Made Holy

‘O IRS, what must I do to be saved? ’ — the cry of the lostj though prior in point of time, is not prior in importance to this, the question of the saved, What must I do to be sanctified? To be sanctified — in plain English, to be made holy — is, to use the admirable definition of the Westminster Assembly’s Catechism, ’ the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness.’ But since — to borrow an illustration from a familiar object — it requires as much skill in contrivance and power in execution to restore the image to a coin from which time has effaced the features as it did to impress it there originally, even so to renew man in the image of God is plainly a work as great and divine as it was to form him in that image at the first. In point of fact, this is a new creation; and to Him therefore who, when creating Adam, said, Let us make man in our image, David turned his face and prayer to cry, Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renev a right spirit within me! ’

He who has lost the image of God is like a man who has lost his life — he has neither the will nor the power to restore it. So far, for instance, as Lazarus’ power and will were concerned, his dead body, having neither, would have remained in the grave to the day of judgment: nor had the current of the dead man’s blood begun again to circulate, nor his heart to beat, unless the voice, which said, Lazarus, come forth,’ had been that which, at the beginning, called our world and all others into being. Spiritual is as much as natural life the gift of God: and to raise man from a state of nature into a state of grace, to convert a sinner into a saint is a work, though it may seem less surprising not less great and divine than ,it would be to change a dog into a man, or a man into an angel. St Paul knew this. Therefore he offers no unnecessary prayer at the throne of grace, imposes no unnecessary task on God, and fosters in his Thessalonian converts no unnecessary humility, when he prays on their behalf, The very God of peace sanctify you wholly! — and speaking of God elsewhere to the same church he says, Who hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth. Nor than Him, as through Jesus Christ the God of peace, who accomplishes this work by the effectual operation of His own Holy Spirit — is there any other source of sanctification. None else is recognized in the Scriptures, or realized in the experience of believers. There are, as I shall afterwards show, means of sanctification. These it is our duty and privilege to use diligently. But we are never to lose

sight of this — that, apart from the influences of the Holy Spirit, these are vain; altogether vain; nor able of themselves — to borrow a figure from our Lord — to do more than cleanse the outside of the cup and platter; to whitewash the building, leaving it, however, as much as before, a dismal, doleful sepulchre, full of dead mens bones and of all uncleanness. No mistake can be more fatal than one which people, not outwardly vicious, are very apt to fall into — that, namely, of mistaking, not only reformation for regeneration, but outward propriety of life and conduct for sanctification of the heart. Beware of this — the error, the fatal error, into which the Pharisee fell. Correct — perhaps even strictly correct — in his outward demeanour, fasting twice a week, and giving tithes of all he possessed, he stands well in his own esteem; nor doubting that he held as high a place in God’s esteem, when his eye falls on a poor publican who stands afar off, and, beating on his breast, cries, * God be merciful to me a sinner,’ this miserable formalist, this whited sepulchre, gives thanks that he is not such as that man. Ah, could he have seen at that moment the proud, ungodly heart that lay concealed beneath this fair exterior, and could he have heard at that moment the judgment heaven pronounced on his case, how amazed had he been! — as much astonished as Belshazzar, when, from the fiery letters on his palace wall, Daniel read out his doom — Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, Thy kingdom is divided; God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it, While many may, to their own great loss, neglect the means of grace, let those who use them beware lest, proud of that, satisfied with doing so, they get puffed up with spiritual pride, and stand in the same condemnation as the self-righteous Pharisee. Regularity in prayer and the reading of Gods holy word, attendance on public worship and the other ordinances of religion, the practice of the various moralities and charities of life, are commendable, and indeed indispensable; but these cannot create a clean heart, nor renew a right spirit within us. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, nor the leopard his spots; nor anything these hearts of ours but the grace of God. Without that, without the power and blessing of the ‘Holy Spirit, the means of grace are wells without water, clouds without rain.

The necessity of this great work, a work which has God for its author, man for its subject, and for its object his restoration to the image of God, is plain, almost self-evident. Take a simple illustration. In virtue of her royal prerogative, the Queen may pardon all the criminals — the thieves, robbers, murderers, malefactors, scum and dregs of society — which our prisons hold. Let her do so, and every jail would be at once thrown open. But this, illustrating the adage, that it is not always right for people to do what they have a right to do, would be justly regarded as a public calamity; and every man who had any regard to the safety of his person and the security of his property would take the opening of the prison-doors as a warning to shut his own. Not only so, but ere we would allow the tenants of the jail to enter our houses and mingle with our families, we should require to be satisfied that their habits and hearts were changed — that the drunkard had become sober, the thief honest, the liar true, the vile pure; that they had undergone, in short, such a change as is pictured forth in this lovely vision of the time, when God shall pour out His Spirit upon all flesh, and the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them; and the cow and the bear shall feed, and their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice den; they shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the seal

Now suppose that the doors, not of our prisons, but of hell itself, were thrown open — which shall never be for their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched — but suppose they were, would the gates of heaven open to receive its inmates? No. Over them these words stand inscribed, ‘There entereth nothing here to hurt or to defile, The door by which Manasseh and the woman that was a sinner, by which the thief of the cross and Saul the persecutor, have entered into glory, would be shut in their face; as, indeed, from the holy nature of its society, heaven would be the last place where they would seek to be admitted. God would not, and could not, receive such as, though pardoned, were still unsanctified; and from their company every spirit of the just made perfect, even their own father and mother, would shrink with holy horror. If so, it is plain that it is not enough to be pardoned, to be justified. We require also to be sanctified, to be delivered from the power and purified from the love of sin. Glory be to God, this has been provided, amply provided for. We are, as an Apostle says, complete in Christ. He who, by dying in their steady has delivered His people from the punishment of sin, bestows the gift of His Holy Spirit to purify them from its love and deliver them from its power. Thus, with one hand Jesus closes the gate of hell, and with the other throws open that of heaven; and thus those who believe in Him, who cling to Him as all their salvation, and who seek Him as all their desire, receiving with a title to the ’ inheritance of the saints ’ a meetness for it, shall not only not perish in the lake of fire, but shall enjoy everlasting life in the kingdom of heaven. So, to Johns question respecting those whom he saw arrayed in white robes, with crowns on their heads and palms in their hands, the angel replied, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb; therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in his temple; they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, for the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of water and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes/

In regard to the nature of this work, I remark:

T. Sanctification consists in the mortifying of our sinful nature.

An Apostle says, They who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts;’ and it is hardly necessary for me to say that, by the term flesh, he does not mean this mortal body, but that corrupt nature which our first parents transmitted to all their children. Its character may be seen in its works; and what these are, when fully developed, may be read in its awful catalogue — adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousnesss, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strifes, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; of the which I tell you before,’ says Paul, ’ as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven.’

Of all natural deaths which man can suffer, or violent ones which he can inflict none is perhaps more painful than crucifixion. Struck down by a flash of lightnings or deprived as suddenly of life by any other cause, man dies without a touch of pain. Such an advantage is this to those who have made their ’ calling and election sure, who are ready at any time to meet the bridegroom, that we, not believing in ’ extreme unction, have never been able to sympathize with that passage of the Liturgy which teaches the worshippers to say, from sudden death,^ as well as from battle and murder, good Lord, deliver us! To a good man sudden death is sudden glory; but for that very reason such a death is not suited to describe sanctification — in other words, the destruction of his depraved and corrupt nature in a child of God. Those, again, who die, as most men do, of disease, suffer usually so much pain as to make it one of the special enjoyments of heaven, that its inhabitant never says that he is sick, that there is no death there. Yet the pain of such death-beds is not very formidable; and it is chiefly because the

dark valley opens on another world, and after death the judgment, that many are so averse to enter it. Were men assured that there is no hell there, no punishment there, no place but heaven there, thousands who regard death as the king of terrors, would be as willing as they are now reluctant to die; and, therefore, an ordinary death — apart from the consideration of its solemn issues — is usually attended with so little suffering as to offer no adequate figure of the pain and agony inseparable from the mortifying of the flesh. It is therefore to crucifixion, whose intensely painful and protracted agonies the Apostle himself may have witnessed, that St Paul turns for a figure strong and bold enough to describe the death of sin — that death to which all who are Christs must of necessity, and, rather than lose Him, will of choice, submit.

Believers are thus spoken of as being crucified with Christ,^ — a term that calls up to our minds that manner of death which our blessed Lord endured for us. By the side of the dying, in the last struggles of expiring nature I have seen the features frightfully contorted, the body frightfully convulsed; but the appalling spectacle had this comfort, that the sufferer was unconscious happily insensible, as the spirit was breaking out of its mortal tenement, to the throes and pangs of dis-^ solution. Such, however, was not the death which Jesus suffered when, to atone for sin, He took its direful punishment on Himself; and in the great love wherewith He loved us died, the just for the unjust, that we might be saved. Behold the Lamb of God! Loaded with infamy and with the tree. He sinks beneath the heavy burden, and falls exhausted, fainting on the street — unpitied save by some women, who, to the everlasting honour of their sex, bewailed and lamented Him. No kind hands are there to make His bed in His sickness; nor weeping friends to smooth His pillow. Rudely throwing Him down on the cross, cruel and malignant enemies drive the iron through His hands and feet — till, weakened by loss of blood and long-protracted tortures,

He yields to the power of death, and bowing His blessed head gives up the ghost! And what agony His, as raised aloft on the cross, He hung by these torn, tender members!

I do not say, it were too much to say, that all who are Christs, in renouncing the pleasures of sin, suffer pain to be compared with His, or equal to that of any who die on a cross. There may be such cases. The roots of sin are not drawn out sometimes but by a fearful wrench. We see people who prefer their sins to the enjoyment of health; to the possession of property; to a good reputation; to the regard of friends; to the interests of their children; even to life itself! The poor drunkard, for instance, rather than part with his vicious indulgence, will part with all these, and drain the cup, though at the bottom of it he sees the loss of character, a beggared family, death in this world, and damnation in the next. For him, in some cases, to renounce his habits may require greater resolution than martyrs, who walked with firm step and cheek unblanched.

have brought to bloody scaffold or burning stake. All I mean to assert is that, as crucifixion implies not the destruction only but the painful destruction of the body, so they who are Christs will destroy the flesh, denying themselves to all ungodliness and worldly lusts, though that should cost them sufferings equal to what he endures who cuts off a right hand; or plucks out a right eye; or expires amid the agonies of a cross.

This should certainly suggest the important practical question, whether we have ever taken our sins, and nailed them to the cross? But the question being, not whether our corruption is destroyed, but whether it is being so r not whether it is dead, but whether it is dying? for men to allege, as some do, that they are denying themselves this or that other sinful pleasure is something, but not enough. The Pharisee himself could do so. He gave thanks to God that he was not an extortioner, nor in many respects as other men. But what will such pleas avail? What would it avail a robber, to plead, and justly plead that he is guiltless of the crime of murder; or the drunkard, that he is not a thief; or the covetous that he has committed no overt act of dishonesty; or a man of revengeful temper, that he has not actually injured the property or the person of any who have done him wrong? Sanctification embraces the whole man; and the question is not so much whether we have mortified the flesh in this or in that respect, as whether sin in every form has ceased, I do not say to dwell within us, but to have dominion over us? And if we have been enabled through divine grace, though with sore pain, to deny ourselves to pleasures which we once indulged in — and to deny ourselves to them, not because they destroyed our health, or wasted our property, or had lost their power over us through age or change of circumstances, but because they were offensive in the sight of a holy God, because they dishonoured our blessed Lord, because they wounded our consciences, and because they were ruining, not so much this dying body, as our precious souls — then are we crucifying the flesh. This is to be sanctified, to die to sin, and live to righteousness.

The gradual nature of this work will form the subjects for future remarks; but I may observe, before parting with the figure of crucifixion, that the destruction of indwelling sin, like death on a cross, is not only a very painful, but is also a slow and lingering process. No doubt cases — very remarkable cases — have occurred where the ’ old man was slain by, so to speak, a single blow: the crucifying of the flesh being begun and finished within the brief time a man survives who has been nailed to a cross. It was so with the penitent thief. But his case forms no rule. On the contrary, the exception, here as elsewhere, proves the rule — his conversion and his sudden sanctification, all accomplished within the space of some two or three hours, being as extraordinary an exhibition of divine grace, as the resurrection of the saints in the neighbouring tombs was an extraordinary display of almighty power.

Divines have distinguished, and very properly.

between justification and sanctification. They call the first an act, the second a work of free grace; and this they do because justification is accomplished in a moment, while sanctification, less like a flash of lightning than the morning light which shines more and more unto the perfect day, advances by progressive stages, and may take even long years to finish. Therefore, it is said in the Westminster Assembly’s Catechism — one, I may remark, which, though most in use in Scotland, was chiefly the work of Englishmen — that they who are sanctified are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness.’ Hence they are said to be crucified with Christ — the most appropriate of all figures — seeing, as we read in Martyrologies, that some condemned for their Master’s sake to their Master’s death hung for days in protracted agony, ere they exchanged the cross for the crown of martyrdom. Experience proves that our depraved and sinful nature is not so easily destroyed as many seem to suppose; especially such as have the unspeakable folly to place their hopes in a death-bed repentance. When the convert has dragged the ‘old man to the cross, and nailed him there, how often does he find that his enemy is not only not dead, but, tenacious of life, seems hardly dying! The flesh wars against the spirit; the flesh makes strong and obstinate resistance to grace: and but that the believer is upheld by God’s Spirit, but that God according to His promise fights against them that fight against Him, the ‘flesh’ would triumph in the end; nor could God’s people say, as, blessed be God, with Paul they can, ‘We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.’ Alas, how often does the carnal nature, which we had almost hoped was extinguished, revived by the breath of some sudden temptation, flame out anew, like fire smouldering in the ashes! Some besetting sin, long denied indulgence, against which we have prayed, and watched, and wrestled, appears to be dead; the ’ old man hangs motionless, to appearance lifeless, on the cross; when, like the convulsive movement of a body from which bystanders supposed the life was gone, in some bad word, or bad deed, or bad thought, the old man lives again, and the ’ new man ’ learns to his sorrow that the flesh he had crucified is not yet dead.

The entire death of sin — a consummation devoutly to be wished for — is a blessins; reserved for the close of life. We cannot indeed be too diligent in mortifying sin, in crucifying every limb and member of the flesh. Still if a man will — as every man should — examine himself and prove his own work,’ the question is not whether sin is altogether crucified, but is crucified at all? — is whether, though it be not with a perfect hatred, we really hate it? — is whether we are delivered, though not completely, from its power? — is whether it has ceased to reigUy though it has not ceased to remain within us? It is slow work dying on a cross, but slower still dying to sin. No vile serpent, no venomous reptile, so tenacious of life as a bosom sin! However, take comfort. Christians; God will perfect that which concerneth us — a hope which, thanks be to God, shows the believer a Fathers reconciled countenance shining on him through the darkest cloud; a hope which will enable you, while confessing with Paul, ‘The good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do,’ in almost the same breath to exclaim, ‘■ I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord .... there is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit!

II. Sanctification lies in conformity to the mind of Christ.

These bodies of ours are liable to an amazing number of diseases; for, though there is but one way by which we enter the world, there are a thousand doors by which to leave it. So insecure indeed is the citadel of life, it lies open on so many sides to attack, that there are none of our organs but may become the seat of a painful and fatal malady. To protect us to cure disease, men have ransacked the herbs of the field and the bowels of the earth; but have found in neither what they sought in both, any elixir vitce, any remedy against death, any specific of sufficient virtue to cure all manner of diseases. But such a power resided in the hand of Christ. The cures wrought by its simple touch were as magnificent as they were many. Not less sovereign than sudden in action, it gave eyes to the blind, voice to the dumb, ears to the deaf, motion to the withered arm, rest to the palsied limb, and life even to the dead. In the blessed hands his enemies nailed to the cross the world saw what had been esteemed a dream at length realized — a remedy for all manner of diseases; a cure for death itself. Where Christ was, there was need neither for drugs nor doctors.

And were God to impart the same mind to all men that was in Jesus Christ, equally unnecessary were all the ordinary means of checking and curing our moral diseases. Let God so pour out

His Spirit on all flesh as that all men shall be transformed into the image of Christy and the father might break his rod; the sovereign lay aside his sceptre; the soldier sheath his sword; justice discharge her courts; and with prison-doors thrown open, and no house-door barred, we should sleep in peace — fearing injury from others as little as we had done from Christ himself. St Paul says, ‘Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God — and let us consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners, He lived more than thirty years on earth, nor injured any one; accused of many crimes. He committed none; He suffered innumerable wrongs, but never inflicted any; into no eye -did He ever bring a tear, nor send a pang through any heart; shedding blessings around Him wherever He went, He could have crowded the hall of judgment with living evidences of His power and goodness; nor, though in their thirst for His blood they suborned men to swear away His life, could those to whom Judas betrayed his Master find a single person to convict Him of a single crime.

In every relation of life our Lord presents a perfect example: as a child. He grew in wisdom as in stature; and, subject to Joseph and Mary, He whom angels obeyed, obeyed them — as a man, He went about doino; p’ood; consecrating; His powers to the glory of God and the happiness of mankind. He was eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame, and life to the dead; He made widows hearts to sing for joy, and earned the blessing of thousands that were ready to perish — as a master. He was kind, considerate, gentle; treating his disciples more as friends than servants, what a beautiful contrast did His demeanour offer to the haughtiness with which many treat and trample on their inferiors — as a benefactor, He shrunk from ostentation, and, unlike the Pharisees, who, to attract attention and win the praise of men, dispensed their charity to the sound of trumpets He did good, as the poet says, by stealth; charging those whom He blessed to conceal the name of their benefactor — as a lover of God, He delighted in holding communion with His Father, and made it His meat and drink to do His will — as a worshipper. He, who could best dispense with them, devoutly attended on all the ordinances of religion; though giving life to dead souls through the baptism of His Spirit, He sought baptism by water at the hands of John; and though Himself the object of prayer, He prayed without ceasing, and, often spending the whole night on His knees, gave to devotion the hours which the world gave to sleep — as a sufferer, who can be compared to Him? By that cross where He was dumb, opening not His mouth but to say, ‘Father, not my will, but thine be done! reminding us of those plants that lend sweet odours to the hand that bruises them, yonder where He prays that His murderers might be forgiven, we lose sight of the faith of Abraham, the meekness of Moses, and the patience of Job. Like stars at sunrise these pale and vanish in the dazzHng effulgence of this Sun of Righteousness!

Such was Christ, and sanctification lies in conformity to His temper, mind, and life. In all these things He has set us an example that we should follow His steps; and since we are assured that unless the same mind — though it may be only in the bud, in the seed, in the feebleness of infancy — be in us as was in Jesus Christ, we are none of His, that becomes a test of Christian character. Without conformity to Him, we are no more to be called Christians than a body without life is to be called a man. Attire the dead like a bride, and with its crown of flowers and sparkling jewels the corpse but looks the ghastlier; whitewash the sepulchre, and, full of dead mens bones and all uncleanness, the inside seems the fouler; let Judas kiss his Master, and we recoil the more from his treachery — it appears the baser and the blacker. Even so the form of religion without its power, the body of religion without its spirit a sanctimonious profession with an unsanctified heart, instead of recommending any to God only renders them more hateful in His sight. Be assured that it is those, and those only, who reflect Christs image, and whose hearts are tuned to harmony with His own, that are saved by sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth. He who died for His people lives in them; renewing them by His grace, imbuing them with His Spirit, and moulding them into the fashion of His own heavenly image. He so helps them to die to sin and live to righteousness, that, they also can use the bold language of Paul and say, ‘I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’

Let all Christians, then, seek to purify themselves even as Christ is pure; or, as it is otherwise expressed, seek to be perfect as their Father in heaven is perfect. But this is an object, let me say, that cannot be attained in any measure bat by daily unceasing efforts, as, to use a figure of Scripture, they mount up on eagles’ wings. Bird of the keenest eye, bird of the broadest wing, bird of the highest flight, let her suspend her efforts, and she does not hang sustained by her plumage — poised in the empty air. Ceasing to rise, the eagle begins to sink, drawn down from the skies to the earth by virtue of its strong attraction; and to a soul which naturally, according to the words of David and to all experience, ’ cleaveth to the dust,’ this world offers attractions we cannot overcome but by keeping the wings of faith and prayer in constant play. To be holy, to be meet for heaven, we must cultivate every Christian grace with diligence. God is no patron of sloth and idleness, to do for us what we can do for ourselves. In the cultivation of the soul, as of the soil, we are to be fellow-workers with Him. Sanctification is the work of His Spirit; but the work of His Spirit in co-operation with ours. He holds the helm, but we are to pull the oars. He sends thfe showers, but we are to plough the field, and sow the seed, — lookincr up for the blessing, and drawing it down with this prayer of David on our lips, ‘Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish Thou the work of our hands upon usj yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it! ’

in. I go on now to say that sanctification, while the work of the Spirit, is accomplished through the use of means. There is, —

I. Prayer. In their joys and sorrows, in their trials and triumphs also, the children of Israel, during their sojourn in the wilderness, present a striking picture of the conduct and fortunes of Christs Church on earth; and in nothing more than the use their history teaches us to miake of, and the confidence it teaches us to place in, prayer. We have many remarkable examples of this; and none more to our present purpose than what is related as having occurred in Rephidim. It has been often observed that a season of great privileges is a prelude to great trials, as if God intended by the one to prepare his people for the other. For example, the three disciples who were honoured to bear Christ company on the mount of transfiguration, were the very three He chose to be the painful witnesses of His humiliation in the garden. Again, the Apostle Paul is called up into the third heavens, to hear and see things of unutterable glory; but he leaves these and the company of aneels to be buffeted by a messenger of Satan — a warning to Gods saints to carry their honours meekly, and look out for storms on the back of sunshine. So was it with Israel in that valley, where, from a rock cleft by the rod of Moses, a river flowed with life in its welcome streams. Seated on its banks, as the people recalled the misery of yesterday, — the whole camp in mutiny, and mothers fiercely pressing on Moses with dying infants in their arms, and this cry on their lips, ‘Water, water give us water! ’ — they were probably singing. The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad! At that moment a storm unexpectedly bursts on their heads. The clash of weapons and shouts of war break on the sweet, peaceful scene. The whole camp resounds now with the crv, ‘To arms! to arms!-* and seizing their weapons, with Joshua at their head, the braves of Israel sally forth to meet the sons of Amalek, who, approaching the host by stealth, have fallen on it like a roaring whirlwind. Meanwhile Moses — not that he was afraid, or a man either to fear or flee — betakes himself to the top of a neighbouring hill. He had other and better work to do than fight. Joshua fights below; and he stands above, holding aloft the rod that had erst woke the thunders of cloudless skies; turned rivers into blood; and, breaking the power of Egypt like a potters sherd, cleft both sea and rock asunder. Symbol of praver, it appeals to heaven for help, and teaches the people to look there for victory. And now, that rod, and the arms which sustain it, appear to govern the varying fortunes of the battle. As it stands erect, or falls through the weariness of Moses’

286 SAV/A’G KNOWLEDGE.

arms so rise or fall the scales of victory. And so, from morning to noon, the tide of battle swaying from side to side, when Moses arms are up Israel prevails; when they sink, fortune changes sides, and Amalek prevails. The battle was fought by Joshua, but won by Moses. Setting him on a stone, Aaron and Hur, like people engaged in united prayer, join their efforts to sustain his arms. That done, Israel wins every foot of ground; the warriors of Amalek fall at every- blow; the fight becomes a retreat; the retreat a rout; till, in the light of the setting sun, Moses descends the mountain to build an altar to the Lord, and in commemoration of a victory won, I may say, by prayer, call it Jehovah Nissi, The Lord my banner.^

On the same pivot turns our success in the work of sanctification, so far as concerns our life-long conflict with temptation; the good fight we have to wage with that trinity of enemies — the World, the Devil, and the Flesh. Since prayer supplies the strength and calls down the blessing, therefore everything turns on it; therefore the Apostle speaks of praying always; ’ therefore he urges his converts to pray without ceasing, And as in him whose case, defying the utmost efforts of Christ-’s disciples, required the presence and power of their Master, there are devils in every man who are not to be cast out but by prayer — earnest and persevering prayer. By way of illustration let us look at two cases — the first teaching us what triumphs are to be won by prayer; the second, what shameful defeats shall follow and punish the neglect of it.

The king of Babylon has issued his impious decree; and this man clothed with a little brief authority has forbidden all men for thirty days, and under penalty of being cast into a den of lions, to pray to any, be it God or man, but to himself. At no time is prayer more needed than when it is forbidden — -just as we have never more need to pray than when we are least inclined to do so; when hearts are cold and faith is weak. Bad times require heroes — brave, as well as good men; nor should His people ever stand up more boldly and resolutely for the cause of God than when they are likely in a worldly sense to lose rather than gain by doing so. So Daniel judged. He had never been ashamed to pray; and now, with that decree hanging like a naked sword over his head, he is not afraid to pray. It was no time for such a man as he to seek his closet and shut the door. The time was one requiring faithful men to openly hold up a banner for the truth. So, shaking out its folds in the face of king and princes, friend and foe, death and the devil, Daniel bravely displayed it — throwing his window wide open that all might see him on his knees. Paying an involuntary tribute to his constancy and courage, his enemies watch him; he is seized; hurried from the throne of God to that of a mortal man, and from thence to the den of lions. Hungry and savage, they leap with a roar on their prey, and fight, growling, over his mangled remains? No. Prayer shuts the lions’ mouths; gentle as lambs, they gambol around him. or lie crouched in sleep at his feet. Not

Amalek, but Israel prevails. There was a man

in Scotland once so in love with prayer that he

was wont to retire to his old church in the town

of Ayr and spend whole nights upon his knees,

till, it was said, they grew hard’ as the stones he

knelt on. But what made the knees callous

softened and sanctified the heart; inspiring it at

the same time with heroic courage. Fit mate of

her, John Knox’s daughter, who, on King James

offering to set her husband free if he would own

the king’s supremacy within Christ’s Church,

replied, as she held out her apron, I would rather

kep his head there, Welsh rose by prayer above

all fear of death. A prisoner in the Bass Rock,

where he mingled his psalms with the boom of

the breakers that burst on his dungeon walls, that

man feared only lest he should not be deemed

worthy, like others, to seal his testimony with his

blood, and win a martyr’s crown.

Now look at another and opposite case. The

supper is over; and, pledged in the- wine-cup rather to die with Christ than deny Him, the disciples go thence with their Lord and Master. On entering the garden Jesus — entering now into the gloomy shadow of the cross — leaves Peter, James, and John, with instructions to pray.. He returns after a little, but it is to find the hands of Moses down — the disciples are asleep. Awakening them, he repeats His injunction, but with no more success; and on a third trial, returns to find them, not praying, but sleeping. They shall sleep no more. The tramp of armed men breaks on the silent night, and torches flash on armour and flicker through the branches of the trees. They are taken by surprise — The Philistines are on thee, Samson 1 and to them more, in a sense, than to their Master, it is the hour and power of darkness.’ Jesus triumphed over death, and sin, and hell, entering on the conflict with prayer. But they entered the battle prayerless; and so, after a brief display, a mere flash of courage, they took to flight. And how does Simon, the brave and self-confident disciple who had declared that though Christ’s own mother and the Marys, and all others should forsake Him, he never would, choosing death rather than desertion — how does he meet this trial? No better, but rather worse than his fellows. We have seen a brave sight — Daniel stand unmoved alike before the wrath of kings and the roar of lions; alas! here — Hiow are the mighty fallen 1 the weapons of war, how are they perished! Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon! ‘Pete-r quails before a woman’s eye; and turning his back on that loving Master to whom he had sworn dauntless and deathless allegiance, he now — oh, most cruel and wicked lie! — says, ay swears, I know not the man! ‘Daniel prays, and grace prevails; Peter sleeps, and sin prevails. But who may not, shall not, do the like if prayer be neglected? Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall. Who would mortify the flesh, cast out the devil, burst the bonds of sin, walk in the glorious liberty of sons of God, and, denying themselves to ungodliness and all worldly lusts, at length perfect holiness in the fear of God, must seek their strength, their great strength, in the use of prayer. Prayer is to the Christian what his hair was to Samson; shorn of it, he is feeble as other men.

To be sanctified, therefore, to have our corruptions subdued, to reach greater heights in grace, to grow in the love and the likeness of Jesus Christ, to be mellowing and ripening for the kingdom of heaven, let us pray much; pray often; pray, in a sense, without ceasing.^ That door is always open, and is open to all. We cannot go there too often, nor ask too much. He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, shall He not with him also freely give us all things?

2. Attention to the state of our hearts.

I know an ancient fortress which one brave man could have held against a host. Perched on the summit of a lofty rock, around which the sea goes foaming, and parted from the mainland by a dizzy chasm, over which a narrow arch, hanging like a thread in mid-air is thrown that old castle stood in other days impregnable. There was but one way of approach and that such as one man could hold against a thousand. As might be inferred from these words of Scripture, Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life, it is otherwise with us. With appetites and passions, each of which may be made an instrument of sin, our hearts lie open on many sides to attack. Take, for example, the most innocent of these appetites, that of hunger — *” Give me neither poverty nor riches,’ says the wise man, praying as much against the first as the second; because, though happily we know nothing of it, it is difficult for a hungry to be an honest man. The empty sack, as the proverb says, cannot stand upright; and he tempts the poor through this appetite who used it to tempt our Lord Himself — saying to Jesus when He was an hungred. If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. In this, as in other ways, Satan tried with his fiery darts every joint of our Champions armour; and only failed because, as Jesus Himself said, The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me! We cannot say so. Like traitors lurking within a beleaguered city, our natural corruptions are ready to open the gates and betray us to the enemy. Hence he who would keep his heart from evil, keep it pure and holy, must plant a sentinel at every avenue by which sin may find access there — guarding against none more than the little sins, as they are called, that are like the urchins who enter by the window and open the door for bigger thieves. The man of God has his eyes to keep, and so Job said, I have made a covenant with mine eyes — his tongue, and hence the exhortation, Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile — his ears, and hence the warning. Cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causeth to err — his feet, and hence David says, I have refrained my feet from every evil way, that I might keep thy word. And since there is no gate of the five senses by which the enemy may not unless the Spirit lift up a standard against him, come in like a flood, we have need to guard every port, and write over every portal, Here there entereth nothing to hurt or to defile/

The work of grace is carried on within the heart. It is therefore the state of our affections more than our outward conduct that should occupy our chief attention and engage our most earnest prayers. Let me illustrate and enforce this by an analogy. The burning thirst, the flushed cheek, the bounding pulse, the restless nights of fever, are but the symptoms of disease. That thirst physicians may allay by cooling draughts; and opiates may dull the sense of pain, and shed sleep and sweet oblivion on the eyes of the weary sufferer. The symptoms are alleviated, but the disease is not arrested — the evil is but masked, not mastered. And that is all which is achieved in the reformation which sometimes passes for regeneration; in that outward improvement of habits and decorum of life, which will never supply the place of sanctification in the judgment of a holy, heart-searching God. Man looketh on the outward appearance, but God looketh on the heart. I once heard physicians say, as they stood baffled by the bed-side of one fast posting on to death. We can do nothing now but combat the symptoms. Ominous and fatal words! Divine grace, thanks be to God, does more. Let it reach the heart, and those works of the flesh, which are the outward symptoms of indwelling sin, will ere long pass away, like a plant which, cut at the root, droops, and withers, and dies. It is in the heart the change is wrought for salvation; and there, as a building rises from its foundations, the work of sanctification is carried onwards and upwards to perfection. Cleanse this fountain, and purity will flow in all its streams. Let our heart be turned heavenward, and our members and affections, our powers, and time, and influence, will all follow and obey its movements — as from stem to stern, from her keel that ploughs the wave to the masts that rake the sky, a ship obeys the hand of the steersman and movements of the hehn. Who, therefore, would grow in grace, would die daily to sin, would live daily to righteousness; while they strive to keep their hands from doing, and their ears from hearing, and their lips from speaking evil, let them strive above all things to keep their hearts with all diligence, since out of them are the issues of life.

3. Living separate from an ungodly world.

With all the world in His choice, God placed His ancient people in a very remarkable situation. On the north they were walled in by the snowy ranges of Lebanon; a barren desert formed their eastern boundary; far to the south stretched a sterile region, called the howling wilderness; while the sea — not then, as now, the highway of nations, facilitating rather than impeding intercourse — lay on their west, breaking on a shore that had few harbours and no navigable rivers to invite the steps of commerce. Such a position rendered frequent and familiar intercourse on their part with heathen nations difficult, if not impossible. Other circumstances also tended to isolate the Israelites. The words of their law read every Sabbath, and the blood of the passover sprinkled every year on their doors, kept alive the memory of old wrongs — reminding the Hebrews of what their fathers had once suffered in the land of Egypt. This was calculated to alienate them from the Egyptians, their neighbours on the south and west; and the Egyptians, on the other hand, were not likely to regard the Israelites with a friendly eye, seeing how, in the oxen and heifers of their sacrifices, they offered up the very gods of Egypt on the altars of the God of Israel. Their other neighbours were the Philistines and Edomites. The first, the surviving remnant of nations whose lands Israel had seized, had old defeats and the blood of their countrymen to avenge; while the second, the children of Esau, were ready when ever opportunity offered, to renew their father’s quarrel with Jacob, and fall on Jerusalem with the sword.

and cries of Raze it raze it to the ground! Thus, besides their geographical position, the relations of God’s people to the nations around them were singularly well calculated to keep them a separate and make them in a sense a holy people; to expose them to the enmity rather than win for them the friendship of the world — a position which our Lord pronounces, and Christians find in their experience to be, the safest and therefore the happiest of the two. When men persecute you and hate you,’ said our Lord, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven.-’

Englands great dramatist speaks of finding ’ sermons in stones, tongues in trees, and books in the running brooks, — and may we not find a great truth in the very position in which God placed his chosen people? It certainly teaches us that to be holy, or sanctified, we must be a separate people — living in the world, but not of it — as oil, that may be mixed but cannot be combined with water. Nor was this the only way God took to teach His people, and through them us, this lesson. In our looms, for example, nothing is more common than to work up into the same web materials of different textures — wool from the snowy flock, with flax from our own, or cotton from foreign fields; nor is it uncommon for our farmers to sow different kinds of seeds in the same field; and occasionally in our country, and very often abroad, we see different kinds of animals yoked to the same plough or cart. Very harmless customs, yet strictly forbidden to the Jews by these laws of Moses — Thou shalt not sow thy field with mixed seeds, neither shall a garment mingled of linen and wool come upon thee; thou shalt not plough with an ox and an ass together. And what spiritual lesson were these regulations intended to teach, but this, that it is not safe for those who would live godly to associate with the ungodly; that, if we would not be partakers of other men’s sins, we must live, as far as lies in us, separate from their society?

* Come out from among them and be ye separate

and touch no unclean thing: and I will receive

you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye

shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord

Almighty/

We have seen an adroit debater seek by the

use of ridicule to throw contempt on what he

could not refute: and this has he who is fertile in

wiles done with the duty that lies on Christians to

live separate from an ungodly world. Satan has

sought to make it ridiculous. In the hermits of

old times, in the convents and monasteries of

Popery, where roam, in the words of Milton,

‘Embryos and idiots, eremites and friars, White, black, and gray, with all their trumpery; ’

and in the seclusive, not to say sour and exclusive, habits of some good but narrow-minded Protfestants, he offers us a caricature of this duty and Gods truth.

It would neither promote our sanctification, nor the glory of God, nor the good of others, to withdraw altogether from worldly society. To ’ depart from evil ’ is but a part of our duty; we are also to ’ do good, ‘Pure religion and undefiled’ walks not in solitude; her hands are employed providing the orphans bread; her feet are found at the widows door; her steps are even sometimes turned to haunts of vice; her visits are paid not so much to the great and noble as to the fatherless and widows in their affliction; and following our Lord nor shrinking from the touch of guilt, she goes forth to seek and save the lost. The proper station for a life-boat is not the quiet lagoon or land-locked bay, but the shores of a stormy coast. But though true religion seeks to strengthen her graces by exercise, and thus effectually promote the work of sanctification, that is a totally different thing, both in its intention and results, from voluntary association with the ungodly; from courting the company and cultivating the friendship of such as are not the friends but the enemies of God. It is not safe, as Lot found to his cost, to live in Sodom. Who can touch pitch, and not be defiled? Sailors give a wide berth to shoals and whirlpools, and we shall find it safest and most for our sanctification to keep away from seductive influences — not so much as venturing into the stream which has carried off their feet many who fancied they could stem its torrent. How often have Gods people learned to their sorrow that worldly society — cooling if not quenching their love blunting the fine edge of a renewed conscience, and checking their growth in grace — has done them far more ill than they ever did it good. Who walks, as we do, in slippery places is in great danger of backsliding; who throws himself into a crowd is more likely to be borne along with the current than to stop it; and who even bravely and nobly attempts to save the drowning must be on his guard lest, locked in their deadly embrace, he sinks to perish along with them.

It is impossible to altogether escape the temptations which the world presents; in that case, a man, as Paul says, must needs go out of the world. This has been tried. But in vain have pious dreamers fled the haunts of men, expecting in the depths of untrodden forests, in caves and lonely deserts, to enjoy uninterrupted communion with God. Alas, they carried with them in the corruption of their own hearts what often proved the worst of company; nor there did they escape him who pursued our Lord Himself to the solitudes of the desert. But suppose that hermits cell or cloistered convents offered a perfect protection from evil in every shape and form, it were not the duty of Gods people to withdraw from the world. It has need, much need of them. Unless these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved .^ Saints are the salt of the earth, and if the salt be withdrawn, how is corruption to be checked? Saints are the lights of the world; but lights are not kindled in empty halls and unpeopled solitudes. They burn where houses stand thick and crowds throng the busy streets: or shine out at the harbour mouth through the night and tempest — guiding lights by whose welcome gleams the sailor, leaving storms behind, steers his bark into the desired haven. Let such be the aim of Gods people. Living for their sanctification separate in a sense from the world, and moving, like the stars above it, in a loftier sphere, let them shine with the lustre of holy and useful lives, that others, seeing their good works, may glorify their Father which is in heaven.

4. The hope of glory.

Hope is a medicine on which physicians place great dependence; nor is there almost any symptom they are more prompt and anxious to combat than the depression of mind which, prostrating the vital powers, goes to produce the very evil that it dreads. Imparting courage, and also strength, firmness to the troops who receive, and energy to those that make the charge, hope has braved the face of death, and won proud victories on many a battle-field. In almost every position of life hope is the prelude of success; as hopeless, on the other hand, may be justly regarded as equivalent to helpless. No hope, no eifort — as observed in the demeanour of an unhappy Indian who, caught in the current, perished in the Cataract of Niagara. Wearied with the chase and asleep, or forgetful of his peril, he had allowed his canoe to drift into the rapids, nor awoke to his danger till the current was sweeping it along with an arrow’s speed. Roused at length by the shouts of terrified spectators, he sprang to his feet, and, looking around him, took in all the danger at a glance. But he seized no oar, nor raised a cry, nor made an effort to reach the bank. With the courage of his race, and the calmness of despair, the savage bows to his fate; resumes his seat; and, folding his arms, awaits the moment, when, borne over the fall, he is buried in its boiling gulf. Hope had fled.

The Word of God furnishes two cases strikingly illustrative of the influence of hope on the one hand, and of hopelessness on the other. T refer to those of Saul and David, when each went forth to meet the Philistine. It needed no familiar spirit, nor prophet from his grave, nor accursed witch that night Saul repaired to her hut in Endor to foretell the disasters of the coming day. Prostrate at her feet, abandoned of God and of hope, rejecting both food and comfort, Saul was already conquered. In his crushed hopes and heart coming eents cast their shadow before. Paralyzed by despair, he was incapable of such efforts, either of body or mind, as the time and his danger required. Ready to fall before the Philistines as a noble oak whose roots have been severed by the axe before the first blast of the rising storm, he had not a chance in the coming battle.

What a contrast to this scene the day that saw David, in the sight of two armies that hung on opposing hills, hastening with eager eye, and flying locks, and elastic foot to meet the giant! Hope was in his bounding step; and sounds to my ear like the blare of a battle trumpet in his reply to Goliath, ‘Thou comest to me wdth a sword, with a spear, and with a shield; but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied; this day the Lord will deliver thee into mine hand, and I will smite thee and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcase of the host of the Philistines unto the fowls of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel: the battle is the Lord’s, and He will give you into our hands, Brave speech 1 this was the voice of hope of heaven-born hope. Sustaining Davids hearty gi^Jig sight to his eyes and imparting strength to his arm, as whirling the sling around his head, he launched the messenger of death right to the mark, that hope was the omen,, and under God the means of victory.

And so it is in the Christian’s conflict with sin ) and indeed in all the work of sanctifi cation. Hence, not for our peace only, but for our purity also, the importance of a lively hope,’ of making our calling and election sure. In spiritual as in earthly things, there is great strength in hope; and, therefore, God’s people are carefully to cultivate that grace. Carefully avoid everything that could cast a doubt on your salvation; throw you into a state of spiritual darkness; and bring you, as David seemed to have been brought by his great sin, to the very borders of despair. A well-grounded hope that, having been made new creatures in Jesus Christ,, we are His — that with our names, though unknown to fame, written in the Book of Life, we have grace in possession and heaven in prospect — that after a few more brief years, pure as the angels that sing before the throne, we shall be brought with gladness into the palace of the King, to be like Christ, and with Christ, seeing Him eye to eye, and face to face — such hopes are powerful springs of action. The source of a peace that passeth understanding, nothing could be better calculated to wean our affections from the world, and deepen our abhorrence of sin, and inflame our desires to be holy as God is holy.

IV. Sanctification is a progressive work.

A connoisseur in painting, so soon as the dust of years and neglect is wiped from a fine old picture,, can tell whose hand laid these colours on the canvas — the works of each of the great masters having a character of their own. In like manner an antiquarian, though history is silent on the subject, and no date stands carved on the crumbling ruin, can tell when this tower was built, or that arch was sprung — the architecture of every age being marked by features peculiar to itself. And to pass from small things to great, so distinguished are God’s works by features all their own — evidences of divine goodness, power, and wisdom — that a Bedoween, when asked how he knew there was a God when he had never seen Him, had good reason to look with surprise on the sceptic, and reply, as he pointed to a footprint in the sand, How do I know whether it was a man or camel that passed my tent last night?

Among other features impressed on all the works of God, none is more distinctly marked than their progressive character. It was step by step, and day by day, not all of a sudden, that our world was constructed, and creation finished — with man, his Makers image, and his crowning work, standing on the summit of the pyramid. The Providence, also, that sustains and governs the world is no less distinctly marked by progress. Babes grow into men; seedlings into trees; the gray dawn into the rosy morn; the morn into the blaze of sunshine; and the green blades that spring from dull clods into the golden sheaves of autumn. Nothing in nature starts at once into maturity — neither the fish of the sea, nor the fowls of the air, nor the flowers of the field, nor the trees of the forest. Nor is man himself, in respect of either soul or body, exempt from this imperial law. Going away to push your fortune in the world, you leave an infant in your mothers arms, and return after long years of absence to hail the blue mountains of your native land as they rise above the wave. Hastening homewards, you stand once more amid the dear and well-remembered scenes of other days. The same trees wave over the houscj the same stream with its daisied banks runs murmuring by the door; and, though time has silvered their heads, and written wrinkles on their brows, you at once recognize the faces and are locked in the arms of happy and beloved parents. But who is he that stands there, in strength and stature a mighty man? — but the infant you left hanging helpless on a mothers breast. And thus, without any previous knowledge of the matter, and looking only at Gods works of creation and providence, we could predicate that sanctification, one of the greatest of His works, would also be one of progress — giving us no more reason to expect that a sinner on his conversion would suddenly grow up into a perfect saint than a seedling into a perfect tree, or the field sown to-day be to-morrow flashing with the sickles and joyous with the song of reapers. Grace has its dawn as well as day; grace has its green blade, and afterwards its ripe corn in the ear; grace has its babes and its men in Christ. With Gods work there, as with all His works ‘in all places of his dominion, progress is both the prelude and the path to perfection. Therefore we are exhorted to grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ — to lay aside every weight and the sin that doth more easily beset us, and run with patience the race set before us — to run so that we may obtain — to go on to perfection, saying with Paul, What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ; yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. I count not myself to have apprehended; but this one thing I do forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

This is a view of sanctification well calculated to strengthen feeble knees and hold up arms that are ready to hang down. I am a great sinner — my head is dark and my heart is dead — my feet are ever slipping — when I would do good, evil is present with me; what I would 1 do not, and what I would not that I do! has been the complaint of the godly. And as a native of the plain, who climbs some Alpine summit, on finding, when he has reached the first height, that another rises before him, and after it another, and still another, each towering higher into the sky, is ready, under the depressing influences of disappointment and fatigue, to throw himself on the ground and abandon the task in despair, so, thus complaining and confessing, God’s people have been ready to fall into despondency and, writing hard things against themselves, lose the blessed hope of being ever wholly sanctified.

But why should you be cast down, or your spirits disquieted within you? ‘^ It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord, Descrying the day in the dawn, the man in the stammering babe, and in the seedling the stately tree with roots rifted in the rock and giant arms thrown out defiant of the storm, let His people rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of their salvation. It is not possible for them to employ language humbler than that of St Paul, the great Apostle of the Gentiles. He reckoned himself ‘’the chief of sinners, and less than the least of saints — that he had not attained, or was yet perfect. But did he therefore go mourning all the day long, wearing a face of gloom and hanging his head like a bulrush? No. He went out to work, expecting a blessing on his labours; he went down to battle confident in God, and therefore confident of victory. They cast him into the inner prison, and he passed the night singing psalms of praise; they hunted him like a partridge on the mountains, and he rejoiced in tribulation; they, both the heathen and his own countrymen, sought to overwhelm him with persecutions, and amid perils and sufferings many he rose, like the ark, buoyant on the top of the flood; Death shook his grisly hand at him, and he defied the king of terrors — this the source of his joy and peace, of his unwearied energy in work and dauntless intrepidity in danger, the confidence that He who had begun a good work in him would carry it on to the day of the Lord Jesus. No cloud on his brow nor in his sky I am persuaded he exclaimed, that neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, shall be able to separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. This confidence is ’ the inheritance of the saints — of all the saints. The blood of Jesus has lost none of its virtue, nor His Spirit any of its power; the fountain of grace is not exhausted, nor is the edge of the sword of the Spirit of God either rusted by age or blunted by use. To-day, the sun in heaven shines as bright as when his old fires first began to burn: and so does that better Sun, the Sun of Righteousness, which sheds healing in its beams — to-day, the wind sweeps field and forest with wings as strong and free as when first it stirred in gentle breezes or tossed in storms the palms of Eden: and now not less free and full than ever that Spirit which is as the wind that bloweth where, and when.

and how it listeth — to-day the great sea, ’ where go the ships, after receiving, for long ages, into its capacious bosom the mud and mire, the decay and death of a thousand rivers, is as pure as when its billows first broke their snowy heads on the shores of our new-born world: and so, though ten times ten thousand and thousands of thousands have washed away their guilt in the blood of Christ, are the fountains of grace and salvation. For deliverance from the love and power, as well as the guilt, of sin, we are complete in Christ, In this confidence, though with fear and trembling, let us work out our salvation; God working in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. Seeking the aids of the Holy Spirit, let us aim at perfection. Let every day see some sin crucified, some battle fought, some good done, some victory won; let every fall be followed by a rise, and every step gained become, not a resting-place, but a new starting-point for further and higher progress; and looking over the gloomy confines of the grave to the glory that lies beyond, let us meet our last hour and last enemy, when they come calm ’ in the sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection ’ — this our confidence, that He who hath begun a good work in us will carry it on to the day of the L(^rd Jesus; and will, while mourning friends receive our parting sigh bring forth the headstone ’ — all the angels of heaven and all the saints in glory shouting, Grace, grace unto it!