"The Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." HEBREWS iv. 12.

WE all have to do with God. "Him with whom we have to do." You cannot break the connection. You must do with him as a rebel, if not as a friend; on the ground of works, if not on the ground of grace; at the great white throne, if not in the fleeting days of time. You cannot do without God. You cannot do as you would if there were no God. You cannot avoid having to do with him; for even though you were to say there was no God, doing violence to the clearest instincts of your being, yet still you would breathe his air, eat his provender, occupy his world, and stand at last before his bar.

And, if you will pardon the materialism of the reference, I will follow the suggestion of my text, and say that the God with whom we have to do has eyes. "The eyes of him with whom we have to do." "Thou art a God that seest" was the startled exclamation of an Egyptian slave girl whose childhood had been spent amid the vast statues of gods who had eyes with far-away stony stare, but saw not. And she was right. "The Lord looketh from heaven; his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men."

Those eyes miss no one. " There is not any creature not manifest in his sight." The truest goodness is least obtrusive of itself. It steals unnoticed through the world, filling up its days with deeds and words of gentle kindness, which are known only to heaven; and herein it finds its sufficient reward. It prays behind closed doors; it exercises a vigorous self-denial in secret; it does its work of mercy by stealth. Thus the great blatant world of men, with its trumpets and heralds and newspaper notices, knows little of it, and cannot find the nooks where God's wild flowers bloom in inaccessible heights, for his eye alone. But the Father seeth in secret. The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous. His eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is perfect toward him. Do you want guidance? Look up! those eyes wait to guide by a glance. Are you in sorrow? they will film with tears. Are you going astray? they shall beckon you back, and break your heart, as Peter's. You will come to find your heaven in the light radiated by the eye of God, when once you have learned to meet it, clad in the righteousness of Jesus.

Unconverted reader, remember there is no screen from the eye of God. His eyes are as a flame of fire; and our strongest screens crackle up as thinnest gauze before the touch of that holy flame. Even rocks and hills are inadequate to hide from the face of him that sits upon the throne. "Whither shall I go from thy presence?" That question is unanswered, and unanswerable. It has stood upon the page of Scripture for three thousand years, and no one yet of all the myriads that have read it has been able to devise a reply. Heaven says, Not here. Hell says, Not here. It is not among angels, or the lost, or in the vast silent spaces of eternity. There is no creature anywhere not manifest to his sight. He who made vultures, able from immense heights to discern the least morsel on the desert waste, has eyes as good as they. And think how terrible are the eyes of God! When Egypt's chivalry had pursued Israel into the depths of the sea, they suddenly turned to flee. Why? Not because of thunder or lightning or voice; but because of a look. "The Lord looked out of the cloud, and troubled the Egyptians." Ah, sinner, how terrible will it be for thee to abide under the frown of God! "With the froward he will show himself froward."

Those eyes miss nothing. "All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do." It is said of the Lord Jesus, on one occasion, that he entered into Jerusalem, and into the Temple; and when he had looked round about on all things, he went out. It was his last, long, farewell look. But note its comprehensiveness. Nothing escaped it. We look only on parts of things, and often look without seeing. But the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. "Naked and opened." This is a sacrificial phrase, indicating the priestly act of throwing the victim on its back before him, so that it lay, exposed to his gaze, helpless to recover itself, ready for the knife. Ah, how eagerly we try to hide and cloak our sin! We dare not pen a truthful diary; we dread the illness which would unlock our tongues in wholesale chatterings; we shrink from the loving gaze of our dearest. We deceive man, and sometimes ourselves; but not our great High-Priest. He sees all, that secret sin; that lurking enmity; that closed chamber; that hidden burglar; that masked assassin; that stowaway; that declension of heart; that little rift within the lute; that speck of decay in the luscious fruit. And thus it is that men are kept out of the Canaan of God's rest, because he sees the evil heart of unbelief which departs from himself; and on account of which he swears now, as of old, "they shall not enter into my rest."

Is it not a marvel that he who knows so much about us should love us still? It were indeed an inexplicable mystery, save for the truth of the words which so sweetly follow: "Seeing, then, that we have a great High-Priest." He has a priest's heart. His scrutiny is not one of morbid or idle curiosity, but of a surgeon, who intently examines the source of disease with pity and tenderness, and resolves to extirpate it as quickly and as painlessly as possible. Is it not frequently the case that fuller knowledge will beget love, which once seemed impossible? There are some people whose faces are so hard, and their eyes so cold, that we are instantly repelled; but if we knew all, how they have been pierced and wounded, and disappointed, we should begin to pity them, and pity is close kinsman to love. The Saviour has known us from all eternity, our downsittings and uprisings, our secret possibilities of evil, our unfathomed depths of waywardness and depravity; and yet he loves us, and will love us.

"He knows all, But loves us better than he knows."

And out of this love, which wells up perennially in the heart of Jesus, unfrozen by the winter of our neglect, Unstanched by the demands of our fickleness, there comes the stern discpline of which this passage proceeds to speak. In majestic phrase, the Apocalyptic seer tells how he beheld the Word of God ride forth on his snow-white steed, arrayed in crimson robes, whilst the many crowns of empire flashed upon his brow. Two features are specially noted in his appearance. His eyes were as a flame of fire; this characteristic looks back over the words we have considered. Out of his mouth goeth a sharp two-edged sword; this looks forward to the words which now invite us. We must never divorce these two. The eyes and the sword. Not the eyes only; for of what use would it be to see and not strike? Not the sword only; for to strike without seeing would give needless pain, this would be surgery blindfolded. But the searching tender vision, followed by the swift and decisive flash of the sword of amputation and deliverance. Oh, who will now submit to that stroke, wielded by the gentle hand that often carried healing and blessing, and was nailed to the cross; guided by unerring wisdom, and nerved by Almighty strength? Not death, but life and fruitfulness, freedom and benediction, are all awaiting that one blow of emancipation. That sword is the Word of God.

THE WORD OF GOD IS LIVING. The words he speaks are spirit and life (John vi. 63). Wherever they fall, though into dull and lifeless soil, they begin to breed life, and produce results like themselves. They come into the heart of an abandoned woman; and straightway there follow compunction for the past, vows of amendment, and the hasty rush to become an evangelist to others. They come into the heart of a dying robber; and immediately he refrains from blasphemy, and rebukes his fellow, and announces the Messiahship, the blamelessness, the approaching glory, of the dying Saviour. They come into hearts worn out with the wild excesses of the great pagan ages, and ill-content, though enriched with the spoils of art and refinement and philosophy in the very zenith of their development; and lo! the moral waste begins to sprout with harvests of holiness, and to blossom with the roses of heaven. If only those words, spoken from the lips of Christ, be allowed to work in the conscience, there will be forthwith the stir of life.

THE WORD OF GOD IS ACTIVE, i.e., energetic. Beneath its spell the blind see, the deaf hear, the paralyzed are nerved with new energy, the dead stir in their graves and come forth. There are few things more energetic than life. Put a seed into the fissure of a rock, and it will split it in twain from top to bottom. Though walls and rocks and ruins impede the course of the seedling, yet it will force its way to the light and air and rain. And when the Word of God enters the heart, it is not as a piece of furniture or lumber. It asserts itself and strives for mastery, and compels men to give up sin; to make up long standing feuds; to restore ill-gotten gains; to strive to enter into the strait gate. "Now ye are pruned," said our Lord, "through the word that I have spoken to you." The words of Christ are his winnowing-fan, with which he is wont to purge his flour, whether in the heart or the world. We are not, therefore, surprised that a leading tradesman in a thriving commercial center said that the visit of two evangelists, who did little else than reiterate the Word of God, was as good as a revival of trade, because it led so many people to pay up debts which were reckoned as lost.

THE WORD OF GOD IS SHARP. Its sharpness is threefold. It is sharp to pierce. On the day of Pentecost, as Peter wielded the sword of the Spirit, it pierced three thousand to the heart; and they fell wounded to the death before him, crying, "What shall we do?" Often since have strong men been smitten to the dust under the effect of that same sword, skillfully used. And this is the kind of preaching we need. Men are urged to accept of the gift of God, and many seem to comply with the invitation; but in the process of time they fall away. Is not the cause in this, that they have never been wounded to the death of their self-esteem, their heart has never been pierced to the letting of the blood of their own life, they have never been brought into the dust of death? Oh for Boanerges! able to pierce the armor of excuses of vain hopes, behind which men shield themselves, that many may cry with Ahab, pierced between the joints of the harness "Turn thine hand, and carry me out of the battle, for I am wounded!"

It is sharp to divide. With his sharp knife the priest was accustomed to dissect the joints of the animal, and to open to view even the marrow of the bones. Every hair was searched, every limb examined; and thus the sacred gift was passed, and permitted to be offered in worship. And God's scrutiny is not satisfied with the external appearance and profession. It goes far deeper. It enters into those mysterious regions of the nature where soul and spirit, purpose, intention, motive, and impulse, hold their secret court, and carry on the hidden machinery of human life. Who can tread the mysterious confines where soul and spirit touch? What is the line of demarkation? Where does the one end, and the other begin? We cannot tell; but that mystic Word of God could cut the one from the other, as easily as the selvage is divided from the cloth. It is at home in distinctions which are too fine drawn and minute for human apprehension. It assumes an office like that which Jesus refused when he said, "Who made me a judge and divider over you?"

It is sharp to criticise and judge. "Quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart." Christ is eager about these. Because what a man thinks and intends in his heart, that he will be sooner or later in life. We must expect to have our most secret thoughts, relations, and purposes questioned, criticised, and measured by the Word of God. No court of inquiry was ever presided over by a more exact inquisitor than this. The corpses of the dead past are exhumed; the old lumber-rooms with their padlocked boxes are explored; the accounts of bygone years are audited and taxed. God is critic of all the secrets of the heart. As each thought or intention passes to and fro, he searches it. He is constantly weighing in the balance our thoughts and aims, though they be light as air.

On one occasion, when Saul had spared the spoils of a doomed city, together with its monarch, the latter came to Samuel, not as a criminal, but delicately, as a pampered friend. And Samuel said, "As thy sword has made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord." Thus it is that we have spared too many of our sins, at the risk of our irreparable rejection from the throne of true manhood and righteousness. How much better to let Christ do his work of amputation and excision! If we do not know ourselves, let us ask him to search us. If we cannot cut off the offending member, let us look to him to rid us of it.

Do not fear him; close after these terrible words, as the peal of bells after the crash of the storm on the organ at Freiburg, we are told that "he was tempted in all points like as we are," and that " we have not a High~Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities." "Does she sing well?" asked the trainer of a new operatic singer. "Splendidly," was the reply; "but if I had to bring her out, I would first break her heart." He meant that one who had not been broken by sorrow could not touch the deepest chords of human life. Ah! there is no need for this with our Lord Jesus; reproach broke his heart. He understands broken hearts, and is able to soothe and save all who come unto God by him.

Chapter 12
TIMELY AND NEEDED HELP

"Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need."-HEBREWS iv. i6.

NEED! Time of need! Every hour we live is a time of need; and we are safest and happiest when we feel our needs most keenly. If you say that you are rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing, you are in the greatest destitution; but when you know yourself to be wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked, then the traveling merchantman is already standing on your doorstep, knocking (Rev. iii. 17-20). It is when the supply runs short, that Cana's King makes the vessels brim with wine.

Have you been convinced of your need? If not, it is quite likely that you will live and die without a glimpse of the rich provision which God has made to meet it. Of what use is it to talk of rich provisions and sumptuous viands to those already satiated? But when the soul, by the straits of its necessity, has been brought to the verge of desperation, when we cry with the lepers of old, "If we say we will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there; and if we sit still here, we die also", then we are on the verge of discovering the rich provision that awaits us (2 Kings vii. 8): all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies (Eph. i. 3); and all things that pertain to life and godliness (2 Pet. i. 3). There are two causes, therefore, why many Christians are living such impoverished lives: they have never realized their own infinite need; and they have never availed themselves of those infinite resources which hang within their reach, like fruit from the stooping boughs of an orchard in autumn.

Our needs are twofold. We need mercy. This is our fundamental need. Mercy when we are at our worst, yes, and at our best; mercy when the pruning knife cuts deep, yes, and when we are covered with foliage, flower, or fruit; mercy when we are broken and sore vexed, yes, and when we stand on the paved sapphire work upon the mountain summit to talk with God. The greatest saint among us can no more exist without the mercy of God than the ephemeral insects of a summer's noon can live without the sun.

We need grace to help. Help to walk through the valleys; and to walk on the high places, where the chamois can hardly stand. Help to suffer, to be still, to wait, to overcome, to make green one tiny spot of garden ground in God's great tillage. Help to live and to die.

Each Of these is met at the throne. Come, let us go to it. It is not the great white throne of judgment, but the rainbow-girt throne of grace. "No," you cry, "never! I am a man of unclean lips and heart; I dare not face him before whom angels veil their faces; the fire of his awful purity will leap out on me, shriveling and consuming. I exceedingly fear and quake; or, if I muster courage enough to go once, I shall never be able to go as often as I need, or to ask for the common and trivial gifts required in daily living." Hush, soul! thou mayest approach as often and as boldly as thou wilt; for we have a great High Priest, who is passed through the heavens, and not one who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

A PRIEST.-Deep down in the heart of men there is a strong and instinctive demand for a priest, to be daysman and mediator, to lay one hand on man and the other on God, and to go between them both. Wit and sarcasm may launch their epithets on this primordial craving; but they might as well try to extinguish by the same methods the craving of the body for food, of the understanding for truth, of the heart for love. And no religion is destined to meet the deepest yearnings of the race, which does not have glowing at the heart the provision of a priest to stand before the throne of grace; as, of old, the priest stood before the mercy seat, which was its literal prefigurement under the dispensation of the Levitical law.

A curious proof of this human craving for a priest is given in the book of Judges. On the ridge of the hills of Ephraim stood the ancestral home of a wealthy family, containing within its precincts a private sanctuary, where though there were teraphim, ephod, and vestments, yet there was no priest. Nothing, however, could compensate for that fatal lack. And Micah said to a Levite, who happened to pass by: "Dwell with me, and be unto me a father and a priest." And when he, nothing loath, consented, Micah comforted himself by saying, "Now know I that the Lord will do me good, seeing I have a Levite to my priest." But the same feelings that actuated him were shared by a portion of the tribe of Dan, on their way to colonize a remote part of the country. They, too, must have a priest; and so, while six hundred armed warriors stood around the gate, five men stole through the court, broke into the little chapel, carried off its images and other apparatus for worship, bribed the priest, by the offer of higher wage, to accompany them; and, long before the theft was discovered, the whole party had resumed their journey, and were far upon their way.

All families of mankind have followed the same general programme. Wherever they have built homes for themselves, they have erected the wigwam, the pagoda, the parthenon, the obelisk guarded temple, the Gothic minster fashioned after the model of the forest glade, a leafy oracle petrified to stone; and they have chosen one of themselves, set apart from ordinary work, and sanctified by special rites to minister, treading its floors, and pleading at its altars, interceding for them in times of famine, pestilence, and plague; blessing their arms as they went forth to fight, and receiving their spoils of victory; making propitiation for sin, and assuring of forgiveness.

This craving was most carefully met in that venerable religion in which these Hebrew Christians had been reared. The sons of Aaron were the priests of Israel. They wore a special dress, ate special food, and lived in special towns; whilst every care was taken to accentuate their separation to transact the spiritual concerns of the nation. For sixteen centuries this system had prevailed, relying around it the deepest and most sacred emotions; and, like ivy, entwining itself around the oak of the national life. And, as we have seen, it was no small privation for these new converts to wrench themselves from such a system, and accept a religion in which there was no visible temple, ceremonial, or priest.

But here we learn that Jesus Christ is the perfect answer to these instinctive cravings which blindly pointed to him in all ages of human and Hebrew history. This is the aim of these opening chapters, and by two lines of proof we have been led to the same conclusion. Before us stand two mighty columns: the one is in chapters i. and ii. of this Epistle; the other is in iii. and iv. They have a common base from which they spring, the Sonship of Christ. The first column is called, Christ superior to Angels; and this is the scroll around its capital, that Jesus, as man's representative, has entered into the glories promised in the eighth Psalm. The second column is called, Christ superior to Moses; with this scroll around its capital, that Jesus, as our representative, has entered into the Rest of God. And each of them helps to support a common chapiter, the Priesthood of Christ. The first two chapters end with a description of the merciful and faithful High Priest, who makes reconciliation for the sins of the people (ii. I 7, I 8). The next two chapters close with the words on which we are dwelling now, concerning the Great High-Priest (iv. 14). In the mouth of two witnesses every word is established. We need no human priests. Their work is done, their office is superseded, their functions are at an end. To arrogate any priestly functions of sacrifice, of absolution, or of imparting sacramental grace, is to intrude sacrilegiously on ground which is sacred to the Son of God; and, however royal such are in mien or intellect, they must be withstood, as Azariah withstood Uzziah-saying, "It appertaineth not unto thee to burn incense unto the Lord, but to Jesus, our Great High-Priest; go out of his office, for thou hast trespassed; neither shall it be for thine honor from the Lord God."

A HIGH PRIEST. A Priest of priests, able to sacrifice, not only for the people, but for all the priests of his house; and alone responsible for the rites of the great day of Atonement, when every other priest was banished from the precincts of the Temple, while the high priest, clad in simple white, made an atonement for the sins of himself, his family, and his people.

We have been made priests unto God; but our priestly work consists in the offering of the incense of prayer and praise, and the gifts of surrendered lives. We have nothing to do with atonement for sin; which is urgently required by us, not only for our sins as ordinary members of the congregation, but for those which, consciously or unconsciously, we commit in the exercise of our priestly office. Our penitential tears need to be sprinkled by the blood of Jesus; our holiest hours need to be accepted through his merits; our noblest service would condemn us, save for his atoning sacrifice.

A GREAT HIGH PRIEST. All other high priests were inferior to him. He is as much superior to the high priests as any one of them was to the priests of his time. But this does not exhaust his greatness. He does not belong to their line at all, but to an older, more venerable, and grander one; of which that mysterious personage was the founder, to whom Abraham, the father of Israel, gave tithes and homage. "Declared of God a High Priest after the order of Melchisedek." Nay, further, his greatness is that of the Son of God, the fellow and equal of Deity. He is as great as his infinite nature and the divine appointment and his ideal of ministry could make him.

PASSED THROUGH THE HEAVENS. Between the holy place where the priest daily performed the service of the sanctuary, and the inner shrine forbidden to all save to the high priest once each year, there hung a veil of blue. And of what was that blue veil the emblem, save of those heavenly curtains, the work of God's fingers, which hang between our mortal vision and the marvels of his presence chamber? Once a year the high priest carried the blood of propitiation through the blue veil of separation, and sprinkled it upon the mercy seat; and in this significant and solemn act he typified the entrance of our blessed Lord into the immediate presence of God, bearing the marks and emblems of his atoning death, and taking up his position there as our Mediator and Intercessor, in whom we are represented, and for whose sake we are accepted and beloved.

TOUCHED WITH THE FEELING OF OUR INFIRMITIES. He hates the sin, but loves the sinner. His hatred to the one is measured by his cross; his love to the other is infinite as his nature. And his love is not a dreamy ecstasy; but practical, because all the machinery of temptation was brought into Operation against him. It would take too long to enumerate the points at which the great adversary of souls assails us; but there is not a sense, a faculty, a power, which may not be the avenue of his attack. Through eye-gate, ear-gate, and thought-gate his squadrons seek to pour. And, marvelous though it be, yet our High Priest was tempted in all these points, in body, soul, and spirit; though there was no faltering in his holy resolution, no vacillation or shadow of turning, no desire to yield. "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me."

All his experiences are vividly present to him still; and whenever we go to him, pleading for mercy or help, he instantly knows just how much and where we need it, and immediately his intercessions obtain for us, and his hands bestow, the exact form of either we may require. "He is touched." That sympathetic heart is the metropolis to which each afferent nerve carries an immediate thrill from the meanest and remotest members of his body, bringing at once in return the very help and grace which are required. Oh to live in touch with Christ! always touching him, as of old the women touched his garment's hem; and receiving responses, quick as the lightning flash, and full of the healing, saving virtue of God (Mark .28).

Chapter 13
GETHSEMANE

"Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared: though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered." HEBREWS v.7, 8.

Eight ancient olive trees still mark the site of Gethsemane; not improbably they witnessed that memorable and mysterious scene referred to here. And what a scene was that! It had stood alone in unique and unapproachable wonder, had it not been followed by fifteen hours of even greater mystery.

The strongest words in Greek language are used to tell of the keen anguish through which the Saviour passed within those Garden walls. "He began to be sorrowful"; as if in all his past experiences he had never known what sorrow was! "lie was sore amazed"; as if his mind were almost dazed and overwhelmed. "He was very heavy," his spirit stooped beneath the weight of his sorrows, as afterward his body stooped beneath the weight of his cross; or the word may mean that he was so distracted with sorrow, as to be almost beside himself. And the Lord himself could not have found a stronger word than he used when he said, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death."

But the evangelist Luke gives us the most convincing proof of his anguish when he tells us that his sweat, like great beads of blood, fell upon the ground, touched by the slight frost, and in the cold night air. The finishing touch is given in these words, which tell of his "strong crying and tears."

THE THINGS WHICH HE SUFFERED. What were they? They were not those of the Substitute. The tenor of Scripture goes to show that the work of substitution was really wrought out upon the cross. There the robe of our completed righteousness was woven from the top through-out. It was on the free that he bare our sins in his own body. It was by his blood that he brought us nigh to God. It was by the death of God's Son that we have been reconciled to God; and the repeated references of Scripture, and especially of this epistle, to sacrifice, indicate that in the act of dying, that was done which magnifies the law, and makes it honorable, and removes every obstacle that had otherwise prevented the love of God from following out its purposes of mercy.

We shall never fully understand here how the Lord Jesus made reconciliation for the sins of the world, or how that which he bore could be an equivalent for the penalty due from a sinful race. We have no standard of comparison; we have no line long enough to let us down into the depths of that unexplored mystery; but we may thankfully accept it as a fact stated on the page of Scripture perpetually, that he did that which put away the curse, atoned for human guilt, and was more than equivalent to all those sufferings which a race of sinful men must otherwise have borne. The mystery defies our language, but it is apprehended by faith; and as she stands upon her highest pinnacles, love discerns the meaning of the death of Christ by a spiritual instinct, though as yet she has not perfectly learned the language in which to express her conceptions of the mysteries that circle around the cross. It may be that in thousands of unselfish actions, she is acquiring the terms in which some day she will be able to understand and explain all.

But all that we need insist on here, and now, is that the sufferings of the Garden are not to be included in the act of Substitution, though, as we shall see, they were closely associated with it. Gethsemane was not the altar, but the way to it.

Our Lord's suffering in Gethsemane could hardly arise from the fear of his approaching physical sufferings. Such a supposition seems wholly inconsistent with the heroic fortitude, the majestic silence, the calm ascendency over suffering with which he bore himself till he breathed out his spirit, and which drew from a hardened and worldly Roman expressions of respect.

Besides, if the mere prospect of scourging and crucifixion drew from our Lord these strong crying and tears and bloody sweat, he surely would stand on a lower level than that to which multitudes of his followers attained through faith in him. Old men like Polycarp, tender maidens like Blandina, timid boys like Attalus, have contemplated beforehand with unruffled composure, and have endured with unshrinking fortitude, deaths far more awful, more prolonged, more agonizing. Degraded criminals have climbed the scaffold without a tremor or a sob; and surely the most exalted faith ought to bear itself as bravely as the most brutal indifference in the presence of the solemnities of death and eternity. It has been truly said that there is no passion in the mind of man, however weak, which cannot master the fear of death; and it is therefore impossible to suppose that the fear of physical suffering and disgrace could have so shaken our Saviour's spirit.

But he anticipated the sufferings that he was to endure as the propitiation for sin. He knew that he was about to be brought into the closest association with the sin which was devastating human happiness and grieving the divine nature. He knew, since he had so identified himself with our fallen race, that, in a very deep and wonderful way, he was to be made sin and to bear our curse and shame, cast out by man, and apparently forsaken by God. He knew, as we shall never know, the exceeding sinfulness and horror of sin; and what it was to be the meeting-place where the iniquities of our race should converge, to become the scapegoat charged with guilt not his own, to bear away the sins of the world. All this was beyond measure terrible to one so holy and sensitive as he.

He had long foreseen it. He was the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. Each time a lamb was slain by a conscience-stricken sinner, or a scapegoat let go into the wilderness, or a pigeon dipped into the flowing water encrimsoned by the blood of its mate, he had been reminded of what was to be. He knew before his incarnation where in the forest the seedling was growing to a sapling from the wood of which his cross would be made. He even nourished it with his rain and sun. Often during his public ministry he was evidently looking beyond the events that were transpiring around him to that supreme event, which he called his "hour." And as it came nearer, his human soul was overwhelmed at the prospect of having to sustain the weight of a world's sin. His human nature did not shrink from death as death; but from the death which he was to die as the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for those of the whole world.

Six months before his death he had set his face to go to Jerusalem, with such a look of anguish upon it as to fill the hearts of his disciples with consternation. When the questions of the Greeks reminded him that he must shortly fall into the ground and die, his soul became so troubled that he cried, "Father, save me from this hour !" And now, with strong cryings and tears, he made supplication to his Father, as king that, if it were possible, the cup might pass from him. In this his human soul spoke. As to his divinely wrought purpose of redemption, there was no vacillation or hesitation. But, as man, he asked whether there might not be another way of accomplishing the redemption on which he had set his heart.

But there was no other way. The Father's will, which he had come down from heaven to do, pointed along the rugged, flinty road that climbed Calvary, and passed over it, and down to the grave. And at once he accepted his destiny, and with the words "If this cup may not pass from me except I drink it, thy will be done," he stepped forth on the flints that were to cut those blessed feet, drawing from them streams of blood.

HIS STRONG CRYING AND TEARS. Our Lord betook himself to that resource which is within the reach of all, and which is peculiarly precious to those who are suffering and tempted, he prayed. His heart was overwhelmed within him; and he poured out all his anguish into his Father's ears, with strong cryings and tears. Let us note the characteristics of that prayer, that we too may be able to pass through our dark hours, when they come.

It was secret prayer. Leaving the majority of his disciples at the Garden gate, he took with him the three who had stood beside Jairus's dead child, and had beheld the radiance that steeped him in his transfiguration. They alone might see him tread the winepress: but even they were left at a stone's cast, whilst he went forward alone into the deeper shadow. We are told that they became overpowered with sleep; so that no mortal ear heard the whole burden of that marvelous prayer, some fitful snatches of which are reserved in the Gospels.

It was humble prayer. The evangelist Luke says that he knelt. Another says that he fell on his face. Being formed in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross. And it may be that even then he began to recite that marvelous Psalm, which was so much on his lips during those last hours, saying, "I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men and despised of the people."

It was filial prayer. Matthew describes our Lord as saying, "0 my Father"; and Mark tells us that he used the endearing term which was often spoken by the prattling lips of little Jewish children, Abba. For the most part, he probably spoke Greek; but Aramaic was the language of his childhood, the language of the dear home in Nazareth. In the hour of mortal agony, the mind ever reverts to the associations of its first awakening. The Saviour, therefore, appearing to feel that the more stately Greek did not sufficiently express the deep yearnings of his heart, substituted for it the more tender language of earlier years. Not "Father" only, but "Abba, Father!"

It was earnest prayer. "He prayed more earnestly," and one proof of this appears in his repetition of the same words. It was as if his nature were too oppressed to be able to express itself in a variety of phrase; such as might indicate a certain leisure and liberty of thought. One strong current of anguish running at its highest could only strike one monotone of grief, like the note of the storm or the flood. Back, and back again, came the words, cup . .pass . . . will . . . Father. And the sweat of blood, pressed from his forehead, as the red juice of the grape beneath the heavy foot of the peasant, witnessed to the intensity of his soul.

It was submissive prayer. Matthew and Mark quote this sentence, "Nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt." Luke quotes this, "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done."

Jesus was the Father's Fellow's co-equal in his divine nature; but for the purpose of redemption it was needful that he should temporarily divest himself of the use of the attributes of his deity, and live a truly human life. As man, he carefully marked each symptom of his Father's will, from the day when it prompted him to linger behind his parents in the temple; and he always instantly fulfilled his behests. "I came down from heaven," he said, "not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. "This was the yoke he bore, and in taking it, he found rest unto his soul. Whatever was the danger or difficulty into which such obedience might carry him, he ever followed the beacon-cloud of the divine will; sure that the manna of daily strength would fall, and that the deep sweet waters of peace would follow where it led the way. That way now seemed to lead through the heart of a fiery furnace. There was no alternative than to follow; and he elected to do so, nay, was glad, even then, with a joy that the cold waters of death could not extinguish. At the same time, he learnt what obedience meant, and gave an example of it, that shone out with unequaled majesty, purity, and beauty, unparalleled in the annals of the universe. As man, our Lord then learnt how much was meant by that word obedience. "He learned obedience." And now he asks that we should obey him, as he obeyed God. "Unto them that obey him."

Sometimes the path of the Christian's obedience becomes very difficult. It climbs upward; the gradient is continually steeper; the foothold ever more difficult; and, as the evening comes, the nimble climber of the morning creeps slowly forward on hands and knees. The day is never greater than the strength; but as the strength grows by use, the demands upon it are greater, and the hours longer. At last a moment may come, when we are called for God's sake to leave some dear circle; to risk the loss of name and fame; to relinquish the cherished ambition of a life; to incur obloquy, suffering, and death; to drink the bitter cup; to enter the brooding cloud; to climb the smoking mount. Ah! then we too learn what obedience means; and have no resource but in strong cryings and tears.

In such hours pour out thy heart in audible cnes. Plentifully mingle the name "Father" with thine entreatles. Fear not to repeat the same words. Look not to man, he cannot understand thee; but to him who is nearer to thee than thy dearest. So shalt thou get calmer and quieter, until thou rest in his will; as a child, worn out by a tempest of passion, sobs itself to sleep on its mother's breast.

THE ANSWER. "He was heard for his godly fear." His holy reverence and devotion to his Father's will made it impossible that his prayers should be unanswered; although, as it so often happens, the answer came in another way than his fears had suggested. The cup was not taken away, but the answer came. It came in the mission of the angel that stood beside him. It came in the calm serenity with which he met the brutal crowd, that soon filled that quiet Garden with their coarse voices and trampling feet. It came in his triumph over death and the grave. It came in his being perfected as mediator, to become unto all them that obey him the Author of eternal salvation, and the High-Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Prayers prompted by love and in harmony with godly fear are never lost. We may ask for things which it would be unwise and unkind of God to grant; but in that case, his goodness shows itself rather in the refusal than the assent. And yet the prayer is heard and answered. Strength is instilled into the fainting heart. The faithful and merciful High-Priest does for us what the angel essayed to do for him; but how much better, since he has learnt so much of the art of comfort in the school of suffering! And out of it the way finally emerges into life, though we have left the right hand and foot in the grave behind us. We also discover that we have learnt the art of becoming channels of eternal salvation to those around us. Ever since Jesus suffered there, Gethsemane has been threaded by the King's highway that passes through it to the New Jerusalem. And in its precincts God has kept many of his children, to learn obedience by the things that they suffer, and to learn the divine art of comforting others as they themselves have been comforted by God.

There are comparatively few, to whom Jesus does not say, at some time in their lives, "Come and watch with me." He takes us with him into the darksome shadows of the winepress, though there are recesses of shade, at a stone's cast, where he must go alone. Let us not misuse the precious hours in the heavy slumbers of insensibility. There are lessons to be learnt there which can be acquired nowhere else; but if we heed not his summons to watch with him, it may be that he will close the precious opportunity by bidding us sleep on and take our rest; because the allotted term has passed, and the hour of a new epoch has struck. If we fail to use for prayer and preparation the sacred hour, that comes laden with opportunities for either; if we sleep instead of watching with our Lord: what hope have we of being able to play a noble part when the flashing lights and the trampling feet announce the traitor's advent? Squander the moments of preparation, and you may have to rue their loss through all the coming years!

Chapter 14
IMPOSSIBLE TO RENEW TO REPENTANCE

"It Is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame."-HEBREWS vi. 4-6.

The sacred writer enumerates four fundamental principles: Repentance from dead works, which in the old dispensation was symbolized by divers baptisms, or washings; Faith toward God, typified by the laying of hands on the head of the victim-sacrifices; the Resurrection of the dead; and Eternal Judgment. And then he proposes not to lay them again, but to leave them. There is no thought, however, of deserting them. The great principles on which God saves the soul are identical in every age, and indispensable.

We can only leave them as the child leaves the multiplication-table, when it is well learnt, but which lies at the root of all after-study; as the plant leaves the root, when it towers into the majestic shrub, which draws all its life from that low origin; and as the builder leaves the foundation, that he may carry up stone on stone, and leans on the foundation most heavily, when he has left it at the furthest distance below him. And we are taught the reason why these principles are not laid afresh. It would be useless to do so; it would serve no good purpose; it would leave in the same state as it found them those who had apostatized from the faith. And so we are led to one of those passages which sensitive spirits have turned to their own torment and anguish; just as men will distil the rankest poison from some of the sweetest flowers.

HOW FAR WE MAY GO, AND YET FALL AWAY. These apostate disciples had been enlightened (ver. 4). They had been led to see their sin and danger, the temporary nature of Judaism, the dignity and glory of the Saviour. Other Hebrews might be ignorant, the folds of the veil hanging heavily over their sight; but it could never be so with them, since they had stood in the midst of the Gospel's meridian light, and had been enlightened.

So may it be with us. Not like the savage, crouching before his fetish, or roaming over the wild; not like the follower of Confucius, Buddha, or Mahomet, groping in the twilight of nature or religious guess-work; not like myriads in our own land, whose hearts are as dark as the chaos into which God commanded the primeval beam to shine: we have been enlightened. We may know that we are sinners; we may have learnt from childhood the scheme of salvation; we may be familiar with the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, into which angels desire to look: and yet we may fall away.

These Hebrews, here referred to, had also tasted of the heavenly gift. What gift is that? I hear a voice, which we know well, speaking from the well of Sychar, and saying: "The water that I shall give shall be in thee, springing up into everlasting life." It is the life of God in the soul; it is Christ himself; and he is willing to be in us, like a perennial spring, unstanched in drought, unfrozen in frost, leaping up, in fresh and living beauty, like some warm spring that makes a paradise in the arctic circle.

But some are content not to receive it, only to taste it. This is what these persons did. They sipped the sweetness of Christ. They had a passing superficial glimpse into his heart. Like Gideon's soldiers, they caught up a few drops in their hands from the river of God, and hastened on their way. So we may have some pleasure in thoughts of Christ. His sufferings touch; his beauty attracts; his history moves and inspires. But it is only a taste; and yet we may fall away. They had also been made partakers of the Holy Ghost. It is not said that they had been converted, regenerated, or filled by the Holy Ghost. The expression is a very peculiar one, and it is used because the sacred writer could not affirm any of these things of them, and yet Was anxious to show that they had been brought under his gracious influences. For instance, he had convinced them of sin, had striven with them, had plied them with warning and entreaty, with fear and hope. And they had so far yielded to him as to give up some of their sins and assume the outward guise of Christianity.

Moreover, they had tasted the good Word of God, and the powers of the world to come. The first of these is obviously the Scriptures; and the second is the usual expression for the age in which we live, and which, with all its spiritual forces, was beginning to thrill the hearts of men when these words were penned. They liked a good sermon; the Bible was full of interest and charm; they had heard the prophets, and seen the apostles of the Pentecostal age. All these had been analyzed, weighed, and counted; and yet they were in peril of going back. Let us, therefore, beware!

WHAT IS IT TO FALL AWAY? It is something more than to fall. The real child of God may fall, as David or as Peter did; but there is a vast difference between falling and falling away. This latter experience can no more come to a real believer than a second flood of waters to the earth; but it will certainly find out the counterfeit and the sham.

To fall away is to go back from the outward profession of Christianity, not temporarily, but finally; not as the result of some sudden sin, but because the first outward stimulus is exhausted, and there is no true life beating at the heart, to repair or reinvigorate the wasting devotion of the life. It is to resemble those wandering planets, which never shone with their own light, but only in the reflected light of some central sun; but which, having broken from its guiding leash, dash further and further into the blackness of darkness, without one spark of life or heat or light. It is to return as a dog to its vomit, and as a sow to her filth; because the reformation was only outward and temporary, and the dog or sow natures were never changed through the gracious work of the Holy Spirit. It is to be another Judas; to commit the sin against the Holy Ghost; to lose all earnestness of feeling, all desire for better things, all power of tender emotion; and to become utterly callous and dead, as the pavement on which we walk, or the rusty armor hanging on the old castle's walls.

WHY IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO RESTORE SUCH TO REPENTANCE. Notice, there is nothing said here of what God can do. The only question is as to the limits of human power, and the ordinary methods of influencing human wills. Also notice, we are not told that God could not save those who had fallen away; but that it is impossible to hope that a man who has passed through the experiences just described, and has nevertheless apostatized, can be reached or touched by any of those arguments or motives which are familiar weapons in the Gospel armory. If the mightiest arguments have been brought to bear on the conscience in vain; if after some slight response, which gave hopes of better things, it has relapsed into the stupor and insensibility of its former state, there remains nothing more to be done. There is nothing more potent than the wail of Calvary's broken heart, and the peal from Sinai's brow; and, if these have been tried in vain, no argument is left which can touch the conscience and arouse the heart. If these people had never been exposed to these appeals, there would have been some hope for them; but what hope can there be now, since, in having passed through them without permanent effect, they have become more hardened in the process than they were at first?

Here is a man dragged from an ice-pond, and brought into the infirmary. Hot flannels are at once applied; the limbs are chafed; every means known to modern science for restoring life is employed. At first it seems as if these appliances will take effect, there are twitchings and convulsive movements; but, alas! they soon subside, and the surgeon gravely shakes his head. "Can you do nothing else?" "Nothing," he replies; "I have used every method I can devise; and if these fail, it is impossible to renew again to life."

This passage has nothing to do with those who fear lest it condemns them. The presence of that anxiety, like the cry which betrayed the real mother in the days of Solomon, establishes beyond a doubt that you are not one that has fallen away beyond the possibility of renewal to repentance. If you are still touched by Gospel sermons, and are anxious to repent, and are in godly fear lest you should be a castaway, take heart! these are signs that this passage has no bearing on you. Why make yourself ill with a sick man's medicine? But if you are growing callous and insensible under the preaching of the Gospel, look into this passage and see your doom, unless you speedily arrest your steps.

THE NATURAL ILLUSTRATION (ver. 7). Behold that field, well situated, prepared by careful culture and arduous toil: the good seed is scattered with lavish hand; the rain comes oft upon it; the sunshine kisses it; the seasons, as they pass, woo it to bear fruit. At first it would appear as if it were about to answer the expectations freely entertained. But see, the show of green which covers its face turns out to be a crop of briars and thorns. The owner for whom it was dressed comes to visit it. "What," cries he, "have you done all you could, this, and that, and the other?" "All," is the reply. Then the decision comes back, stern and sad, "It is useless to expend more time or care. Leave it to its fate. Let no fruit grow on it henceforth and forever."

We may resemble that field; and yet, whilst there is a spark of devotion, a thrill of holy longing, a sigh after a better life, a yearning to be penitent and holy, there is still hope. The great Husbandman will not cast us off, so long as there is one redeeming feature in our condition. He will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax. He will not fail, nor be discouraged, until he has made the desert into a garden, and the wilderness like the paradise of God.

Chapter 15
THE ANCHORAGE OF THE SOUL

"Be followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the 1)promises." HEBREWS vi. 12.

THE PROMISES OF GOD! That is a key-word here. Inherit the promises (ver. 12); God made promise (ver. 13); he obtained the promise (ver. 15); the heirs of promise (ver. 17). But perhaps the reiteration of the word does not awaken the interest or stir the heart of those who read it. We are so familiar with it; and, above all, we are not in circumstances which make the divine promises specially precious. The night of sorrow must obscure our sky, or we can never descry or appreciate the stars of promise that sparkle as gems in the firmament of Scripture. Those who are rich and increased in goods and have need of nothing cannot realize what the promises of God really mean.

Possessed of a good income, guaranteeing the supply of every need, it is of little moment that God has pledged himself to provide all needful things for those who seek his kingdom first. Environed by troops of faithful friends, like so many successive lines of defense intrenched in the strong fortress of position and rank, there is less interest in the assurance that God will be the shield and buckler, the munition of rocks, the refuge from the storm for his saints. But when riches dwindle, and friends fail, and health declines, and difficulty, persecution, and trial threaten, then the soul betakes itself to the promises of God, and cons them over, studying them by the hour together, until it wakes up to find mines of treasure under pages which were blank as the moorlands beneath which coal-beds lie. It would be well for some of us if God would strip us of all those things in which we place such confidence; so that we might be compelled, perhaps for the first time in our lives, to seek in himself all that we are now wont to seek in his gifts. Oh, blessed loss, which should teach us our true wealth! Oh, happy deprivation, which should reveal our inexhaustible resources! Oh, loving discipline, which should break the cisterns that hold the brackish rain-water, and compel us to betake ourselves to the river of God, which proceeds from the throne of God and the Lamb!

The lax and cursory manner in which we read pages begemmed with divine promise is largely due to the fact that we have never been put into such straits of sorrow and privation as to appreciate their value. One crushing trial would open up whole tracts of promise, which are now like the shut doors of a corridor in a royal palace. This is one reason why such a man as the Christian hero, Gordon, would spend hours over the Word of God, counting his Father's promises, holding them up as jewels in the sunshine, and rejoicing over them as great spoil; such men as he have had little else; they have had no other resources to fall back upon; they were driven to lay hold on them for very existence. And thus they fulfilled the enigma of the Apostle, "Having nothing, yet possessing all things." Those who are conscious of their poverty are they who become rich in faith, and heirs of the Kingdom.

It was in precisely such a condition that the Hebrews here addressed were found. Their goods had been spoiled; they had endured a great fight of affliction; they had been made a gazing stock both by reproaches and afflictions; all on which men are accustomed to rely had been swept from them; and therefore the Holy Ghost, in these pages, directs their minds to the exceeding great and precious promises, in which God pledged himself to supply all their need; and to furnish from his own treasuries all, and more than all, that they had lost; not giving them these things in visible possession, but supplying them as they were needed, and in proportion to their faith. It was surely a good exchange, to lose all, and to recover all in God!

GOD'S PROMISES ARE RELIABLE. A good man's word is his bond. And when such a one has given a promise our anxiety is allayed, our fears are quieted, we have strong consolation. But if, in addition to the promise, our friend has solemnly bound himself by an oath, calling heaven and earth to witness, and God to ratify, the asseveration is so momentous, the appeal so awful, the impression made on the mind so deep, that, whatever happens, the soul shelters itself in the immutability of his decision. It is doubly impossible for him to change or deceive. And this is the bond by which God has bound himself.

When dealing with Abraham, God gave him repeated promises, first of the land, then of the seed, also of the blessing which should accrue to all generations of men through him. On one occasion he went through the form of covenant making in vogue among the surrounding peoples (Gen. xv.17). But, on Mount Moriah, when the faithful patriarch had given the one stupendous evidence of faith and obedience, even unto death, God sware, and "because he could sware by no greater, he sware by himself." "By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord', (Gen. xxii. i6).

And so it is with us. We who by faith are the spiritual seed of Abraham are blessed with him. "The promise is sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all" (Rom. iv. 16). All the promises of God are Yea and Amen. He is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent. He has well calculated his resources, before he has pledged himself; and when once he has done so it is impossible that he should fail. Fall flat on the divine promises; cling to them as a shipwrecked sailor to the floating spar; venture all on them; their fulfillment is guaranteed by covenant and oath; by blood and agony and death; by the light of the resurrection morning and the glory of the ascension mount; by the experience of myriads, who have never found them fail. If any man living has found one promise untrustworthy, let him publish it to the world; and the heavens will clothe themselves in sackcloth, and the sun and moon and stars will reel from their seats, the universe will rock, and a hollow wind moan through creation, bearing the tidings that God is mutable, that God can lie. And that voice will be the herald of universal dissolution. But it can never, never be. Heirs of promise! God's power Is eternal, his counsel is immutable. Heaven and earth may pass away, but his word shall never pass away. Ye therefore may have strong consolation; though ye lose all else, your heritage in the word and oath of God shall be unimpaired, world without end.

GOD'S PROMISES, THUS ASSURED, MAKE AN ANCHORAGE FOR THE SOUL. Few things are more important for the mariner than to secure a good anchorage ground, where the soil will not give before the weight of the vessel and the strain of the storm. And with all those inclinations toward drifting which we have already considered, we urgently need to discover something permanent, unchanging, and satisfying, with which we may grapple by the anchor of our hope.

The faculty of hope in a Christian is not different to that of a worldly man. It is the same faculty or quality in each. But there is a vast difference in the ground in which the anchor is fixed. In the case of the worldly man, it is the loose, light, unreliable soil of peradventures and speculations. In the case of the Christian, it is the unyielding, immutable promise and oath of the Eternal God. Therefore the former is often darkened with mis-giving and fear; while the latter cries, without a shadow of doubt, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded."

Hope is something more than faith. Faith accepts and credits testimony; hope anticipates. Faith says the fruit is good; hope picks and eats. Faith is bud; hope blossom. Faith presents the check; hope lays out the amount received. And such hope is the anchor of the soul. The comparison between hope and an anchor is familiar even to heathen writers, and it is easy to see how fit it is. It steadies the soul. Take an illustration from common life. A young man pledges his troth to a poor but noble girl. He is drafted for foreign service, and says farewell for long years. Meanwhile she is left to do as well as she can to maintain herself. Work is scanty, wages low, she is sometimes severely tempted and tried. But, amidst all, she is kept true to her absent lover, and to her nobler self, by the little strand of hope which links her to a happy and united future. So, when suffering or tempted or discouraged, our hope goes forward into the blessed future, depicted on the page of Scripture in glowing colors, and promised by the word of him who cannot lie; and the anticipation of it fills the soul with courage and patience, so as to endure the trials of time, in view of the certain blessedness of eternity.

THE ANCHORAGE IN THE PROMISES HAS A THREEFOLD VALUE. It is sure, there is no fear of its failing; sure as the sure mercies of David; sure as the "everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure"; sure as God can make it. It is steadfast, its influence on the soul is to keep it steady: "Steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord." It entereth into that within the veil. In the ancient world, when there was not water enough to float a ship into the harbor, a man would carry the anchor over the shoals, and fix it in the calm waters of the inner basin. In some such way as this, our Lord Jesus, when, like the high-priest in the Jewish Tabernacle, he passed through the blue veil that hides the celestial world from ours, took our hope with him, and holds it there. The Lord Jesus is our hope (I Tim. i.1 ; I John iii. 3). He is our forerunner. He has preceded us into his Father's presence, the first fruits of them that slept. He has gone thither as our Representative and Priest. When he majestically passed from the sight of his disciples, and was hidden from the eyes that longingly followed him, he entered within the veil. There he ever liveth; and because of it our hopes follow him, center in him, and connect us already with that bright home of which he is the radiant center.

THERE ARE CERTAIN QUALITIES WHICH WE MUST LEARN TO EXERCISE. Faith and patience can alone inherit the promises (ver. 12). Abraham had patiently to endure before he received the promise (ver. 15). It is not easy to wait, or to let patience have her perfect work; and it is only possible to faith. There is no sublimer instance of long waiting than the history of Abraham, for which his faith nerved him, and to whom the promise was literally fulfilled. And so shall it be again. Patience weary, eager hearts. The time shall come when you shall lay hands on your capital; but be content in the meanwhile to enjoy the interest. The auspicious moment hastens when you shall know and taste all the blessedness of Paradise regained; but feast in the interim on the grapes of Eshcol, the pomegranates and other produce of the land. Claim the patience of Christ, of which the last of the apostles, who had need of it to sustain him in the long delay, so sweetly speaks (Rev. i. 9). "Be ye patient; stablish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh." "Let us run with patience the race set before us, looking unto Jesus." Thus shall we manifest "the patience of the saints"; and thus shall we, like those who have preceded us, finally inherit the promises.

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