infinite mercy and goodness without affection or gratitude? Can we behold divinity in the form of flesh, the Son of God giving himself a ransom for many, bearing our infirmities, suffering for our sins, and not love Him because he first and so loved us? Can we think of his everlasting kingdom, of its threatenings and its promises, of its terrors and its hopes, and not seek refuge in Him, whose is all power therein, and who “hath the keys of hell and death?"15 We believe it is for his sake that all the mercies we now enjoy, or the far greater ones we hope for, are granted to us; that it is by Him we are redeemed from death, and have the blessed hope of everlasting life; that it is his blood which (alone) cleanseth us from all sin, and by faith in which alone we are saved. We believe that we "are accounted righteous before God only for his merits, not our own; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and not for our own merits or deservings."16 We believe that he shall come to be our Judge," to cast the wicked into outer darkness, and take the good to everlasting joy;

that the life which we now live in the flesh we are to live, "by the faith of the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us;" that "our life is hid with Christ in God," but that when "he who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory;" and that if we now abide with him, he will with us, fitting and preparing us for that eternal state in which we shall " abide with him for ever."

These are the points to which in this chapter we are more especially led, and to which in this part of his conversation with his disciples their attention was directed. These were the doctrines upon which they were to found his church; and the directions which he gives in the remaining verses of it relate more especially to their mission, when, for that purpose, they were to go into the world. But in his passage through it every member of Christ's Church hath need of the same union with Him, and must strengthen it by all the methods which he hath prescribed.

The first is by frequent contemplation on Him, and on the relation in which we stand to Him.

17 Col. iii. iv.

You were baptised by his direction into that faith which engages you to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present life; which gives you indeed an interest in his redemption, but requires you first to become a "new creature," to be "renewed in the spirit of your mind," to "do that which he commands in order to your obtaining that which he doth promise." This, however, is no easy task, and he therefore urges the necessity of that mutual abiding by earnest belief and endeavours on your part, and the assurance of assistance upon his; if you neglect to "hold fast by Him," you expose yourselves to the suggestions of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and will be led into what is wrong; and if, on the contrary, you remember and impress upon your minds all that Christ hath done and suffered for you-of his coming to save you, of his urging you to save yourselves through him, and of his coming again to enquire what has been your life, deciding accordingly your eternal statethese things are in themselves so momentous and so vast, that if really believed, and made an abiding principle, they must influence the life

and conduct of every creature that hath a mind to understand or a heart to feel.

But as even this must be the work of a mightier power, as we are not able to do these things of ourselves, nor to walk in his commandment and to please him without his special grace preventing us, "that we may have a good will, and working with us when we have that good will," we are taught to come to Him for that purpose in prayer, and in his public worship strengthen those views of Him which then more vividly are set before us, and to the due observance of which ordinance he hath promised more especially to be present. The objects with which we are most familiar influence us most. By much converse with the world, we lose the relish for spiritual things; we become more indifferent to them. In the hours of religious exercises different thoughts arise; they "renew a right spirit within us;" our attention is turned from things temporal to things eternal; and we feel the reality of all our Saviour did and said: we hear his word, we hear it as speaking to ourselves, "abide in me and I in you." Though he be exalted

far above all principalities and powers, we are reminded that there is still the same care and love and tenderness (infinitely enhanced, indeed, and sublimed) for us now, as there was for his disciples; and if, in his conduct towards them, we trace the solicitude of a friend, a parent, and a Saviour, our very gratitude kindles into devotion and rises with adoring thoughts towards him in that state, where, "with the Father and the Holy Ghost, he liveth and reigneth ever one God world without end."

Frequent communion in the Lord's supper might seem the last, and is, as its very name denotes, the instituted channel and ordinance to convey spiritual life and strength; the rite ordained by Christ himself, in which his mercy seems to shine more brightly, and in which he manifests himself unto us, not as when we are in the world; and the consideration of it in this view, the duty therefore of observing it, might be fully and separately treated on.

But by whatever means that constant and sacred intercourse may be preserved, it is our bounden duty to consider; it is the privilege of