war with mighty powers, and are not yet freed from the struggle. Forget not; that dearly redeemed people, must live above themselves, in the righteousness of Christ, and therefore grace is now and then withdrawn from them, in order that they may become conscious of their helplessness. But with all that, they are and will remain, a holy people, nay the only holy, because from the depths of their soul they love God, and that which is of God. We will not deny, that the secret of personal sanctification has sometimes suffered some perversion under the doctrine of justification through faith. We admit that many do not yet consider righteousness of life in the proper light. In the church we have always deduced sanctification from gratitude for pardon received, and placed in the mouth of the Lord this question to his disciples: "This did I for thee; what doest thou for me?" But Jesus never did ask this. Such language seems to attribute to man sanctification as his own work. The derivation of good works out of the gratitude due, savours of workmerit and legality, and has therefore not unfrequently weakened the attachment of Christians to the doctrine of sanctification. The Scripture refers sanctification of the faithful to Christ, their Head, as to its source, and teaches that, after Christ has first in himself represented us as blameless before the Father, he will next present us to him holy, as is the type and idea of man, implanted and developed within himself, and which he really transfers to the church, so that his glory may be manifested in it, even as the glory of the vine is set forth in its rich and clustering fruit. In this scriptural view, the doctrine of sanctification loses not only every objection of legality, but appears exceedingly attractive, and

quite evangelical, and when it is thus understood, it can only produce the most earnest longing that the Lord Jesus may likewise dwell in us;-thus it will also maintain as an eternal flame upon the altar of our heart that : "O do thou dwell in us."1 More and more prayer: 66 will the church learn to understand the sanctification of justification in the form just signified, and in time, it will bear as its precious fruit a more profound, evangelic view of one of the most blessed secrets of the whole Gospel. But even now, wherever there are found the fruits of sanctification which endure before God, whether it be pure love, or true humility, faith persevering unto death, or whatever it may be; it is not in the unbelieving world, but in the "little flock." And thus then I think, that we had better contentedly remain with His little community. For this changeful vineyard of the Lord, even now, in all the obscurity in which it appears, is the noblest and most beautiful which the earth bears,-a living mirror of Christ, although for a time one of manifest gloom, nay, as the apostle calls it, "The fulness of Him that filleth all in

all."2

Therefore let us no longer exchange "the living fountains" for "wells without water." We shall not be able to make it evident, even to our natural reason, that it is more advisable to cling to the fluttering banners of a socalled "prevailing enlightenment," than to the standards of Zion. The heart which has a consciousness of its inmost necessities, sees in the glory of going with the multitude a miserable equivalent for the sacrifice of comfort in life and death. What we have chosen endures as the "good part;" what they offer us, shines only Ephes. i. 23.

1 2 Cor. vi. 16.

2

until it comes to the proof! Let us therefore be no more troubled. Whether we follow them hither or thitherwards, and are inclined to embrace, at this moment or that, yonder cloud of vapour; we know, that at the end we should mournfully cast down our eyes, and are led the more impressively to repeat the exclamation, "Lord, whither shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life!"

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XI.

ELISHA'S JOURNEY TO DAMASCUS.

SO

IN St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews,1 we meet with a passage full of meaning: "As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment; Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation." An awakening voice speaks to us in these words, a voice of warning and consolation.

The apostle here surprises the son of the dust amidst the childish levity of his earthly pursuits, and the vain phantoms of his temporal hopes and plans, with a loud command to pause, and strikes into his God-forgetting heart the injunction, "Man, remember thyself!" and lifts him out of the deadening tumult of his ordinary thoughts, in order to make him survey, as from a serene height, his whole course of life, and to direct his attention to the dark final catastrophe of his existence. There impends, he says, over man, an inevitable destiny, an irrevocable divine decree is pronounced upon him; there' is a threefold sentence passed upon him by God: "that he shall die; that he is once to die; and after that the judgment!" That is the end of the short day of mist of our earthly life.

1 Hebrews ix. 27, 28.

"To die" is the first, that is appointed unto us. At all our cradles thus sung our evil angel: “Man, thou art dust, and shalt again return to dust." But the dissolution of the body does not exhaust the entire meaning of that terrible word; that expression involves something still more awful. St. Paul has in view not that death which a Simeon, a Stephen, a John died; but that which was threatened as a curse: that death, at which no Mediator stands by the side of the gasping sufferer; at which no loving hand, extended from the clouds, dries away the sweat from his brow; no angelchoir surrounds him; but at which he, "who has the power of death" exercises his functions. This judgment of death is passed upon all who depart from the right way, and if I feel I am wandering from Jesus, then I think nothing more certain, than that it will be executed upon myself.

This death is "appointed," unto us sinners, and he who dies it, has only "once to die," says the apostle. No middle state after this; no second life of preparation, no new school for heaven; but "to die,” and after that -the "crisis" says the Greek text: the "decision," the "judgment !" Horrible! Dreadful! Who trembles not!-Yes, tremble to the inmost recesses of your being; only-despair not!

Next after the awakening voice follows that sentence of warning. Whether or not it is thus "appointed" by God, as we have just learned, still the great sacrifice, although it has not entirely cancelled that awful doom, has averted it from those who walk in the paths of the divine commands.

"And as," says the apostle, that is: in the same sense, in the same manner, as—“it is appointed unto men