cord and manifest dissension between the two parties the entire volume of the Old Testament protested. The root of this evil was neglect of the "instruction" given by the prophets, forgetfulness of the great "hope" they announced to universal man, and slowness of heart to learn the "patience and consolation" which their predictions, through the Spirit's grace, infuse. To the mind of St. Paul it concerned the highest glory of God that the ancient dis tinction between Gentile and Jew should be utterly abolished and forgotten. To this high level of contemplation he had long since risen with Christ. To this high level the Christians of Rome had not risen. A large concluding section of his epistle is devoted to the endeavour to raise them out of their unevangelical position: a labour of love which engaged his whole soul. His arguments are enforced by the example and teaching of Christ, by the supreme revelation of the glory of the Divine counsel, and by the blessedness of the common patience, consolation, and hope of the Gospel. But here, as everywhere, his mightiest argument is prayer. It is his manner whenever he would stimulate his readers to the highest achievements and attainments of grace, or impress upon them the importance of some great forgotten duty, to make them kneel with him. This observation may be verified by a glance at the long series of his Epistles: the solitary exception being that to the Galatians. On the present occasion he can scarcely wait. till the argument proper is ended. He breaks off mid-way, and cries: "May that God who gives patience and strength through the Scriptures grant you to have but one sentiment of love towards each other, even as Christ has but one feeling towards you, holding you all equally dear may He give you one faith towards Him who is not the God of Jews and of Gentiles respectively, but of one common humanity in the Person of Jesus Christ; that you may, with one unvaried and accordant confession, glorify Him in the name of the One Saviour of all."

3. But the Prayer has survived its original purpose; it belongs to the universal Church, and has its relation to every community, with an obligation resting upon each individual confessor of the name of Jesus. Unity is the one topic that emerges out of the whole the unity of brotherly love, the unity of common faith in the mediatorial God, and the unity of a worshipping confession. Each of these is the gift of God, but only a gift of God that blesses the effort of man to attain it. All that has to be said on this unity in general has been anticipated in the exposition of the Prayer in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. But there is one feature peculiar to this passage which will amply repay our attention. is the unity of mind and voice in the glorification of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Those who mind the same thing

in the concord of brotherly love must make His name the centre of unity that seems to be the meaning of "according to Christ Jesus;" His name is the standard of union, and not its example. So, also, their union in the purest worship of the Gospel is the unity of thought and word in the confession of the Divine Father of the Person of Christ. In other words, the confession and adoration of God in Christ, with all that is involved in it, is the bond of unity in the worship of the Christian Church.

Our English translation, "God even the Father of our Lord," does not expressly indicate this, or rather expresses it in a diluted form. The word "even" is needless. The sacred formula

throughout St. Paul's writings is always faithful to our Lord's own saying, "I ascend to My God and your God," which declares at once an immeasurable difference and an essential unity between His relation and ours to the common Father. In Eph. i. 17, "The God of our Lord Jesus Christ is the object of Christian prayer as He is here the object of Christian praise. In that passage the acknowledgment of our Saviour's incarnate relation to God is said to be the highest wisdom of revelation, as we shall hereafter see; in this passage the relation of God to the Incarnate Saviour is said to be the subject of highest worship. There is no difficulty in understanding this, if we remember that in the mystery of Christ's Person God in all His fulness is revealed to us; but not simply as God, rather as God incarnate, the Godhead "dwelling bodily in His fulness" in Christ. (Col. ii. 9.) In the mediatorial economy of the Trinity the Father is God, as it were absolutely; the Son incarnate, one with the Father in eternal dignity, is in the dispensation of grace and the return of glory subordinate as Mediator; the Spirit proceedeth from the Father and the Son as, touching redemption, subordinate to both. The bold but reverent maintenance of this truth is necessary if we would form a right theory of New-Testament devotion. It does not by any means imperil the co-equal dignity of the other Persons of the Trinity, who, "for a season if need be," are the Father's Ministers in the execution of His will. The glorification of the Son is included in that of the Father, if we remember that the Father is the "God of Jesus Christ:" that is, not the "Head of Christ" simply, (1 Cor. xi. 3,) but the God who, in the redeeming manifestation of the Trinity, is known only as revealed in the Son. The "Christ of God" is the "God of Christ;" and the "God of Christ" is really "God in Christ." So, also, in the neighbouring prayer the "power of the Holy Ghost" is no less than the Divine power of a Personal Agent; for, in this sense also, "there is no power but of God." While all prayer goes up to the Father through the Mediator by the Holy Spirit, it is the Holy Trinity in

the Person of the Father who receives human supplication. And, while all praise glorifies the God and Father of Jesus Christ, the only God whom mortals know, it is the praise of the Triune God that the Father, if such language may be allowed, representatively receives. The right understanding of all this depends upon our sound conceptions of the two temporal Missions of the Son and the Spirit on these two subordinations, received in the simplicity of Christian faith, hang all the mysteries of the worship of redemption.

The glorification of God as revealed in the Person of Christ is here said to be a confession of the common mind and common voice of the Church. There is no express distinction between the faith and the worship. The faith is the body of the worship, and the worship the spirit of the faith: but these two are one. How all Divine doctrine and Divine praise are wrapped up in the knowledge and acknowledgment of God in Christ we shall more fully see when we come to the Ephesian Prayers. The one thought that is peculiar to our present passage, which therefore must be pointed out particularly, is the petition that God would grant this unity of confession. St. Paul prays that the Romans might live together in peace, minding the same thing "according to Christ Jesus." And then he rises to the highest manifestation of that unity in their glorifying God with one mind and one mouth. Both gifts are Divine. It is God that maketh men to be of one mind in a house; and it is the same God who by His Spirit reveals that knowledge on which a true worshipping confession is based. This is the abiding need of the Church; and the supply of this need is the supply of all need. It is a perversion of our Prayer, a perversion as superficial as it is dangerous, to say that the unity of the Christian confession is secured if men agree to worship the common Father through Christ. The confession here referred to includes all the fundamentals of complete evangelical truth. It is a very large, and full, and glorious acknowledgment of the "mystery of God and of Christ." There is no petition more important than this in the present day. When we offer it in these times, we must forget the divisions of the church at Rome. There are divisions among us in comparison of which the differences of the Jewish and Gentile Christians, however critical, were slight. When St. Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans there were two evils that interfered with the unity of faith that of the "weak," who in their bigotry limited the Gospel; that of the "strong," who in their license would make it too free. The same evils reign after long centuries of the Spirit's administration; but they are intensified and aggravated, and give but slight signs of arrest. Bigotry and Latitudinarianism still fight against the simplicity of

faith. Our refuge is in the charity, on the one hand, that cultivates brotherly love "according to Christ Jesus ;" and, on the other, the fervent prayer which maintains a sound confession in preaching and teaching whilst it supplicates the universal outpouring of the Spirit of truth. Our Lord's witnesses on earth, bearing their testimony against a multitude of errors, must unite in this Prayer of the Apostle, remembering amidst all their discouragements the special attribute here given to the Hearer of their prayer, "The God of patience and consolation."

HOPE.

"Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost."-Rom. xv. 13.

THIS Prayer is closely connected with the preceding. The more immediate and obvious link seems to be the final word of the quotation, "In Him shall the Gentiles hope;" but, if we look closely, we see that the note of hope had been struck before: "that we through the patience and consolation of Scripture might have the Hope." We need not, however, pause on the connection. The Apostle has lost sight of it, and gives us his solitary Prayer on this grace of the Christian life in a manner perfectly independent, thus adding an element indispensable to the completeness of the series of his Apostolic Supplications. Hope is its one subject, whether we regard the God to whom it is addressed, or the fulness of the blessing which it asks.

1. The Author of Redemption derives some of the most precious among His many names from the Gospel which manifests His glory. As that Gospel rests upon an accomplished propitiation, He is the God of grace," "the Father of mercies," with an abundance of attributes attending these names; as that Gospel displays its present effects in the souls of men, He is "the God of peace," and His name of names is Love; as that Gospel reserves its blessedness for the future, especially the final future, He is "the God of hope." Hence it is an undue limitation to make this mean "the Giver of hope." The signification is rather that God is the Author and Fountain of the entire Christian salvation as it is not yet revealed and imparted. This includes both a wide range and an interminable perspective. Taking the former, there is hardly an aspect of the redeeming work which "the God of hope" does not preside over. The Son, whom He has sent is "Christ Jesus, our hope," 1 Tim. i. 1; the Gospel is the foundation of a great hope, Col. i. 23; the Christian vocation is summed up in hope, Eph. i. 18; salvation is our comprehensive hope, 1 Thess. v. 8; Rom. viii. 20, 24. Taking the latter, the future is a glorious sequence of revelations which the God of hope has yet

to disclose. There is the hope of the glorious appearing of God and our Saviour, Titus ii. 13; the hope of the resurrection, which is the redemption of all past pledges, and the new earnest of all that is to come, 1 Thess. iv. 13; the hope of righteousness by 'faith, which, although already imparted, is to be sealed as a final declaration of righteousness through Christ imputed and imparted, Gal. v. 5; the hope of salvation, as the final deliverance from every evil that our nature has ever known, 1 Thess. v. 8; Rom. viii. 20; the hope of eternal life, as more than mere deliverance, Titus i. 2, iii. 7 ; the hope of glory, which admits no paraphrase but the word perfection, Col. i. 27; Rom. v. 2; 2 Cor. iii. 12. Now, it would be easy to show that every one of these forms of the one great Gospel blessing is referred to God as its Author. And when He is called "the God of the Hope," we must give the expression a wide meaning. As He is the God of Creation, Redemption, and Providence, so also He is the God of the Gospel Hope.

2. But the Prayer refers to the establishment, assurance, and abundance of the Christian hope as imparted by the Holy Spirit to believers. Though other terms are found here, it may easily be seen that they pay their tribute to this one grace; and it is the observation of this fact that gives the interpretation its only key. Faith is the root of hope; the peace and joy which are the fruits of faith are the nourishment of hope; and the abundance of hope is here in a certain sense made the perfection of the Christian life as it is a life of probation. .

Faith and hope are within the soul so united and inseparable, that the only definition of both contained in Scripture makes them all but identical: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for." They are one in this, that their objects are invisible: Faith is "the evidence of things not seen," and "we hope for that we see not." But they always and essentially differ in this, that in the economy of salvation faith has to do with the present, and hope only with the future; or, rather, that faith brings the past, and hope the future, into the reality of the present moment. Faith and hope blend in the experience of the now that is; but faith brings its assurance of a mercy resting upon the work already wrought, and hope its assurance of a salvation yet to be revealed. Faith rests upon the "It is finished," already spoken; hope rejoices in the assurance of another "It is finished," which the creation groans to hear. But, while they thus are counterparts, it is obvious that faith must have the pre-eminence as being the parent of hope. We may conceive of a faith without hope, shut up to the present moment, however difficult the conception may be; but we cannot conceive of a hope that does not believe in its object. Hence, when the Apostle is about to invoke upon the Romans the