the other hand, knowing and feeling that we have no such rightcousness, accept a righteousness already made, and present that righteousness as our perfect title to heaven. It is not true that "do and live" is now reversed by an equivalent "believe and live." Faith is no more my title to heaven than work is. The distinction is this: Faith receives the righteousness now; man performed that righteousness of old. Under the law, I should have to be righteous that I might be justified; under the Gospel I have to accept righteousness that I may be justified. And this righteousness is revealed in such a passage as this; "He that knew no sin was made sin for us," that our sins being laid upon him, we might be made the righteousness of God by him, his righteousness being laid upon us. Christ wore our polluted rags, and endured the agony and the cross; we wear his spotless, seamless, perfect robe, and we inherit his everlasting peace, joy, and felicity. Just as it was righteous in God to pour down the expressions of his wrath upon the innocent Lamb, because he wore our tainted fleece, so it will be but faithful and just in God to pour down upon us the expressions of his love, because we, the stray sheep, wear the spotless fleece of that holy and immaculate Lamb. Jesus was not a sinner when he died: we shall not be personally righteous and worthy when we live. There was no demerit in him when he drank the cup of that curse to its dregs; and there will be no merit in us when we drink the cup of that blessing for ever and ever. He suffered because of others' sins; we shall be saved because of another's righteousness: thus the law shall have had its due, and yet we alone inherit all the joy, while Christ, and Christ alone, shall have all the glory. Like Levites in their spotless robes, we shall tread the floor of that grand temple; like true patricians, we shall walk with him in white; like kings and conquerors, we shall sit with him on his throne, even as he also overcame and sat down with his Father on his throne.

And then, adds the great adviser, "Anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see." He pronounced the church poor, he bids her take wealth; he pronounced the church wretched, he bids her take happiness; he pronounced her blind, he bids her take light. Are we then blind? It is implied that we are

so from such a passage as this, "That the eyes of your understanding being enlightened:" and the Psalmist says, "Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous 'things out of thy law." The Evangelist John writes, in one of his epistles, "But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you." And again, the prophet promises, "All thy children shall be taught of God, and great shall be the peace of thy children."

Now here is the distinction between a man-taught, or priesttaught, and a God-taught person. The man-taught person never rises higher than the priest, the ceremony, the sacrament, the church. The God-taught person comes to Christ; "He that is taught of God cometh unto me," says our Lord. A stream never can rise higher than its source. Let a rivulet start at a thousand feet high, and it will rise to that level again and so a religion from man rises only to man; a religion from the priest rises again to the priest; a religion from the church carries itself only to the church again; a religion from God lifts a man above the priest, the church, the ceremony, and leaves him not till he basks in the splendours of the beatific vision, and in the presence, and amid the glory of God. The eye-salve that is here spoken of is called in another place, "the unction of the Holy One." The ointment which was prepared for the high priest of old was an ointment which it was blasphemy to imitate, and he who ventured to imitate it was put to death. This eye-salve is, no doubt, the Holy Spirit of God. I know no stronger proof of the dreadful corruption of which man is the victim by the fall than this fact, that it needs not only a God to redeem him, but a God to convince him that he is redeemable at all. Men ask you, Where is a text to show that man is corrupt? I answer, here is the evidence; In vain God has bowed the heavens to open my grave; God must again bow the heavens to open my understanding to believe it. It needs not only my God in my nature to redeem me from the curse; but it needs the Holy Ghost, who is God, to come into my bosom and persuade me to accept of the redemption that is offered me "without money and without price."

Never forget this, my dear friends, that we can never pray, nor preach, nor hear, nor feel, nor know, nor make one step in

the right and upward direction, until the Holy Spirit of God enlightens and sanctifies and directs us.

I pray that you may have this eye-salve, that you may possess "this unction of the Holy One;" that you may see your pride to be your shame, your beauty to be your deformity, your glory to be but dust, your strength to be but weakness, your wisdom folly. Pray that you may have this eye-salve, this Holy Spirit; that you may see sin to be the evil, the only evil in the whole universe of God; that you may see holiness to be the chief beauty; living religion to be the purest happiness; enthusiastic devotion to Christ to be the greatest moderation and the gravest wisdom. Pray that you may see your soul to be precious, your Bible precious, your Saviour to be, if possible, more precious still. Pray that you may be led to see this, if you see no more;-no infallible directory but the word of God; no atoning or expiatory virtue anywhere but in the cross and passion of Christ; no regenerative or sanctifying or quickening power but in the Spirit of God; no way to heaven but that of which Christ is the door; no fitness for heaven but that of which the Spirit of God is the author, and no obstruction to your instant peace with God but what is in yourselves.

"Tis thine to cleanse the heart,

To sanctify the soul,

To pour fresh life in every part,
And new create the whole.

"Dwell, Spirit, in our hearts,

Our minds from bondage free;

Then shall we know, and praise and love,
The Father, Son, and Thee."

39 #

LECTURE XXX.

SOVEREIGN LOVE.

"As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten."-REV. iii. 19.

Lord' for this truth,
Christ loves us, and

THESE words are part of the epistle to the Church of Laodicea. They are addressed to her immediately after the counsel which the Lord had given her to buy of him "gold tried in the fire that she might be rich;" and in order to comfort those in the midst of her who were the people of God, amid the fiery trial to which she was to be soon subjected, God tells her, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten." Mr. Winslow, in a very excellent work called "Grace and Truth," makes the following remark on this text: "Had we not a 'thus saith the its greatness would render it incredible." because he loves us, he does not let us alone. Is it then true that we are loved of Christ? that we sinners are loved in spite of our sins, loved of Christ? His manger, his cross, his passion, his agony, and his bloody sweat, are all the evidence of this one proposition, "Christ loved us." Every fact in the Saviour's history-every sermon that he preached-every bright incident that broke forth in his life-every circumstance that surrounded him, are additional evidence that he loved us. Nor when we come to the last scene of his sad and awful biography, is there less proof of his love. The patience of the victim-the forbearance of the Almighty-the fact that no earthquake swallowed up the murderers of the Lord of Glory,-that no lightning smote and no thunderbolt blasted them-the awful eclipse that shrouded all, in which no word was uttered but love-the awful silence that pervaded all in which no accent was audible but love,

are eloquent and decisive evidences of his own assertion, for which, to quote the language of the author to whom I have aliuded, we have a "thus saith the Lord"-" As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten."

Having ascertained the fact that Christ loves us, let us try to ascertain the nature of his love, by its characteristics. I will not dwell on them; I will briefly, but as distinctly as possible, recapitulate them. In the first place, it is an everlasting love. Christ's love to us was not a sudden impulse that rose within his mind under some sudden influence, and, like man's, evaporated when he had expressed it; but it was an uncreated, and, literally and strictly, an everlasting spring in the bosom of God. "I have loved thee," he says, "with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee." How grand is this truth! that we, sinners saved, are the subjects of a love that glowed and burned, and panted for its egress before the worlds were created, or the angels sung together for joy at the completion of the once beautiful works of God! Secondly, it is an unfailing love. It rose from the depths of eternity, and it will roll into the depths of eternity again. It lasts while God reigns and ages roll. It can never be exhausted; when it has overflowed and overwhelmed, if I may so speak, the greatest number of the greatest sinners, it still is unexhausted, as much as if it had never flowed forth at all. He himself has told us, 66 a woman may forget her babe, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb, yet will not I forget thee." In the third place, it is a sovereign love. When God loves, he loves as God; when a creature loves, he loves as a creature. A creature loves an object, because in the object he sees something beautiful or good; God loves an object though in it there be nothing good, in order to make it, by his creative power, alike beautiful and good. Our love is created within us by an object without us; God's love is Sovereign. We love the beautiful and good because they are so; God loves the guilty and the depraved in order to make them what they should be.

This love, in the fourth place, is a distinguishing love. There is one fact in the Bible which has always in some degree perplexed me; and the more I think of it, the less am I able to