man." From henceforth however, this Glory, this Angel-Jehovah, becomes stamped with the form and characters of man. It is the risen Son of man who is now carried up to his place on high. It is not merely " the appearance of a man," but one whose manhood had been assured and verified. As such he now ascends. The Glory has taken his abiding form. Blessed truth for us. And as the glorified man it is, that we from henceforth in the book of God see him. In the vision of the prophet, he is after this, as the glorified man brought with the clouds of heaven to the Ancient of Days to receive his

kingdom (Dan. 7); as such after this he stands, in the eye of another prophet, in the midst of the golden candlesticks (Rev. 1); as such he tells us himself that he shall hereafter be seen sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven (Matt. 26); and as such, when all the judgment is passed, his name will be made excellent in all the earth, " the world to come" not being subject to angels, but to man (Psa. 8 Heb. 2)

This is indeed a wondrous theme which the word of truth offers to our thoughts, brethren. It is man that has been thus anointed, and ran that is to be thus exalted. The ranks of angels which have as yet surrounded the throne, must open, as it were, to let the Church of redeemed sinners in, that man may be displayed as the appointed vessel of the glory in the ages before us. " What is man," surely may be said, " that thou art mindful of him, and the Son of man that thou visitest him."

When the priest Zacharias went into the temple, the whole multitude owned the power of his entrance there, and were without praying at the time of incense, as we read in this Gospel (see 1:10). And when Moses went within the cloud, being thus as by the vail shut within the sanctuary of God, the people rose up, every one standing at his tent door and worshipping (Ex. 33) So here on this entrance of the risen Son of man within the cloud (Acts 1:9), the vail between the holy and the most holy, of this true priest within the true temple, the people without own the power of his ascension there, and again look after him and worship. But then it is here, and only here, that they are his own people worshipping himself. For all these were but the human shadows, but this is the divine substance. "They worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God."-In Mark (or Matthew) they go forth to the world to preach; in John they ascend after the Son to the Father's house; but here in Luke, as the priest was entering the heavens to bless them, they enter the temple to worship. All strictly still in character. And their worship was praise. For such only was now the seasonable worship. There had been the solemn meeting (John 14:1), and the priests had wept as between the porch and the altar, and there had been the mourning for the pierced one (Joel 2:17, Zech. 12:10). But he had now seen them again and their hearts had rejoiced. They could not eat the bread of mourners while surrounding such an altar as this. It was, shall I not call it, the feast of the resurrection that they were now keeping, and it must be kept with rejoicing. The first-fruits of the harvest had been accepted for them, and they must offer their meat-offerings and their drink-offerings with joy in his temple (Lev. 23:10). They were waiting for the Pentecost, the feast of weeks, but " Jesus and the resurrection" was their present feast, and it was only with gladness that they could look on that accepted sheaf of first-fruits- waved before the Lord.

"Amen," as in all the Gospels, then seals this witness of our Evangelist. But we have not the same rapturous note of admiration as at the close of St. John. For all the writings may not be equally elevated, though equally perfect in their order, and divine in their original, as one star differeth from another in glory, though all (as another has said) are equally in the heavens which God alone created and made. St. Luke, like the others, is in his own character to the very end, as we have now seen. It is the Son of man whom the Spirit traces by him, as it had been Messiah or Jesus in Jewish connection by Matthew; Jesus the Servant or Minister by Mark; and Jesus the Son of God, Son of the Father by John. And this perfect man was first the anointed man, walking though the varied paths of this life, and in all of them presenting to God offerings of untainted human fruit in such a vessel as had never before furnished or adorned his sanctuary; then the risen man, showing himself to his own in his victory over death and all the power of the enemy, and in samples of some of the blessing which that victory had gained for them; and finally as the ascended or glorified man, about to perfect in their behalf before the throne of God, and in the heavenly temple all the fruit of this his life and conflict and victory, and to fill them with joy and praise forever and ever.

Here we leave our blessed happy occupation in tracing the varied ways of our divine Lord and Savior, through the four Gospels. O that this occupation could leave the same power in the soul behind it, as it imparted joy to the soul while engaged in it. But the heart knows its own secret causes of full and constant humiliation, and has well learned that word " when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room,"-learned it, I mean in its truth and fitness, though not in its power. May our God, beloved, train our hearts to his own joys which ever find their springs in the person and work of the Son of his love! And may he also free us of ourselves more and more, that Jesus may be only seen in us and by us! Surely then we shall be happy and obedient disciples.

In closing these meditations on the four Gospels, I would again. say, that the skill which is thus with a little care discernible in the executions of them is perfectly divine. It is indeed of God's own hand. Had each of the evangelists introduced his writing by a formal declaration of the design of it, and how it was to distinguish itself from the others, the wisdom and perfections of him who indited them would have not been so glorified, nor would the same exercise of heart have been so called out, as now it is by reaching this distinct purpose through the " characteristic exhibition" in which each of the Gospels abounds. But as they now stand it is the very harmony of creation that we listen to. "There is no speech or language, without these their voice is heard." They do not in terms declare themselves, but without these, they express themselves. And thus we see that the very same hand which fashioned the heavens and gave them their voice in the ear of men, has traced the glories that shine in the different Gospels, and given them a voice likewise in the ear of saints.

But after all this, beloved, the Gospel itself must be our object. May the Lord keep that fresh and immediate upon our hearts continually! It is the Gospel itself, the tale of God's unmeasured love, and which heaven calls the earth to listen to, that bears with it the real and abiding blessing to our souls. It is the entrance of the living God, God of all grace as he is, through the testimony of the Son of his love, into our hearts, that indeed sheds abroad the light, the liberty, the victory there, and is the seed in us of eternal life. As one has said, " a man may be captivated by this intellectual and moral harmony, and take much pleasure in tracing it through all its detail, and yet derive no more profit from it than from the examination of any curious piece of material workmanship.-It is proper that this beautiful relation in Christianity (and I might add, in the scriptures that reveal Christianity) should be seen and admired; but if it come to be the prominent object of belief, the great truth of Christianity is not believed.-There is much in Christianity that may take a strong hold of the imaginative faculties, and give a high species of enjoyment to the mind, but the most important part of religion in relation to sinners is its necessity. The Gospel has not been revealed that we may have the pleasure of feeling or expressing fine sentiments, but that we may be saved: the taste may receive the impression of the beauty and sublimity of the Bible, and the nervous system may have received the impression of the tenderness of its tone, and yet its meaning, its deliverance, its mystery of holy love, may remain unknown."

This is valuable to us, beloved. With all our knowledge of other glories and secrets, may our knowledge of that message of surpassing love that has reached us be, still the dearest and simplest, and most intimate possession of our souls. The Gospel of his grace tells us that our necessities have drawn forth the sympathies and resources of the blessed God. On such a truth may our hearts still dwell with lingering desires, sitting down " at that one well-spring of delight." It is in the faith of that, the life, the joy, the liberty, and strength of our souls will be found. There is one who has loved us and given himself for us, and that one none less than the Son of God. Such was the spring of Paul's life, and to such may we turn continually for light and refreshing, our hearts taking counsel there still the oftenest. And when the last of us is gathered in, and all have come in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, it is that we may be taken there where with enlarged powers, both of understanding and joy, we shall praise this Lamb that was slain for the love that he had for us for evermore.

May his grace keep us with uncorrupted minds and undefiled garments, dear brethren, that we may know him only in this evil world, for his name sake!

(Continued from p. 127, vol. 12.))

The Kingdom of the Lord Jesus, &c.

Redemption, in its every step, silences the boastings of corrupted nature. Redemption, in its full accomplishment, utterly abolishes that nature. The earth will visibly declare the former, and the heavens the latter, in the millennial kingdom of the Son of God.

But my subject has not been this kingdom in its glorious display of the various triumphs of redemption. I have desired to direct attention to a period preparatory to that. A period in which the redeemed and delivered earthly people are led through a course of moral and external preparation for their earthly glory.

I have written very generally, hoping that others may be led to bring scripture testimony more definitely to bear on this period. For its study would, I believe, cast light on much scripture (especially the Psalms), and would necessarily unfold the deep counsels, and unfailing workbags of our God, in redemption. And to learn redemption, is to have intelligent fellowship with God, in a work which he purposed before this world's creation, and which he will fully perfect only when this world has ceased to be.

For however, by means of redemption, God may yet bless and gladden this old creation, still this old creation is not redeemed. To display his Son's title and glory, God will, by him, pour out redemption-blessing on this creation-its sabbath of repose and thanksgiving and joy; but in the new heavens and the new earth alone will the consummated results of redemption be seen. The Lord grant unto his saints more communion with his own heart and mind in all this!

Moses's Loss of Canaan

Moses had his ordinary shepherd's rod in his hand, when God called him to feed Israel (Ex. 4) It then became God's rod, for God made it the symbol and instrument of Moses's authority and grace in Israel. He was thenceforth to take it, that by it he might do his wonders in Egypt, and in the wilderness, for judgment on the enemy and for blessing to the people (Ex. 4:17).

It first swallowed up the rods of Egypt, to show that no strength could stand before God's strength, thus giving Egypt notice that it was hard to kick against the pricks (Ex. 7:12). But Egypt would not learn that lesson. And then the rod brings the plagues of blood, of frogs,, and of lice, till the magicians own that they could not measure their strength with the Lord's (8:19). It is then used in the plagues of hail (9:23), locusts (10:13), and darkness (10: 22), and finally for the deliverance of Israel, and for the overthrow of Egypt in the Red Sea (14).

Thus was it the instrument of judgment and of grace in Egypt. It was but a weak shepherd's rod at first, but as such it was the more fit to become God's rod,-for he ever perfects his strength in our weakness, and chooses the weak things to confound the mighty.

But we are still to see the rod in the wilderness, for Moses with it opens the rock in Horeb (Ex. 17) By the same shepherd's strength and grace he now feeds the camp in the desert, as that by which he had redeemed them from bondage.

By all this use of the rod, Moses (and Aaron his associate) should have been fully submitted to by all the congregation. The wonders they did (of which this rod was the symbol) had fully accredited them, and entire subjection to them as the king and the priest, or God's dignities, was the righteous place of the congregation. But it happens otherwise. The congregation despise these dignities, and are for setting aside this king and this priest of God (Num. 16). That was a solemn moment in Israel. The rebellion of Korah and his companions was an awful consummation of despite of the Lord. But then the Lord pleads the cause himself. He judges the offenders, and in a solemn trial of the question, he determines by the budding rod who his dignities or officers were, that the murmuring of the congregation might be silenced forever, and that they might thus be saved from death (Num. 17).

Now we have much of the way of the Lord Jesus in all this. Jesus was set forth to Israel at the first as their Shepherd. He did his wonders of grace and strength, his miracles and healings and teachings, were enough to accredit him, so that they owned for a season that this was he (Matt. 12:23). But Israel at length rose up against him, they despised God's king and priest, like Korah and his company, crucifying the Lord of glory. But God pleaded his cause against the nation by raising him from the dead. Jesus brought forth in resurrection, is the budding of the rod, the dead stick blooming blossoms and bearing almonds. Jesus in resurrection has all the virtue of this rod, both in silencing the murmur of every rival, and securing from death the soul that will trust in him, and allow his claims. These two virtues of the resurrection, are largely preached by the Apostles. The resurrection has made Jesus a Prince and a Savior. It has vindicated his claims and made him the dispenser of life. By it God has fully declared that all power is Christ's, that he is the spring of life and the executor of judgment. And the Apostles were the preachers of the resurrection in these its virtues, and the angel at the tomb so witnessed to it (Matt. 28 Acts 2:36; 17:31; 3:13, 16; 5:31; 1:22; 4:10-12, Rom. 1:4). And now all blessing must flow through it, through this new rod, this budding rod, not Jesus as before born of a virgin, but Jesus brought from the dead; not the rod that was first in Moses's hand, but the rod that was brought from before the Lord (Num. 20:9; 18:7).

It is quite true that many perhaps at future seasons would not hear the voice of the budding rod, as now many will not hear the voice of the resurrection; but that does not alter the voice. Whether they will hear it or not, it silences murmurs,-the budding rod and the resurrection have established those claims, for which, Moses and Jesus the Son of God had been previously rejected and reproached.

This seems to me a simple following out of the history and the mystery of the rod. But then this also gives us the character of Moses's and Aaron's sin, by which they forfeited the land.

God will be sanctified in them that come nigh him (Lev. 10:3). He will have the provision which he has made, either for his own service or his people's blessing, honored by them. And the contrary of this was the sin of Nadab and Abihu. They took fire of their own, and did not use God's fire, the provision he had made for his own altar. Thus they did not sanctify him. And this was the sin of Moses and Aaron here. They did not sanctify God in his ordinance of the budding rod. They did not use it according to God's mind about it. They did not give it its ordained place, or duly own its virtues before the congregation. They acted as they did before, striking instead of speaking. They did not know the power of this rod-using strength instead of preaching the virtue of it. Nor did they duly honor the grace of the rod, for in it God's grace had greatly abounded. In spite of all their sin in the matter of Korah, God had set up this other witness for his praise and their blessing. But Moses and Aaron act no more in full sympathy with the grace, than they had with the power of the rod, for they upbraid the people, as well as strike the rock, while they were told merely to speak to the rock, and to do nothing with the people but bring them forth the water. Their conduct, therefore, was unbelief in the virtues of this mystic rod. It was unbelief in the present ordinance, and a return to previous dispensations.. They forgot the lesson of Num. 17 for a moment, and thus they forfeited the land.

Such was their sin, and such their judgment. And it is like present unbelief in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. For Christ risen is God's great ordinance now. The resurrection as I have said, is the true budding rod. It is that ordinance which has the virtues of Aaron's rod in it. When the resurrection is not honored in its fullness of grace to sinners, and of glory to God, as that which silences every tongue that should rise against the holy claims of Jesus, and also hinders the death and feeds the life of the poor sinner that will trust in him, God's ordinance is not honored, and then comes forfeiture of all blessing. For God must be honored in his ordinances, and sanctified in them that come nigh to him.

Now to this I would just further add, that Saul of Tarsus offended against the resurrection. He was chief among those who killed the witness of it (Acts 8:1). But Saul was brought to know it, and by that knowledge to die to himself and to live to be the witness of a higher glory still, even of ascension or heavenly glory. And so with Moses here. He offends against the budding rod, and loses Canaan, but afterward shines in the glory of the Church on the top of the hill (Matt. 17:3).

In the previous paper I have meditated on Moses's loss of Canaan. I would now trace the testimony to his heavenly glory. For though he lost the one, the Lord through abounding grace had prepared for him the other.

From Acts 7 we learn that the rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ by the earth, was the occasion (I speak of course, as remembering that " known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world") of giving him a glory in heaven, and in connection with a family there, of an order higher than any glory he would have known or gathered, had the earth received, instead of rejecting him. But that chapter also tells us, that that mystery had been typified in the histories of both Joseph and Moses. Joseph was sold, and Moses was refused by their brethren, but by reason of that, Joseph got joy and glory and a family in Egypt, and Moses got the same in Midian; and each of them was thus in his day, a foreshadowing of the glory and joy of the Son of God, in the midst of the Church or heavenly family, consequent on his being rejected in his day also by Israel and the earth.

But in the progress of Moses's history, we get him a second time separated from Israel, such separation being also followed by the same heavenly results. The sin of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai, by which the covenant was broken and the blessing forfeited, casts Moses again into the same heavenly character. The tabernacle, upon that sin of the golden calf, is removed, and pitched without the camp, the Lord in righteousness disowning his revolted people. But there Moses meets him, and meets him too in a new way, "face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend" (Ex. 33:11). This had not been so before. It was the expression of increased intimacy between the Lord and Moses. It was letting him into friendship with the Lord, such as the Church now stands in (John 15:15). It was a new thing with Moses, a fresh character of glory in him, as his previous dwelling in Midian among the Gentiles had been new in its day.- And it was just the thing that distinguished Moses from all Jewish worthies or prophets, and took him above them; as we read, " there arose not a prophet since in Israel, like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face" (Deut. 34) And being in this place of intimacy, or in this heavenly place,, he acts according to the high prerogatives of it. He passes and re-passes between the glorious tabernacle which the cloud guarded, and the camp of the congregation (Ex. 33:11). And this movement expressed his equal access to heaven and to earth, and thus that he was the Mediator, the shadow of our heavenly Priest, Christ Jesus. Joshua the while, was kept in the tabernacle, as the servant separated it is true, from the defiled and revolted people (as the righteous remnant will be in the latter day), but still not let into the place of intimacy, the heavenly place, which Moses filled.

And in another case he acts according to the high prerogatives of his new and heavenly character. He marries an Ethiopian woman (Num. 12) He takes another wife from among the Gentiles, and those, too who were, in common esteem, the very basest of the Gentiles (Jer. 13) His natural kindred, his connections in the flesh, are not prepared for this, and they speak against him, and are for refusing his place and authority. He being a man of heavenly temper, more meek than any who could have been found on the earth, says nothing to all this. But the Lord pleads his cause, and in doing so vindicates him on the very ground of that heavenly character which he had acquired in the days of the golden calf, or of the apostasy of the earthly people. " Hear now my words," says the Lord to Aaron and Miriam, " if there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream; my servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all my house; with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches, and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold—-wherefore, then, were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses."

Here the Lord very strikingly pleads in favor of Moses, and in full vindication of his doing an act which earthly or fleshly kindred did not understand, and were not prepared for, the intimacy with himself which Moses had acquired by the former sin of that earthly people. That intimacy, or speaking " face to face" with the Lord, had thus raised him quite above the Jewish, or earthly level, and had clearly given him a heavenly character, one of the prerogatives of which he had now been exercising, in marrying an Ethiopian woman, as he had before, as I have shown, exercised another of them, in passing and re-passing between the Lord in the tabernacle of glory and the camp of the people.

And I must notice the value of the word "all" in this passage. It is very striking in connection with my subject,-" who is faithful in all my house," says the Lord, words which went to tell Aaron and Miriam that Moses was a person of special dignity, having access to all parts of the Lord's house. It was not only that he was faithful, but faithful in all parts of the house, having title to be in the holiest, or heavenly place, as well as in the tabernacle of the congregation or the courts. For it is Moses's dignity as well as fidelity that his divine Advocate is here pleading.

All this strikes me as being very clear and strong, and thus Moses's second marriage, or with the Ethiopian, has the same voice as his first marriage, or with the Midianite. Both show him in heavenly character, or as the type of the Lord in union with the Church.

Thus Moses becomes a partaker of the heavenly calling, and according to this, as we may now further see, at the end he occupies the heavenly place.

We see him for instance, in the Mount Pisgah, viewing the land of Canaan stretched out beneath him (Deut. 34) That was a new mount of God to him. It lay a little outside the promised land, but it afforded him a full view of it. It was a high eminence, the top Pisgah on Mount Nebo, in the mountains of Abarim. The earth had now ceased to own Moses, Israel also knew him no more, the wilderness, too, had all been passed, and the Lord alone is his company on the hill that overlooked the land of promise. What an expression of the place of the Church or heavenly glory the whole of this is! on high with the Lord, Moses looks down on the earthly inheritance, the place of the tribes of Israel, Gilead and Daniel Napthali, Ephraim and Manasseh, with all the land of Judah to the sea, the south too, and the valley of Jericho, with the city of palm trees unto Zoar! A place that could command such objects beneath, and in such company, is heavenly indeed. Moses is on high with the Lord, looking on the cities and plains where the redeemed and happy families of the earth were to dwell. It is from heaven alone that such blessing and occupation of the earth in righteousness and peace, will be seen by the Lord and his children of the resurrection.

And again as another witness of Moses in the heavenly place, we see him in the New Testament, on another mount, the Mount of the Transfiguration. Peter, James, and John are there, representing Israel and the earthly people, and they are on the outside. But Moses is there, again in company with the Lord and another co-heir of the heavenly glory, and they are within, enwrapped in the cloud of the excellent glory, the true vail that is to separate the holy place from the courts, or the heavens from the earth. Moses is on the heavenly side of that vail, glorified in the likeness of the very Lord of the glory himself.

These are two strong and clear testimonies to the heavenly gloryof Moses,-striking exhibitions of him in the heavenly place, being in company with the Lord on the top of two hills, from the one of which he sees the earthly inheritance beneath him, and from the other, the earthly people outside him. And thus I judge from all these witnesses which we- have here listened to, we gather both the heavenly calling and glory, or the heavenly character and place of this honored and faithful servant of God. A child of the resurrection he is, and a joint heir of God with Jesus Christ.

Thus does Moses lose the earth, but gains heaven. He loses Canaan by his own wrong, trespassing, as we have seen, against the grace and power of the budding rod, but he gains glory on the top of the hill that overlooked Canaan, through the abounding kindness and love of God his Savior. Law says that "no man shall take advantage of his own wrong," and justly so, for righteousness forbids the thought that any one shall gain a benefit by his own misdoing. But grace does not act by law, for the glory we reap through it, as pardoned sinners, is richer and brighter far than that which Adam in innocency knew. God's riddle is solved in our history,-the eater has yielded meat, and the strong man sweetness. Moses and the Church both illustrate it: both are traveling onward through forfeiture of the earth, led by the hand of the Son of God, to the top of that hill which looks down on the goodly tents of Jacob beneath.- O beloved, what manner of people should we be! May the life and energy of the indwelling Spirit, keep us more and more separated to heavenly character, and heavenly hopes! Amen, Lord Jesus.

The Mount of God Part 1

I separate these chapters, because they present us, I judge, a distinct subject for meditation, and afford us some of the grounds on which it is that Horeb or Sinai in Arabia is called, in scripture, "the Mount of God."

They open with Israel in Egypt, and that land is seen in her guilt before. God, for it is here written of her, "now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph." That land was thus the ungrateful, the apostate. She had departed from Joseph, and so from God himself, from him who had filled her storehouses with plenty, and her throne with honor and strength. Thus Egypt was, in miniature, the world,-the great apostate from its rightful Lord and gracious Benefactor. And the Lord had no sanctuary, no altar there. His people would have sacrificed the abomination of that land (8:26), and therefore they must go into the wilderness to hold their feast or do their service to the Lord. All was apostate and ripe for judgment. Joseph's memory had been despised, and all that remained to Joseph was put to the brick-kilns (1)

But in such a place the Lord has a cluster, and in the cluster a blessing. The cluster of Israel in the vineyard of Egypt at this time, savored, it is true, too much of the soil where it grew; for as the one had forgotten Joseph, so does the other now refuse Moses, saying, " who made thee a prince and a judge over us?" But God has his remnant even in such a generation, his blessing in such a cluster (Isa. 65:8), and it is found in the tribe of Levi, to which this second Joseph, this offered but rejected deliverer of his nation belonged. "By faith Moses when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child, and they were not afraid of the king's commandment."

But the name of this child, this predestined deliverer of his people, has its meaning. Pharaoh's daughter, as we know, called him "Moses," because she had "drawn him out" from the waters. But God had his purpose, it appears, in that name also, for it is from henceforth to the end owned by the Spirit of God. He was another Noah. Noah had been "drawn out." An ark had kept him in the waters till the dry land again received him; and that was, as we are divinely taught, a like figure with baptism of death and resurrection (1 Peter 3:20, 21). And so Moses now. He had been kept in an ark through the waters, that place of death, till he stood again in the place of life, as one that had died and has risen (2)

Thus was he, mystically, the dead and risen man: and he acts, "when he was come to years," in the power of resurrection, refusing to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, rather choosing affliction with the people of God; that is, disclaiming his advantages in the flesh and in the world, and walking by faith, seeing him who is invisible, and having respect unto the recompense of the reward.

Such an one is he, thus, both in his person and character, ere he goes forth to run his appointed service, whether among strangers or in Israel. Through their present unbelief, rejecting this deliverer, the children of Israel are left for a time longer at the Egyptian brick-kilns. But he whom they thrust from them is accepted in another place, and seated not at the head of a nation but of a family, enjoying intimacies and affections sweeter and closer than ever he had known among his own kindred. A stranger receives him. Jethro the Midianite opens his house to him and gives him his daughter in marriage, because he had been her deliverer, though in spite of the same grace towards them Israel had just refused him.

This family of strangers, is, mystically, the Church taken from the Gentiles during the Lord's estrangement from Israel, as has been often observed among us, beloved. I do not, therefore, stop to look at it particularly. But (as we generally know) the blessing is not to be spent on this family of strangers. Israel is had in remembrance still, though they have once refused the deliverer. Accordingly Moses, in due season, is called forth to change the scene of his action again, and bear God's redeeming love and strength back to Israel in Egypt. For he is their only hope and channel of blessing. If in their distress, Israel cry to the Lord, the answer must come by the hand of him whom once they refused. The Lord has no other help for them. From the outcast Joseph alone is the Shepherd and stone of Israel. But he can and will answer. The ears of the Lord of Sabaoth have heard the cry, and Moses is immediately put in readiness to return from Midian into Egypt for the help of Israel.

The burning bush is now the symbol of God's constant care of Israel, though in the furnace of Egypt. It tells Moses how in all their affliction, the Lord had been afflicted, and how the angel of his presence had still preserved them. And it is in connection with this mystic bush, that Horeb is first called "the Mount of God." For now it is that the Lord is first telling of himself there. He "who dwelt in the bush" had a "goodwill" towards them, for if the Son of God be in the furnace with his people it is to preserve them. And this same spot which now thus testified of grace should by and bye testify of glory to them, as is here said to Moses, "when thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God on this mountain" (3,4)

Thus was it now between the Lord and Moses at this holy Mount. Then by miracle upon miracle in the sight of Egypt, and with plague upon plague, and fury poured out, this deliverer rescues Israel from under the hand of their taskmasters. It was the day of judgment to Egypt, as afterward it was to Canaan. For Egypt was the world, as I have said. She had filled up her sins. She had despised the day of grace in Joseph, and now comes the day of judgment by Moses. It is as the wrath of the Lamb coming on those who refuse the blood of the Lamb. Pharaoh said he knew not the Lord, but Pharaoh must know him (5:2, 9:14). If Pharaoh would disown him in goodness, he must know him in righteousness, for his judgments were now to be made manifest, and " the Lord is known by the judgment which he executeth." As his holy prophet says to him, " when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness." God would be known in grace; but if that lesson be refused by Egypt, she must know him in the uplifted hand of power, as she now does, till the strength and flower of her people lie on the banks of the Red Sea (5-15).

But I desire in the midst of these scenes, which these chapters give us, to look for awhile at the children of Israel between the paschal night, and the banks of the Red Sea.

The blood on the lintels had secured the first-born, and the Egyptian had then allowed Israel to pass out of the land. But the Egyptian himself was not yet destroyed, neither was Israel clearly beyond the borders of the enemy. These results waited till the Red Sea was reached and crossed. And till then they are not at ease, nor have they any song. The Egyptian has gone out after them, and they judge, as it were, that it is nothing but death before and behind. They see the cloud, and they cannot but remember the shelter of the blood, and that they have, in some sense, left Egypt. But in some sense also they judge themselves to be in a worse state than ever. And such often is a stage in the history of a converted soul. There is the quickening, the rising up as out of Egypt, the sudden new direction which the soul takes, with some sense of the value of the blood of Christ. But withal, this quickening, this rising up, does but lead the soul to judge worse of its condition than ever. A new sense of death comes in-death in trespasses and sins is apprehended, and no adequate assurance of the completeness of redemption. There is a shutting in between Jesus and God, if I may so speak. The soul can look to Jesus-his blood on the door post has told of his love, but God has not been so apprehended as to give certainty and ease of heart. All the virtue of the cross is not known, as all the virtue of the cloud and the rod is not known by Israel here. For the cloud had virtue not only to lead the redeemed, but to overthrow their pursuers. It could change its ground and stand between the two camps, and while it was light to the one, be darkness to the other. As its companion, the rod, could make a passage for the one, and bury the other in the mighty waters. And so in like manner, has the cross its full and double virtue. It rescues the sinner and silences all his accusers. But until those virtues be understood, the soul will be kept as in the interval from the passover to the Red Sea. Let however the cloud and the rod fully display themselves-let the cross of Christ publish all its virtue in the ear of faith, then Israel can sing their song, and the believer can say, " if God be for us, who can be against us." God as well as Jesus can then be triumphed in, the whole character of the cross being made known to the soul. The enmities are seen to be all abolished (Eph. 2)- the law to have found its end (Rom. 10)-sin to have paid its wages, and thereupon discharged (Rom. 6)-the great enemy to have been led a captive with all his powers (Col. 2)-death to have been abolished (2 Tim. 1)-and the flesh to have been found out, rebuked and discharged also (Rom. 7:8) And as the enemy is thus seen dead on the shore, so the sinner sees himself fully rescued-accepted in the beloved (Eph. 1)-happy in the adoption and love of God (Rom. 8)-treated as in the spirit and not in the flesh (Rom. 8) -safe in that hand out of which none can pluck (John 10)-dwelling in that love which leaves no room for fear (1 John 4) Israel has passed the waters.

Thus is it ofttimes still with the soul, as here it is with Israel. Of course the full victory of Jesus for the sinner may be understood at once, for the gospel publishes it without reserve. But till it be, the song is not learned, the redeemed one is on the Egyptian side of the Red Sea.

But the sea once crossed, Israel understands the cloud and the rod, and Egypt and its enmity are gone forever. Ere, however, they reach "the Mount of God," where they were to hold their feast, they are to learn the hand that would lead them, as well as the arm that had just saved them. For there is to be a journey from the sea to the Mount, as there had been from Egypt to the sea; and on this second journey we would also linger with them a little space (15-17)

Five distinct lessons are taught the people on this journey, the value of each of which the soul of the saint still also enters into. The song has already instructed them in the Lord's victory, and that song should be kept alive in their hearts all through, whatever other lesson they might learn, for that was a deathless victory, and the truth of it they were gathering every step of their way. But after it, we get the healing of Marah, the wells and palm trees of Elim, the manna, the water from the rock, the discomfiture of Amalek. These five distinct actions, displaying the Lord's varied grace and power, pass before us in this interval from the Red Sea to "the Mount of God." And each of them tells us of his care for his congregation in the wilderness. The healing of the waters of Marsh by the tree, tells us of the consolations which are provided to meet the sorrows of this evil world. Paul gathered of that tree, when he could say, " sorrowful yet alway rejoicing." The wells and palm trees tell us of the occasional refreshings which the saint gets through communion and ministry. The camp passed them, and saw them no more, after taking, as it were, one repast of them. So the Apostle could sit down at them for awhile, when comforted by the mutual faith of himself and others. The manna, in its turn, tells us of blessing also. It speaks of Jesus, the bread of life. Unlike the provision of Elim, it remained. It waited morning and evening for forty years on the camp, and fed them till they reached the land of corn and oil-as the true bread, which the Father gives, can feed us, let the place of the desert be what or where it may. The water from the rock tells us, in due order, of the Holy Ghost, the abiding Comforter. 'Unlike the wells of Elim also, this water follows through all the way, as the Giver of the true water says, "that he may abide with you forever." And lastly, the overthrow of Amalek tells of the strength, of the right hand of the Lord over that which would dare to withstand the way of that ransomed people over whom the glory of the Lord was hovering.

Thus they learn the sufficiency of God's grace and strength for all their necessity. He has the bread and the water for them, the healing tree, and the palms of Elim, though the place be desert and dry, and victory for them when the enemy appears.

And here let me say, that the Lord acquires his holy honors by all those acts and mercies which he accomplishes for his poor people. Thus his memorials are engraved on our blessings. Wonderful grace, and perfection of goodness this is, that God should be celebrated by and in that which blesses us. He got the title of " Jehovah-jireh," because he graciously provided a ram in the place of Isaac; he was celebrated as " a man of war," because he got the victory for his people in the Red Sea; he was " Jehovah-rophi," because he healed the bitter waters for the camp; he was " Jehovah-nissi," because he was their banner against the face of Amalek. And so I might show still further. But this is enough to tell us how the Lord makes himself a name, as Jeremiah says (Jer. 32:20), by his doings for us, and acquires (such is his grace) his own praise and honor by that which secures his people their blessing. The victory of Christ was over our enemies. If we believe his victory we must believe our own salvation. To question our blessing is to refuse him his praise. And it is a blessed economy of goodness that thus weaves the two inseparably together.

But the last of these lessons has large instruction in it, and I would look at it a little more particularly. Amalek was the grandson of Esau, and Esau, as we know, was the profane one-the man of the world. And Amalek appears before us in this place as one in that long line of willful ones, who run their course across the face of the earth, "mighty hunters before the Lord," or defiers and rivals of God himself. At this moment the glory was seen over Israel, and the rock was following them with its streams. But what was all this to Amalek? What did he care for the glory? Such as Isaiah or Daniel might learn their own vileness from it, and Peter in its presence might know himself to be a sinful man, but the glory had no lesson of holy fear for such as Amalek. He comes out, the rather, to measure strength with it. He is as the one who by and bye will dare to plant his idols on the battlements of the holy city, and his tabernacles on the glorious holy mountain. What is the glory to such as these? "Our tongues are our own," say they. Their standards may rival the Lord's pillar. But the hand that holds them shall wither, as Amalek here falls, and as the last of the race shall hereafter fall (Dan. 11), with none to help him.

This may be fearful, and it is so; but it ends the trial and discipline of Israel. As in that future day also, when the last Amalek falls, Michael will stand up and every one found written in the book shall be delivered. So here the discomfiture of this enemy makes full and easy way for Israel to "the Mount of God." That place, out to which they had been called from Egypt, under promise that there they should serve the Lord, and hold their feast to him, is now reached, their toil and discipline and danger all over:

And this long promised and now attained mountain, is again called "the Mount of God." The first time Moses is seen there, the burning bush, as we then saw, told him of grace; but now there is to be something to tell him of glory. Then he saw the pledge of redemption, now he is to see the pledge of the kingdom (18).

Zipporah and her children had been sent home to her father's house; and as far as we can judge, immediately after the circumcision of the child (chap. 4) and naturally so. For there was something in that action that was not according to the mind of a Gentile wife. But Moses, when returning into connection with Israel, should have owned the circumcision of the-God of Abraham. Coming back to his kindred in the flesh, he should have remembered the legislative national token in the flesh. The reproach of Midian should have been put away then, as the reproach of Egypt was afterward (Josh. 5) But Zipporah, who had no fleshly kindredness with Israel, could not have been prepared for this, and therefore with her the Lord had no controversy. It was Moses or his child, and not Zipporah, whom the Lord would have slain at the inn, according to the ordinance (Gen. 17:14). And his life being forfeited to that ordinance, it was grace that spared him. And it is altogether likely that it was just at that moment Zipporah was sent home. The Spirit, however, has left it without certainty. And justly so, as I judge, because her departure home to Midian is typically the hiding of the Gentile, or heavenly family, in the Father's house, till the Lord, the true Moses, conducts those judgments on this Egypt-world, which are to issue in the deliverance of his earthly people, and the kingdom.

But Egypt being judged, Israel redeemed, disciplined, and led to the borders of the mount, the due time had come for the re-appearance of Zipporah, the Gentile wife. She is now manifested, led out by the hand of her father for re-union with Moses at "the Mount of God," when all the action of judgment and redemption was now gloriously and fully accomplished.

The scene here is thus strikingly beautiful and significant. We have here (as another has justly called him) " the mysterious Kenite," for Jethro is a type or mystery, a sign of that which is especially time mystery. He here meets the redeemed heirs of earthly blessing till now a stranger to them. He comes from regions unknown to Israel. But when they meet there is no want of full companionship. A common hand seems to have led them towards each other. The deeds of the Lord, his famous deeds for Israel, are rehearsed, when Jethro and Moses had kissed each other, and the family affection had taken its course. The strangers congratulate the earthly tribes on their recent rescue and prosperous journey to "the Mount of God," and now the union of the great deliverer of Israel with this distant unknown family was made manifest. Hitherto this had been a hidden union. But now the wife and the children, led forth by the father, appear in the presence of his fleshly kindred, and take a place nearer to Moses, the great center of the whole scene, than any of them.

The stranger likewise soon takes the highest dignities, as well as fills the place of nearest affection. He occupies, as it were, both the throne and the temple, giving direction to the lawgiver and offering sacrifice in the presence of the priest. The last is first-the younger before the elder-the stranger in higher honor than the kindred.

But what is all this but, in figure, the dispensation of the fullness of times, the gathering together in one of all things in heaven and in earth? What is it less than the raising of the ladder between heaven and earth? Do we not here listen to the intercourses of the kingly priestly stranger with redeemed Israel, rejoicing in their blessing, but holding still the place of holiness and honor? Jethro assumes the place of Melchizedek. In no less glories than those of king and priest together does he here shine before us. He offers the sacrifices and spreads the feast for Aaron, and sits as chief in the seat of judgment with Moses. And when he had thus displayed his glories, rejoiced in the prosperity of God's chosen, and led their praise for the mercy, "he went his way." As was said of the God of Abraham before, "and the Lord went his way as soon as he had done communing with Abraham" (Gen. 18) So now Jethro having rejoiced with Israel and displayed his glories, goes his way. For both were as strangers in the earth, and a distant way led them to their proper home.

Thus we have great things in this chapter. The opening of it shows us the heavenly one descending, and the close of it shows us his return or ascending, in figure, as the angels of God once ascended and descended on the mystic ladder, and will again upon the Son of man. And it shows us, also in figure, all things in heaven and earth gathered in that one who has connection with the two great households, though in different ways, while they themselves were unknown to each other till now. All this tells indeed of the dispensation of the fullness of times (Eph. 1:10). This mount, where all this is seen, is now again called " the Mount of God," as being, in this manner, the place of glory, as before when it was called " the Mount of God," it was as strikingly the place of grace, or the burning bush. It well deserves the praise. It surely is the mystic holy ground where the traces of the blessed God are thus to be seen, and where we learn those ways of his, that establish the heart both in faith and hope.

This intercourse between the heavenly and earthly families having one great center, as it will be enjoyed in the coming kingdom, so has it been typified in many past shadows. The ladder which Jacob saw, and to which I have alluded, gave it in figure to us. The passing and repassing of Moses from the cloudy tabernacle to the camp of the congregation (Ex. 33), was another expression of this intercourse between the place of the glory and the earth. The vision on the mount of transfiguration, where the glorified family were seen, and also the representatives of Israel, gives us another pledge of it. The interviews between the risen Lord and his disciples, still in their earthly places, is a like figure; for then at seasons he showed himself to them, but his place was more duly in heaven, his word being " touch me not," though at times he would eat and drink with them as before. So, the notice that is taken of the ascent by which Solomon went up to the house of the Lord, and which was one of the principal objects that rested on the vision, and filled the spirit of the queen of Sheba, is another intimation of the same (2 Chron. 9); for it looked somewhat above, and apart from, the mere earthly places, to which the sitting of the servants, the furniture of the tables, and all the royal magnificence and fullness pertained, and would properly have drawn her thoughts upwards. And so this our closing chapter shows the same. Here is the ladder again, the communion of the heavens with the earth in the days of the glory. Moses's estrangement from Israel for a season, his secrecy among the Gentiles with his father, his wife, and his children then, then his return to Israel, and their redemption and discipline under his hand, the overthrow of the great enemy who dared to affront the glory of the Lord, and finally, the place of peace, " the Mount of God," where the strangers and Israel (both, though differently, having found their union with Moses the common deliverer) meet for the first time to rejoice together, while the stranger fills the nearer intimacies and the higher dignities: all these tell out the mystic tale of the heavens and the earth in the coming kingdom or fullness of times. The union of the bride and the bridegroom, which before had been hidden, is now published, and the Gentile stands nearer to Moses than all his kindred in the flesh.

There is a voice in all this, beloved, that we cannot but hear. For thus will it be in the kingdom, surely. Is not all that is royal and glorious to be on the earth then, with the ascent to heaven from Jerusalem? Is not the true ladder to be there, and the ministers of the kingdom passing and re-passing upon it? Is not the glory then to be a covering on the dwelling-places and assemblies of Zion? " Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad." Tales of mercy and salvation will then be rehearsed, as here; and the Church will learn the joy of Israel's deliverance, though they never knew each other before, for the Church's path had been heavenly and Israel's earthly, and thus they lay not in the same regions at all. But then they will find that all the while they have had a common center in the true Moses, the true bridegroom of the true heavenly stranger, the true deliverer and leader of the tribes of Israel. And then as Jethro here spreads the refreshments and gives the blessing, so the golden city, the city of the heavenly strangers, will pour forth its light and its waters, the effulgence of its glories and the streams of its fountains, to gladden and refresh the earth, and Israel with her attendant nations shall be blest in the Millennial kingdom of the Son of man.

The next chapter (19) introduces us to other scenes and thoughts altogether, so as to allow us to look at this scripture (1-18) by itself. And it is, as it were, one of the title-deeds of Horeb to the holy dignity which it bears. It shows us why it should be called " the Mount of God." For grace and glory, as we have now seen, both display themselves there, and they belong to God. The next scenes are still, however, at the same mount, and they will give us to read again, though in other lines (the Lord giving us grace and his blessing), the title of that mount to bear the same holy inscription upon it. And if we still linger upon it, beloved, may our souls get some little increased strength to rise above the level of this corrupted earth, and all its low ambitions and vanities!

The Mount of God Part 2

I have already looked at Horeb, " the Mount of God," as the witness of grace and glory, or, of redemption and the kingdom, being the spot where the Lord of Israel first showed himself in the burning bush, the symbol of grace or salvation, and afterward displayed the glories and joys of the kingdom in the intercourses of Jethro and the ransomed tribes of Israel.

But though all this has passed, the congregation are still in the same place; and the place, as we shall now see, is still giving us to read its title to be called " the Mount of God."

In the opening of our present chapters, we reach the third month since the Exodus. A new era is thus noticed by the Spirit, and accordingly new scenes and new thoughts will be found to unfold themselves. The heart of the people is here called into exercise. Moses the mediator passes and re-passes between them and the Lord, and all this tests the mind that was in them, and ends in proving the security of the natural man, and his confidence in himself to do all that the Lord shall command (19)

But this their way was their folly. They had been brought out of Egypt by him who dwelt in the bush, " the God of grace," the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the same hand had led them through the desert up to the mount where " the God of glory" had, in figure, shown his kingdom and joy to them. But now, as soon as the Lord, having thus shown what he was, turns, as it were, to inquire what they were, and whether they would now trust in themselves rather than in him, the ground of the heart is discovered, man is found to be self-confident and boastful, ready to enter upon terms with God, rather than be simply debtor to him for grace and glory.

Accordingly this mount, where all so lately was the peace and honor of the kingdom in the presence of Jethro, now on the departure of that mysterious stranger, becomes the fiery mount. It puts on new attributes altogether. It is preparing itself to consume the sinner, a mount of blackness and darkness and tempest, where the voice of God is heard in righteousness, where the ten words, or the covenant of the law of works, putting man to the trial which he had too confidently submitted to, are now to be published.

But what will such trial end in? It must leave all their comeliness as rottenness. The burning mount of the law here gives them at once to know the terribleness of that righteousness which they had challenged, and they can but cry out in the fear of it (20)

This however, so far was as it should be. This cry of fear was the proper, seasonable fruit of the ground on which Israel now stood, as the Lord himself afterward says (Deut. 5:18) And according to this fear they stand afar off. But the mediator draws near to the thick darkness where God was, and there, as between the Lord of Israel and his people, he receives the statutes of the kingdom which were to make Israel the Lord's nation,-a separated people who were to have the Lord for their God and King, bearing his image and superscription upon them. And he is promised also an angel to go before him, presiding, as it were, over this covenant of the nation, in whom the name of the Lord of Israel was to be; so that if they obeyed him they should be blest, but if they refused he would not pardon their transgressions (21-23)

The mediator having thus received the book of the statutes of the realm, and the promise of the angel of the covenant, the covenant itself is solemnly sealed. It is dedicated with blood (Heb. 9:18, 19). The altar and the twelve pillars are raised, and the altar is sprinkled. Then the book of the covenant is read; and on the people undertaking obedience, they are sprinkled likewise. Thus Jehovah and Israel are joined in the conditional covenant, the blessing of which rested on their allegiance, and the representatives of the nation are called up to eat and drink in the presence of the God of Israel.

For all as yet is reconciliation, the blood of the covenant being upon. them, and no trespass as yet committed. It was the sight of " the God of Israel" they now get. They may look unhurt, and unalarmed. There is no danger of gazing here, as there had been when the law of the ten words was delivered (xix. 21). It may last but for a short moment, but this is a sample of that day when the God of Jeshurun shall be known as riding on the heavens for Israel's help, and in his excellency on the sky (Deut. 33); when the king shall be seen in his beauty, when Zion shall be a quiet habitation, a city of solemnities, and the glorious Lord shall be there, lawgiver, judge and king (Isa. 33) The glory did not make them afraid, the hand of such an one was not heavy upon them. There he was in all his honor, but they could eat and drink before him (24)

Thus the covenant in which the nation was now to stand is settled, the parties to it bound, and the whole avouched and concluded. Moses is then called to take up another position. And this is done with due solemnity also. His minister Joshua accompanies him a certain stage, but he goes upward to the mount where the Lord was. The glory was still there, as devouring fire in the eyes of the children of Israel, but the cloud covers it for six days. Then on the seventh (expressive it may be of the rest into which Moses was now about to be conducted beyond all the terror of the fiery mount), the voice of the Lord out of the cloud calls him, and Moses goes up into the midst of it and gets him into the mount. Hitherto he had been either on a level with the people, while the ten commandments, the moral law, was delivered, or a little separated from them as the mediator of the nation, while the statutes of the realm were published. But now he enters into further intimacies with the Lord. He is called to the top of the hill, beyond the region of darkness and thunder altogether. The heads of the nation are left in the camp,-the vision of the God of Israel is folded up, and he is called to the very midst of the cloud, where the Lord was dwelling and shining.

But he is not long there before we learn the secrets of that holy place, and how it was that he got there, and in what that virtue lay that could enable him to pass, as it were, all the devouring. fire unharmed: He is there in company with Christ. That is the secret. The shadows of good things to come there pass before him, and one by one tell out this glorious truth-that God can be a just God and yet a Savior,-that he can conduct a sinner safely up the fiery mount, without the smell of it passing on him. For Christ is the end of the law to every one that believeth. God's claims in righteousness are all answered in the Person and obedience of Jesus. The brazen altar, with all that intervened from that to the mercy seat itself in the holiest, is shown here to Moses. All pass in review before him. And the minister of the sanctuary, in his mystic garments, is shown to him also. And thus he learns Christ in his fullness; and learning that, he learned how he could stand in such peaceful communion with God beyond the summit of the fiery mount. He saw in him that mercy could rejoice against judgment; that provision was made in him and by him for the discharge of sin, for the magnifying of the law, for the acceptance of the sinner, and for the letting out the full flow of boundless and unmingled goodness to save and to bless us (25-31)

All this, however, was to Moses only. The people were still within view of the mount as a mount of devouring fire (24:17). And they speedily show themselves to be material fit for such fire, vessels fitted to destruction, incurring the vengeance of that holy place, by refusing the very first voice that had issued from it. For instead of having none other gods than the Lord who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, they take a golden calf, which their own hands had made, to be their god. This was entire forfeiture of all blessing under that covenant; and in token of that, Moses, on returning down the hill, breaks the tables of the law to pieces, and never puts them into their hands to keep and to do them (32)

This was a great moment for the discovery of what man was. O how differently the path of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had ended, the God of grace and salvation, who dwelt in the bush. He had led them forth in entire safety out of Egypt, the place of the taskmasters; not a dog had wagged its tail against them, not a hoof was left behind, not a feeble person was among their tribes, all harnessed and full-handed they had gone forth, and he never left them, as we saw just now in our previous paper, never forsook them through the droughty desert, till he had planted them in the joy and glory of "the Mount of God." But they then trusted in themselves and took their own way, and all now is closed in disaster and ruin, the very pledges of their covenant, the ground of their confidence, being shattered to pieces. This was sad and shameful indeed. But while we thus mark their sin, we are called to see their repentance also. They mourn on hearing the word and anger of the Lord. They put off their ornaments. They go outside the camp, as conscious that the place of convicted sinners or unclean lepers became them. They watch the ways of the mediator and stand adoring: And may I not add that they feel unable to stand before the bright light of righteousness, so that Moses has to vail his face (33-34)

All this was repentance, the way of poor convicted, self-condemned sinners. And while they are thus, the Lord is preparing something blessedly suited to them. He makes known to them his secret. Moses delivers the patterns of heavenly things to them. And all that they have to do for their full comfort, is to follow by faith this unfolding of God's counsels concerning them. They have only to do according to the patterns, and they shall soon read their title to unmixed blessing. Just like Noah. He had only to build an ark according to God's command, and he should soon find that he was building something for his own safety. Obedience was his blessing. And so here. They have but to render the obedience of faith, by just giving forms and substances to the patterns as Moses commands, and then they will see in the sanctuary a refuge and relief for guilty sinners destroyed by the thunders of Sinai, as they now were.

And so they do. Blessedly are they here seen rendering the obedience of faith and of a changed mind. They do all for the tabernacle, as Moses commands, and that too with willing hearts, so that he has to restrain their zeal and devotedness. And with all this willingness, there was no willfulness, for they are careful to follow the patterns in all things, that all may be according to God's purpose, though rendered willingly by them.

All this was further fruit of repentance. I do not knew that in any period of their history we see them in a healthier, happier condition of soul than now, during their making of the tabernacle. The materials were supplied by the willing offerings of the people, and the silver half-shekels which they had paid as atonement-money. These materials were then fashioned by workmen divinely skilled, according to patterns divinely exhibited. And when all was finished, they brought it to Moses; and Moses had but to say of it, that it was all good, all according to God, and to bless them. Judgment they reaped before (32:28), but, now blessing (39:43). Then after all had been finished-for the sanctuary in this obedience of faith, the mediator presents the whole in due form to God, compacted, as it were, and fitly framed together; and then the Lord has only to crown and quicken it all with his presence. The cloud rests on it, and the glory enters into it (35-40)

And other fruit of repentance continues to be produced, while they remain round "the Mount of God." Thus their waiting on the consecration of Aaron (Lev. 8:9)-their clearing of themselves of the blasphemer (24)-their dedication of the altar (Num. 7) -their surrender of their brethren, the Levites, to the service of the house of God (8)-their keeping of the passover (9)-and finally their quitting of the mount in holy order, the light and approval of the Lord resting in full satisfaction upon them (10)-all this evidences their state of faith and obedience. And there is no public trespass committed from the day of the golden calf till they leave Horeb. They maintain their place and allegiance all through, and finally move onward to the land of promise under the unfurled banner of the Lord -God of Israel.

Thus it is indeed that the Lord now meets them; not as obedient servants, but as pardoned sinners. As debtors to obedience under the burning mount, they did not stand for a moment; but in his own grace the Lord provides a sanctuary of salvation for them, and there they rejoice as pardoned sinners, debtors to mercy. And how truly blessed their new standing is. They come into vision of things altogether differing from the fire on the hill. The form of something that Moses himself had seen in regions far higher than that of the lightning and thunder, now fills their vision also. They now get into his secret. If he then stood in peace beyond all the reach and terror of the law, so may they now. Christ in his fullness and grace, and not the law in its judgments, was here. Here was an- altar shown to them that could attract the fire from the mount, and let it spend itself on the victim that was there, not on the people around. Here was provision in God himself for all, the mischief which man had wrought, and all the penalty he had incurred: Mercy was here heard to rejoice over judgment.

This is what "the Mount of God" now tells us; and thus telling of God himself and his ways, it shows us again its title to be honored with such a name. Here God first showed himself in the burnings and thunders of this mount, to tell us of the terribleness of righteousness; but then here he showed himself also in the shadowy tabernacle pitched at the foot of it, to tell us of his provision in Jesus to let mercy rejoice over judgment. And thus he is still declared here. His name is still written on this holy hill, the name of the just God and yet the Savior. The tables of testimony, as we find here (see also Deut. 10:1-5), are now laid up in the ark, that is magnified and made honorable in the person of the Lord of the temple, while sinners who come up to worship, see only provision for their sins in the various furniture of this sanctuary. And if sinners now (as the tribes might have read their names on the priests breast-plate) will by faith only see themselves borne on the heart of Jesus before God, they may know at the same time, to the full repose of their consciences, that the law is there before them. As he says, thy law is within my heart." So that the sinner's blessing and salvation is thus kept in closest intimacy and company with God's fullest praise and honor in righteousness. The sinner is borne on that heart in which God's law has been kept and treasured up. These tales of redeeming grace, which are here told out at this mystic mount, are indeed wonderful, beloved. The glory now changes its place. It had seated itself, as we have seen, like devouring fire on the top of the hill (Ex. 24:17), but now it comes down to fill the tabernacle that was pitched at the foot of it. In its first place, it was death to approach it. If so much as a beast did then but touch the border of it, it was to be stoned or thrust through. But now, it is life to come up to it. If a poor trembling sinner now do but touch the hem of it, she shall be made whole. And we may well know the readiness with which the glory thus changes its place. It was its own delight to do so. As our hymn says, beloved, " 'Tis his great delight to bless us-O how he loves." To quit the fiery mount and seat itself in the sanctuary; to put the place of judgment behind it, and to fill the place of grace; this was its happy path. As afterward, when it came to occupy the house which Solomon built for it, it took its throne there with full complacency. " Arise into thy resting-place," said Solomon-" this is my rest forever, here will I dwell, for I have desired it," answered the Lord. It was the good pleasure, the desire of the glory to fill the place. And so when it does come down actually (as we see here and also in 2 Chron. 5) it spreads itself, if I may so speak; it stretches itself out as though it felt itself at home. The holy and most holy places are filled, and its train so flows forth into the courts that neither Moses now, nor the priests then, could stand to minister.

But what comfort this is to the poor sinner, that the Lord delights to take those paths which thus bring him into the midst of his people in grace and with blessing. They are not strange or uneasy to him. And what have we sinners to do, but to let the blessed Lord take his own way of grace with us. It is true that we have, like Israel, by our golden calves, sinned away all right to blessing. But it is as true that the Lord has spread out before us his golden sanctuary furnished with its altars, its laver, and its mercy-seat, to tell us of his abounding grace, and Christ's victory for sinners. I learn salvation in Jesus, from that same word which tells me I have destroyed myself. And there is not a thing in God's sanctuary that does not tell of mercy through Jesus. No trace, no voice of judgment or of death is there. And we have to shout, like Israel, at the door of this sanctuary (Lev. 9:24). And this is faith. Love may bring services afterward to testify obedience, but faith first tells God of his goodness. The glory has taken its path from the fiery top of the hill to the mercy-seat in the sanctuary; and we have only by faith to follow it-to follow it as simply as it has moved willingly, and thus to meet our God not in the fires of judgment, but in the dwellings of love and peace.

This we get here, in these chapters, and thus read, though in other lines, the title of this mount, to be called "the Mount of God." For here God is thus still revealing himself. Grace and glory had passed before us on this hill in the previous chapters as we saw,-grace in the burning bush, and glory in the assembly of the strangers and Israel. Judgment, and mercy rejoicing over it, have now, in their turn, passed also before us at the same place,- judgment in the fire at the top of the hill, mercy in the tabernacle at the foot of it. And thus the Lord, in these ways, and at this place, makes himself known to us, and Horeb is indeed " the Mount of God."

Thus I have, with desire, surveyed this holy hill. But I cannot finally leave it till I have another little meditation at the foot of it.

All that we have here seen is REVELATION of God. This hill is the place for God's showing himself. Now our obedience to revelation is faith. If God reveal himself, faith is man's obedient response. And on faith I would now in closing say a little.

There is a peculiar character of excellence in faith, and no wonder the scriptures so much speak of it. It glorifies God above everything, just because it takes God's account of himself, and lets him do his pleasure,-" He that cometh to God must believe that he is." Adam ought to have been a believer, for God to him was a revealer. God had revealed himself in a warning, and Adam should have had faith. But Adam failed in that; and through unbelief or making God a liar, he sinned and fell.

We now, in like manner, are called to have faith in God, for God has revealed himself to us also. In another way it is true; but still God is a revealer of himself to us sinners now, and we have now to render the obedience of faith. And " without faith it is impossible to please him." Just as with Adam. All his joy in the garden was worship. If Adam delighted in the flavor of its fruit, the scent of its flowers, or the singing of the birds there, all that enjoyment was worship. But Adam should have believed also, and his faith would have been the highest act of worship. For the heart would have rendered its service to God by faith or confidence in his word, while the eye and the ear and other senses would have been exercising themselves in the garden of God as in the holy places of a temple.

Thus Adam was called to faith, and faith would have been his best service and worship. Sin having entered does not at all change this. Faith still renders the best service and performs the highest acts of worship. Only we sinners have other objects proposed to faith than untainted Adam had. Necessarily so. One threat of death was revealed to him. Promise of life in union with the Son of God, and all its consequent glory and joy, is made known to us. Our circumstances give opportunity of returning to God larger ser-vice and worship, through faith, than Adam's did. If faith gives to God his highest glory from the creature, we, by our circumstances as sinners, being called to larger exercise of faith, have competency to yield larger praise. There is more, much more, in our condition, than there was in Adam's, to exercise faith. Sin and its necessities and sorrows have induced this. This world is the very place for the largest possible exercise of faith in the blessed God; and if we indeed desired God's praise, we should rejoice in such opportunities of giving him the worship and honor of faith.

And such an one in this world of ours was Jesus. Without sin, he was made sin. He came into this world of sinners. And how did he carry himself here? " I have put my trust in him," says he. All through he was rendering to God the obedience and worship of faith. He trusted him, and trusted in him. He believed and was confident. Nothing weakened or disturbed his cleaving by faith to the living God. He had laid hold on him, and nothing slacked his hand. With all against him, he trusted in God This was glorifying God beyond all glory that God had ever received. The life of faith which the man Christ Jesus led in this world, was constant worship of the highest order. Angels could never have so glorified him, or rendered such worship. But that was worship and praise indeed which was brought by the faith of this " wondrous man," in scenes which our fallen world alone could have afforded. For " faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." It deals with such things as are neither enjoyed nor visible. And it is our circumstances in this world that admit of such most abundantly. Adam had present things to which he might give himself, and through the joy of which he might glorify God, and only one warning or threat revealed to his faith. Angels too have their full visible present delights. But the saint is in a world where all that is present is more or less astray from God and against him, so that he must go forth from them by faith towards things hoped for and unseen. This calls faith into the most varied and constant exercise, and this makes the saint a competent worshipper of God in the highest order of worship. And Jesus valued this opportunity of worshipping him, for he loved God perfectly. He waited in such a temple continually. But we (with sorrow may we learn to say it) want a heart to value God and his praise.

But while we thus look at the principle of faith, grieving that we know it so poorly, we may also look at the object of faith, and there we shall find abundant cause for joy. For God is good, unspeakably good. God is love. His delight is in mercy, and accordingly that which he reveals to our hearts, or that which he proposes as the great object of faith in this fallen world, is salvation. He offers that to our faith, that our hearts may at once rejoice before him. The Apostle says, " we have an altar whereof they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle." A strong testimony to God's salvation, or the object of the sinner's faith. The servants or worshippers in the tabernacle were not made perfect in the conscience. The very place bore witness that the way to God was not then made manifest; and the sacrifices with which the worshippers dealt continually, kept their sin in remembrance (Heb. 9:10) For such sacrifices could never dispose of sin. There was no such blood in them as could ever, let it be applied again and again, take it away. But now the saint has a purged conscience, because on his altar he sees blood which has obtained eternal redemption. His altar witnesses remission, and not remembrance of sin.

This is the mighty distance between them. This keeps the worshippers in the tabernacle and the attendants on the New Testament altar, as the Apostle tells us, asunder. The one cannot stand in company with the other. To understand the virtue of the altar is of necessity to quit the tabernacle. Assurance of heart in the remission of sins, or a purged conscience, is the due attribute of him who waits on the one, constant sense of sin the due condition of him who serves or worships (λατρευοντες, Heb. 13:10) in the other. And this being so, what offering is that which the worshipper at the altar brings? Having apprehended the virtue of the blood there, what sacrifice does he in return pay? The answer comes, " by him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually" (verse 15). Praise is the due fruit of a heart that has learned salvation or the value of the altar.. Not prayer, but praise. A sinner has not prayer to make, but praise to render. A saint has many and many a prayer, it is true; daily weakness and short-coming and necessity leads him that way. But a sinner in prayer, denies the value of the altar. Praise suits salvation, and it is as God the Savior that our altar reveals God to faith.

And what has faith to do but to let the blessed God take his own way, and show himself in his goodness and glory? The heart that believes is silent before him, while he passes by. He is pleased by this altar which he has raised and revealed, to provide for sinners; and who are we that we should stay his hand, or narrow the flow of his rich mercies? Let him do his pleasure-he is the Lord. If the gospel propose to let us sinners see him in the exercise of unspeakable goodness, it is the duty of the sinner just to look at him,-it is the way of faith to do nothing else. Faith thus in filthy Joshua allowed change of raiment without a question. He never broke silence, but just accepted the blessing and the glory (Zech. 3) Faith in the convicted adulteress was silent while Jesus passed by in the still small voice, writing the memorial of her shame as on a sandy floor, which the next breeze would efface forever (John 8) Faith in the camp of Israel, as we have now seen, after they had sinned away all their blessing by the golden calf, followed the patterns which were one after another unfolding the pledges of God's salvation in the golden sanctuary (Ex. 35-40) All this was faith, which ever lets, the Lord take his own way with the sinner, taking his own blessed revelation of himself without a question, and thus honoring him above everything, allowing that he has a right to bless even sinners if he please, and us ourselves as well as other sinners.

And this was the voice of the basket of first-fruits (see Deut. 26) On the nation being settled in the land, they were to fill a basket with the various fruit thereof, and offer it before God's altar; acknowledging at the same time, that all his promises had been made good, that he had accomplished all the goodness and mercy of which he had spoken to them, of which this mystic basket was now the witness and sample. And then they were to rejoice before the Lord their God, the nation thus simply owning all that he had done for them,"and all that he had been to them, and that they, poor perishing Syrians in themselves, could indeed rejoice in him.

And this is just the pattern of a perishing sinner's faith, be he Syrian, Greek, or Jew. We have to lay out our basket before the Lord. This is faith. Conscience may confess sins that we have done; love may bring services and obedience; but faith tells what God is and what he has done, in a rich and varied and overflowing witness. Liberty of conscience, joy in God, assurance and ease of heart, hope, largeness of desire, with other exercises suited to a soul consciously brought home to God, these should be the holy fruit to fill our baskets before the Lord. Affections, such as our altar may well awaken, should fill the heart and run over; affections that become pardoned sinners, the due fruit of that land to which the Savior brings us. This is our " first love," our basket of first-fruits. Ephesus lost it. The fruit in the basket there had withered a little. For let whatever other sacrifices may come into God's house, this first offering should be always there in its freshness. Faith should always rejoice in what God has done, that thus the first love may be ever young and lively.

But this is far from being the way of the natural heart of man. His mind is not of this order. He clings to the law. Grace is too great and generous a thought for him. Works rather than faith is his master-principle. And this separates between his mind and God's mind. And this principle in man shows itself, at times, in God's choicest servants. For it is of the flesh, which is in us all. Look at David in 1 Chron. 17 He thought to do something for the Lord. But in that he wronged God. He did not think so, or mean so, but so it was, by that he was wronging God's love. For shall David be before the Lord in kindness? Shall David be better than God? Will David think of building God a house, before the Lord has built him a house? That must not be. God will be God in his love as in everything. He will be better as well as greater than we. And therefore that very night, as though he could not rest under such a thing, the Lord tells Nathan to go and stop this purpose of David's heart. God's love had been wronged by it. The Lord would build him a house first, and then David or his son (in this sense the same), might build the Lord a house. And when David hears this through Nathan, the whole temper and current of his soul is changed. He at once sits before the Lord as a receiver, and does not act for the Lord as a giver. He does not talk any more of building a house for God, but rejoices in the thought of the Lord building a house for him. He leaves Martha's place, and takes Mary's more excellent place (Luke 10:38).

And this was faith again,-faith that ever allows God to take his way and show himself. What right has man to stop the way of the Lord? Shall he say to the Lord, when the Lord rises to unseal the sources of the river of life, "hitherto shalt thou come and no further? If goodness will glorify itself, shall unbelief dare to dim it? Who shall close the hand of the Lord of the vineyard, if he be pleased to give the penny? If they talk of law, is it not lawful for him to do what he will with his own? God is the Lord of the well of life, and may he not turn its streams, if he please, to water the dreariest lands? He owns the springs themselves, and therefore let his rights as such owner be weighed and tried even in the balances of law, and it will be found that it is lawful for him to use them as he may,-he has a right to bless sinners if it please him.

Faith simply gives him his rights, and allows the lawfulness of God acting in grace to us. Yea, even to ourselves as well as to other sinners like us. For the less is blessed of the better; and as God justly claims for himself the place of the better, faith fully owns the claim and receives the blessing from him, even the richest blessing, the blessing of eternal salvation, life and glory.

Thus it is faith which chiefly glorifies God, for it sets him in the place of " the better." Service renders to God, faith receives from him, and thus faith honors him in the holiest place that he graciously fills for us. In a sinner walking before him in the artless liberty and confidence of faith, God is especially honored. For " God is love," and to glorify such an one we must be free and happy in him. Love can be satisfied by nothing less than that. Of course love knows how to " comfort the feeble-minded;" and where there is "little faith," it can well come and "support the weak," for it tells us to do so. But still our joy in him is his will and even his commandment. The bread of mourners was not to be eaten in the sanctuary; it would have defiled the presence of God, as the offering of an unclean heart would have defiled it. For if holiness become God's house, so do liberty and joy. And it is faith that brings in this liberty and joy, for it apprehends the altar of which I have spoken; it apprehends God engaged for the sinner in a love that is perfect, so as to have nothing in the soul inconsistent with itself, as the bread of mourners would be. It casts out fear, and fills the temple within with its own clear, free, and refreshing element.

May our faith then, beloved, grow exceedingly. May we know the repose of heart, the silence of conscience, the triumph of hope, and the song of praise in the spirit, which it gives, more and more! The revelation which our God has made of himself is so blessed, that it is only such a faith that can duly honor it. Ο that in connection with our subject, we were, beloved, more in harmony with the spirit of those sweet words which we sometimes have sung together:-

"Look forward to that happy place,
Beyond the bounds of time and space,
The saints' secure abode:-
On faith's strong eagle-pinions rise,
And force your passage to the sides,
And scale the Mount of God!"