will to do any thing without first taking counsel with God. Here was the error of Joshua and the princes in the matter of the Gibeonites. We stay not to inquire whether self-love is the parent of self-will, or the reverse: they are twin rebels and must be put down. But who is to do it? We, if we will; if not, God, whether we will or not.

4. One other sphere of self-judgment must be named, i.e., the mortification of the flesh with its affections and lusts.

As those who have put on Christ we cannot love those monsters which still lurk within us. Neither can our will be that they should bring us into captivity; we cannot will their fulfilment, for then we should be "as Cain who slew his brother." Our self-love is seen in defending ourselves against imputations which these indwelling foes may bring upon us, instead of saying, "I have sinned." Our selfwill is seen in adopting measures which these subtle passions may have suggested, regardless of the Spirit which is against the flesh. The lusts are to be mortified-put to death: the will is to be subdued, "bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." (2 Cor. x. 5.) How shall this be done? Let there be this unshakable conviction: "in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." This is a good starting point. Now then for the course. I desire something which I esteem good. Let me pause and say, Father, may I have it?" No, my child, it seems good, but it is full of evil for thee." Or, "I will, be it unto thee according to thy faith." But will our heavenly Father thus plainly speak to us? He will, by His word or some other way. If this be true, it will be seen at once how we must set about this great business. How can I distinguish between flesh and the Spirit? How shall we distinguish objects in a dark room? By taking a light. Now says the Spirit,

Ye are light in the Lord." (Eph, v. 8.) It is true of the whole word, as of prophecy in particular, it is "a light shining in a dark place to which ye do well to take heed." (2 Pet. ii. 19.) There is no cause of stumbling

66

to him who walketh in the light. If, then, I take the word of God for "a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path," I shall never walk in darkness. Again, Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto, according to Thy Word." He that disregards this, forsakes his own mercy. The mortification of the flesh is always in proportion to the cultivation of " the fruit of the Spirit," and this is by the reading of the Word. Thus says one: "I have more understanding than all my teachers, for Thy testimonies are my meditation.' Thus the Spirit must increase, and the flesh decrease.

Prayer is not undervalued because the reading of God's Word is so lauded. It is a twin means of grace; so thinks Paul, "praying with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit." In prayer we speak to God, in His word He speaks to us: sometimes else, but mainly thence. The most diligent in the use of these means is the one who is the most "thoroughly furnished unto all good works." Our Great Master was a man of prayer, and a diligent reader of the word of God: thus, as in other things, He hath left us an example that we should walk in His steps. We have to be on our guard respecting prayer lest the example of others should discourage us; thus Moses says, I fell down before the Lord, as at the first, forty days and forty nights; I did neither eat bread nor drink water, because of all your sins, . . . but the Lord hearkened unto me." (Deut. ix. 18-20.) Moses was miraculously sustained. Of our Lord it is said, "He went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God." (Luke vi. 12.) Let no one think that such is required of him, or he will be in bondage. But what, O believer, doth thy God require of thee? Not what others do, not to follow implicity what they teach, though they may be learned in the Word, and holy men of God. In few words Jesus Himself tells you, "keep My commandments." Whilst we read and adore Him in His ways, and desire to be like Him in theseyea, seek to be like Him, there

must be a limit to such an imitation: but there is no limit to the work of keeping His commandments. Now He does command us to pray, but not to pray all night, nor even for an hour; though there are many of His servants who, having spent one hour thus covet another. Perhaps as we increasingly become acquainted with our need we shall be more in prayer. Now this is one thing to pray for-that He will more and more make us feel this need. We are needy, we should know it. It was a sad condition of some who said, “I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing," and yet they were really "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.' Yet these same were not mere worldlings, for said He, "who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks," as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten; be zealous, therefore, and repent;" so the Lord deals with the Laodicean Church (Rev. iii. 1719.)

It seems clear that in order to come and get profit from the word of God, or to commune profitably with God in prayer, there must be a sense of need; and also a full and abiding conviction that "God is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." (Heb. xi. 6.)

One might suppose that with a sense of need there would be a desire to have that need met. This is not always so. Pride may be in the way; this must be humbled. Oh! what a weary time is this in some cases. Even to God some poor ones of His family can scarcely humble themselves, never to their fellow creatures, however deeply they may have wronged them; and hence there is Never! never peace. Well, never does it "flow as a river," which it might and ought. If God will have His due, so does He will that others should have theirs: yea, until we have humbled ourselves to our justly offended brother, there will be no happy consciousness that God has accepted our submission to Him. God is jealous over the rights of His children; yea, of all His creaturesas well as of His own.

Another of the "stones of empti

ness that must be gathered out is slothfulness. This is not "a little fox," but more like "the boar out of the wood." Not only does this monster bark the pleasant trees, but it disfigures the green pastures. Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep," and who can see with the eyes shut? In this deep sleep there is a forgetting of being cleansed from old sins. On this is founded the exhortation "give diligence."

"Now of the things we have spoken this is the sum." By washing, we are set free from certain positive disqualifications for communion with God. By sanctification, we are partakers of His holiness, and thus are brought into positive relationship with Him. By washing, we are relieved of certain repulsive disfigurements which might well be expressed in the language of the prophet, "Thou wast cast out in the open field, to the loathing of thy person.' (Ezek. xvi. 5.) By sanctification, we are adorned with certain ornaments which make our Almighty Lover exclaim, "How fair and how pleasant art Thou, O love, for delights." (Cant. vii. 6.) By washing, we are enfranchised; by sanctification, ennobled. By washing, we are purified; by sanctification, all our garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces." (Ps. xlv. 8.) By washing, we are dissociated from "the unbelieving and the abominable;" by sanctification we are "set with princes, even the princes of His people." (Ps. cxiii. 8.) By washing we are made comely; by sanctification we are made all glorious within." (Ps. xlv. 13.) By washing we lose what our nature has given us; by sanctification we are made

66

46

partakers of the Divine nature." By washing we lose all of earth; by sanctification we gain heavenly grandeur.

It is on the ground of sanctification in Christ that we are urged to be holy. It is the duty of every one to be holy, but the unregenerate are not thus urged faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is the only initiatory step for this holiness. We who have believed are addressed as "holy brethren," that is, as elsewhere, "sanctified in

Christ Jesus" (1 Cor. i. 2), and because of this condition in Christ are thus exhorted "gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ, as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance, but as He that hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation." (1 Pet. i. 1315.)

Thus does it appear that sanctification is not merely a dogmatic principle, but eminently a practical exhibition of the children of light. In them is no darkness, if so be they walk in the light-" the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world."

"I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through Thy truth; Thy word is truth." (John xvii. 15-17.)

III. JUSTIFICATION.

WHILST washing designates a state of freedom from all impurity, and sanctification suggests a condition pure indeed and holy as that of one who is washed, but more, even of a higher and holier nature; justification predicates a termination of a judicial suit instituted on a charge of guilt. There is nothing analogous to washing in an earthly court of justice; there is, faintly, to sanctification; wholly so to justification, which is equivalent to an acquittal on the resolve of equity. If washing could be accomplished in human litigation the plantiff would be nonsuited, for there would be no bill. Were this not among the provisions of heavenly jurisprudence-indeed its initial act-grace would

be

shamed. The grace of God is holy; the grace of man is pitying, sympathetic. They are both congruous, suited to the nature and character of the exhibitor. Nor could it be otherwise: "He can be just and yet the justifier of them that believe." The wisdom of God might devise number

less plans for His love to work in, but His holiness demands certain conditions; and before ever the sinner can be brought into practical conscious relationship to God he must be washed, or "purged from his old sins;" and if he would maintain · this fellowship, he must retain this consciousness.

The doctrine of atonement, as does not commonly apprehended, enter into the simple process of washing, though it involves it. But when we speak of justification, which the same process effects, we are conscious at once of something deeper than mere cleansing. One who has washed another does not justify him by this act from a charge of heedlessness, or blame, in contracting uncleanness. Justification involves washing, but it does more. He who has been forgiven an offence is not hence a just man, but he who has never committed one. This is the standard in severe jurisprudence. In social communities, extrajudicially, he is accounted just who is actuated by upright principles. Under the law, the first is the rigid condition of life-" this do, and thou shalt live:" under grace, the latter is accepted in Him who is made alive

66

the just shall live by faith," and "he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous." Washing effects no more than a restoration to the primal condition, unless there is something in the cleansing agency of a renewing character. It is just this that we assert of the blood of Christ-that it is competent for washing, for sanctification, and for justification; and furthermore, that these three embody the atonement.

meet a higher condition of good than the law he is under. He may have exceeded the liberty granted by the laws of a neighbouring state, but he is not amenable to that. If, therefore, he is careful to "render to all their dues," the law takes no cognisance of covetousness, envy, jealousy, and the like, which do not overtly invade the rights of others. Private chicanery that despises the command to love our neighbour as ourselves; cold neglect that leaves a wife to pine away in lonely misery; selfishness that suffers the poor to starve, or fellow inmates of the same dwelling to shrink in dread from its brutal requirements; haughty pride that contemns the approval of others, or sickly vanity that craves it-all these, and various other debasing lusts, man's administrative capacity can have no enactments for. Man, as a creature, stands before a higher tribunal than he himself can or ought to frame. The Judge of all the earth hears our appeal, and shall He not do the thing that is right?

In a

strict equity inquiry mercy cannot be heard. Mercy may appear to modify the sentence; and in an earthly court this has a peculiar appropriateness. "Remember thyself," says the Spirit; and whenever we would judge of others or judge them, if we must-we should thus check the native cruelty of our hearts.

God is Judge. Man is the party to be judged.

We say, God is the Judge or Accuser, for virtually it is the same if we say the law is for what is the law but the expression of the character of God-"holy, and just, and good?" Some have asserted-irreverently, though not conscious of it-that God is a subject of law, because that law, irrespective of His will, is inerrably right. But God is thus no longer a Sovereign on the throne of eternity-He is a subject. What God wills is law; and He wills because it is in accord with all the attributes of His incomprehensible Godhead, The inevitable will determines, but the councils of ineffable perfections have suggested every detail of the inscrutable whole. If vain man desires to find a flaw,

speedily is his impious vanity gratified, and he utters his daring judg ment, declaring that "the god of the Jews is not the one whom we ought to worship."* Enlightened men boast that they do not bow down to idols, works of men's hands; but if they do not worship the calf, their hearts are electrotyped with its gold.

If, however, men frame anything like an adequate notion of God-of a supreme Being-it is that He is holy. When they hesitate to accept any thing ascribed to Him, such as the afflictions of Job, the murder by Jael, the exterminating wars of the Israelites under Joshua, &c., it is on the ground that He is holy and therefore just. They fail to understand, and therefore refuse to accept the Scripture account of Him. In solving a mathematical problem the omission of a stroke (-) mars the solution. In considering the Deity, men are impatient under the thought of His unapproachable and inappreciable wisdom, and so ignore it. We must accept the fact and rest in it, when even His love seems to fail, and reason would condemn it. This notion of God's holiness is right in the abstract, but wrongly applied.

In these inquiries now being made, we assert of God infinite holiness, of which we can conceive of nothing more than actual purity and impossible impurity.

We have suggested that the judge in any court does not require a higher degree of excellence than he himself possesses: now we add that he must, as a just judge, and himself a spotless exponent of that law, demand as much. God is all this to man-to us who "are under sin." Oh, who shall deliver?

This, then, is the demand of the Judge-actual purity and impossible impurity. If this is a true statement, we then see that simple washing will not suffice, unless we attach to the term "washing" a more than natural significance: this the Scriptures often seem to do, though it is

* An actual utterance of a Jew in London to the author.

questionable; for, as we have said, one may be washed and no more than clean.

Actual purity, then, is an effect of washing: impossible impurity must likewise be there where the Judge looks for an answer to the imperative, relentless demands which He Himself makes as the exponent of His own law.

To refer again to the process of dyeing. Though three distinct processes have been accomplished on the article, it is commonly spoken of as one. The third, not yet alluded to, is the application of a mordant. This is not an invariable part in the dyeing of a garment: its object is to fix the colour. Earthly things vanish away, but "I know," says Solomon, "that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever." (Eccles. iii. 14.) Eminently so is it with those who have been washed in the blood of the Lamb. Not only are they made clean and pure in the eyes of an infinitely holy Judge, but through the preciousness of the blood of Christ-God's mordant-they must be for ever continued in that state.

But there is another view of this blood besides its preciousness which confirms this testimony-" the blood is the life." In this blood-this life, we are plunged, and we thus become permeated, imbued with this life; so that not only does Jesus give His life for His sheep, but to them. How vividly does that word then stand before us, "your life is hid with Christ in God."

But further. The essential righteousness of Christ is a constituent of His life. He thus gives to His people this righteousness, and this righteousness alone can meet the demand of the infinitely righteous God, the Judge of all. This righteousness is not hence essential to the redeemed-it is imparted, not self-existent.

Here then is seen the justification of all who believe in Him who gave Himself "a ransom for many." Justification and righteousness have the same root (dikŋ, justice): now righteousness is but rightness, and so also justification is nothing more or less-a putting right. Thus impos

sible impurity meets the searching gaze of Him whose eyelids try

66

the children of men," and He is satisfied.

Having thus searched out the ground of the justification of the sinner, we identify it with the Scripture basis-sanctification. Now this sanctification, as already remarked, has a faint analogue in a human law court; only faint, because of the infinite requirement by God who is the Judge of all; and on no other ground is there a disproportion.

So then, although the washing is only commensurate with the defilement, the sanctification is satisfactory to the demands of an infinitely holy Judge. Hence also, in all the claims of the God of the spirits of all flesh," who, through redemption, has become our Father in Christ Jesus, the terms are not lessened; thus He says, "Be ye holy, for I am holy." Moreover, thus He views us in His Son, as He is, so are we in this world." (1 John iv. 17.)

66

Thus do we establish our justification on a basis which even inexorable justice cannot challenge.

"Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor? For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to Him be glory for ever. Amen." (Rom. xi. 33-36.)

On this doctrine we adduce some corroborative Scriptures.

Rom. v. 9: "Justified by His blood." We find here precisely the same agency enunciated for justification, as for washing and sanctification. Wonderful is the scheme, wonderful the means! Is the result commensurate? Surely it is: "As I live," saith Jehovah, "all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord." (Num. xiv. 21.) Have we plumbed the depths of the wondrous love of God? "Oh the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!" (Rom. xi. 33.) The Infinite alone can measure