are in], but we hold His position as earth-rejected, which He was in fully, until His cross-He had a mission from God to the Jews, and was a healer upon earth of sickness, etc.

Blessed as the meditating upon each of these five chapters might be, I must confine myself more particularly, now, to the first of them, viz., chap. vi. In which chapter, I conceive, we get an explanation fuller in detail than usual of the salvation in Christ, so far as its application by God to the believer is concerned.

The complexity of the circumstances of the party to whom the salvation has to be applied, as well as the complexity of the evil which is internal, will soon be evident. The born thrall of Satan, man, is in a world of Satan's arranging, and has a body ready in every way to identify itself with all the evil around. Then as to how it is with "the patient," when grace finds him, the disease is very complex; 1st, there is thorough ignorance of God as He really is, and a thorough accrediting of the false picture of God, which the sinner, in his delusion, has of Him. 2ndly, there is an overweening good opinion of himself-by which, in selfcomplacency, man takes it for granted that he cannot have a lie in his right hand, and, as a result, a selfsufficiency, as though by his own wisdom and power he would be able to settle everything for God and for himself too, in a way better than the best;—a heart, made to be satisfied with God alone, but gone astray from Him, ever filling itself with vanity and discontentment, blowing its own bubbles of lust; there is, too, a will fickle as the weather-cock, but obstinate and unbending as sinews of brass. Now, how is such a one to be fitted to be happy and at home in the Father's house in heaven, to be a channel, through which the river of

e Satan has usurped power on the earth, as well as in the heavenly places,-but the world, as I speak of it here, is a system ordered by man under Satan's direction (as in Gen. iv. 16-22). It is upon earth, indeed, and largely made up of the materials connected with the earth-yet it is not the earth-but a system of evil upon earth. In it man can find the pleasures of sin, which are but for a season, and the gratification of his lusts and passions; it is outside of the presence of the Lord.

divine goodness can flow forth in unselfish heavenly and divine blessing. God will do it by His own application of the rich salvation found in Christ Jesus, through faith and by the Spirit. But then, and here enters what is an enlargement of the difficulty to man's mind; while God's whole mind and heart are pledged to each solitary believer, to make all His full salvation to be that of the individual-individual salvation is part of a present testimony, and of a future glory which shall pervade every field in which redeeming love is known. State it, in a rough way, thus, and the difficulty will be seen: I am to be saved, but my salvation has connection with God's dealings through the last 5000 and odd years, and more especially with His testimony through the last 1857 years, and issues in a glory which is to fill the heavens and fill the earth in the resurrection-morn. This, while it gives that comparative increase of importance to my salvation which a brick built into a wall has, as part of a house, above a brick by the wayside, at the same time reduces me to my just proportion. The temple would not be a perfect temple without that stone; it is an integral part of the Lord's temple now-little as it was and is if looked at in itself.

The sixth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, opens with a proposition which is common enough among men of perverse and ignorant mind, when they handle God's truth. Only that which they lay down as, according to their logical reasonings a self-evident axiom of certain result-Paul, or the Spirit of God by Paul, holds up as an absurd and foolish thing, to be denounced at once. The doctrine of free forgiveness of sins, is to man synonymous with, and inseparable from, liberty to go on

f What a confession of his own folly, and of man's wickedness, however, does the gospel-opposer make, when he so says. Taking man upon his own ground, I have sometimes answered such: "Then, I suppose, you would consider that all forgiving love toward children, towards old friends, would be calculated to cultivate rebellion in their hearts: and the more that my wife, my child, know that I love them, the more certain I am not to be loved and honoured." What stupid ignorance of human nature: but, at the same time, what an admission of man's horrid selfishness and self-will, does the gospel-opposer's view contain in it.

sinning. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in "sin, that grace may abound?" [Paul says, once and again, "I speak as a man;" but note that he does not stoop to say so here.] He puts the question. His answer is double. First, an expression of revulsion. God forbid [or, away with it (such a thought)]. Then, an expression of the folly of the idea. "How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" (ver. 2). Three things were true of me individually; 1st, I had sin in me; 2ndly, this made me necessarily to be under the penalty of the judgment of God against sin; 1st, in death, and after that, 2ndly, in judgment to come. Sin, death, and judgment, were mine. I was morally dead in sins; and as such my prospect was death, and then judgment. Christ, who was holy, harmless, separate from sinners, in whom Satan had nothing-and who was not of this world-died, as Son of man, under the judgment of the wrath of God due to me. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" was his cry. For me, morally dead, He bore the penalty. God has revealed His own grace and mercy in providing such a way for poor sinners. If others do not admit the death of Christ as a substitute through grace, I do. It is an eternal reality, and I know it exists as such, independent of my faith in it, or my want of faith in it. This faith God has given to me, and His Spirit, that I might receive His truth, and, by act of my own, set to my seal to His truth. "I do," would be my answer to Paul's. "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into His death" (ver. 3). Yes; blessed be God for His grace! I can say, and add, "Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death."

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I, morally dead, had a future death and judgment

A sound human heart would certainly argue (as the gospelrejector denies), that such a benefit as this will surely draw the coldest and most indifferent heart towards God. It ought (but that is law in another form): but there is no power in man, as a mere creature, when once fallen, to do what he ought. Grace gives him a new nature a nature that loves God, and delights. as it must, if divine, more in God's love to us, than in ours to Him.

before me. Christ has borne that judgment in His own death. God's Christ did that: He was sent of God to settle that matter. Certainly God does not think that His Christ failed, or that His work failed in this matter. They are the parties most competent; yea, alone competent, to pronounce a judgment herein: such a judgment they have pronounced, that "it is finished.' Through grace, my Amen has been put in, where God's Amen was long before mine. My Amen has little value, in comparison with His; but it is not without its value; for it is, 1st, the proof of a fresh and present act of His gracee-even that He has caused His thought about Christ to be light and brightness to my soul-and this, 2ndly, marks a new and present action of the Holy Ghost, who not only gave the testimony to Christ at first, and wrote the epistles of old, but has now, of recent date, brought home that testimony to my soul. Grace, too, in God, sets a high price in heaven upon a poor sinner's Amen upon earth, to the worthiness of mercy, through Christ, by the Spirit. To the poor sinner's self, the worth is past measure-'tis a measure of eternal, heavenly, divine love. But then, what, if I had done with my Adamic ruined inheritance, and had nought else? Adam's inheritance in Eden is forfeited, I cannot return there-might a poor sinner say, who, having discovered that sin, death, and judgment, were his portion, as a descendant of Adam's, had just learnt that God looked upon him as dead and buried in Christ. Well, but this dead and buried together with Christ, is only the first blessing. The second is this,

"That like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified together with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him. Knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more, death hath no dominion over Him. "For in that He died, He died unto sin once: but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God, Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin

therefore, reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God" (Rom. vi. 4—13).

Mark it well, we are those that are alive from the dead; nothing can be clearer. And, indeed, no one can read the portion down, without seeing how this is quietly assumed throughout the whole of it. It is assumed, that since my identification with Christ, through faith, I have complete power over myself: this certainly was not the case when I was in sin. So far from being greater than myself and my members, I was led captive by them, and they were dragged hither and thither, through lust, by chance influences from without, in what was around me, guided by Satan. It is not, note it, a man trying to overcome himself and his evil, that he may get associated with God, or that God may honour him, but a man recognizing that he is, in grace, associated with Christ by God, and so associated, that Christ's penal death rolls in upon his soul, at once a moral judgment upon all that he, the sinner, was, and at the same moment a complete deliverance from all its consequences; not only from its just judgment-that cloud has passed from the sinner, and is seen to have hurtled once for all over Jesus when upon the cross, having no power to descend ever again upon the believer, but also the power of the law of sin is broken. With a new life given to us in Christ, there is the certainty given, that when He is displayed in life, we shall be displayed in the same life with Him. When He has changed these vile bodies, and fashioned them like unto the body of His glory, then will there be indeed a perfect walk in newness of life; then shall we be also in the likeness of His resurrection fully; we shall never serve sin, but be free from it for ever; we shall also live with Him; with Him who dieth no more, over whom death hath no dominion; but while this is blessed truth, the Christian antedates, in his conduct here, through faith, the fulfilment of these blessed hopes. This is the third truth Paul is pressing here, viz., this: if, FIRST, you have been cleared out from Adam's standing with its sin, death and