With reference to our intercourse with the world, it becomes us to hear the message of God. Our Lord declares it when he says, "I pray not, that Thou wouldst take them out of the world, but that thou wouldst keep them from the evil." We must not seclude ourselves from the world's duties in order to escape from its temptations. A conventual life, were it doctrinally pure, is a mechanical, not a moral and real seclusion from the world. We may destroy the body, and yet not subdue its lusts. We may, with Jonah, prefer to flee from the presence of the Lord rather than to do his will. Selfishness may prescribe our withdrawal from the world, and a show of wisdom and will-worship may be the only actuating motives. We are not called upon to cease to be artisans in order to become Christians. “In the world” is our position, "Not to be of the world" is our duty. Let not the fear of the world ensnare us, nor the attractions of the world dazzle us. We must guard our hearts alike against the joys that would dissolve them in sensual and earthly sympathies, and against the passions and lusts that would creep inward and curl around them, and lock them in selfishness or in sin. Every frail thing approaches us in the garb of good; selfishness in the likeness of prudence-the sacrifice of righteousness as the common custom-asceticism in the robe of piety-extravagance in that of respectability—revenge comes as self-respect, and murder in the plausibilities of honour. Satan gains the greatest victories as an angel of light. God promises to keep you from the evil of the world by his word, providence, and Holy Spirit. Pray evermore, Deliver us from evil. Pray not against poverty, but against murmur

ing and discontent; nor against riches, but against their snares. God bids you pray, and this is his message: "Remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me, lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.'

Let us listen, above all, to such weighty portions of God's message as the following: "There are none righteous, no, not one.' "All flesh has corrupted its way." "By one man's disobedience, many were made sinners." These words describe the natural condition of us all. There may be shades of guilt, and intermingling rays of moral beauty, but the substance of the charge is strictly and universally true.

The same message assures us, "The soul that sing shall die." "The wages of sin is death." Thus, in the mind of God, sin and suffering are associated, not by any arbitrary and variable bonds, but inseparably and eternally. Crime and penalty are cause and effect, and the last fire shall not dissolve nor eternity exhaust the connection. This is a very solemn part of the message of God.

It involves us all, it places all under sentence of death, for all are guilty.

But the same blessed message announces the evangelistic truth, Christ died for our sins." "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth from all sin." "In him we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins." These are the texts that embody the great and distinctive provision of the gospel. It is good news-the news of deliverance to the captive; acquittal to the condemned; acceptance to the cast-off; and life eternal to the dead. These, and

kindred truths, like the foundation-stones of the an cient capital of Rome, lie deep and solid, with nothing below them but the Rock of ages; and on these only may we construct our plea for pardon, our aspirations after communion with God, our hopes of glory and acceptance for ever. The great doctrine of the atonement is the very essence of Christianity. It is no indifferent dogma. It ought to stand out in all creeds, churches, and systems; in our faith, our hearts, our hopes, like Chimborazo under the line, running up from its torrid base through all the climates of the globe, with belts of the herbage of every latitude along the surface of its mottled sides. It is life eternal to know thee the only true God and thy Son Jesus Christ.

It is also recorded in this message, and impressed by various arguments and illustrations, "Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of heaven." This is laid down as an essential preliminary to our entrance into heaven. Without this change we cannot cross the threshold of heaven or mingle with the blessed. It is not baptism-it is not outward morality it is not a name, but a total transformation of heart, and nature, and life. It is a new creation. Be what you may, if you are not born again, you are far from God.

Believer, child of God, heir of immortality, there is also a message from God for thee. "By grace art thou saved." You are surrounded by the everlasting arms. You live amid benedictions. Seas and hills and hurricanes seem to lie between you and God, but they cannot repel you or intercept your fellowship with him. God's love ever around your head as an aureole,

and within your heart as an undying flame, will make the burning sands of the desert grow green beneath your feet, and its stunted shrubs blossom as the rose. All things bless him whom God has blessed. All things work together for good to him.

"Blessed for ever and ever be that mother's child whose faith hath made him the child of God. The earth may shake, the pillars thereof may tremble under us, the countenance of the heavens may be appalled, the sun may lose his light, the moon her beauty, and the stars their glory; but concerning the man that trusted in God, if the fire have proclaimed itself unable so much as to singe a hair of his head; if lions, beasts ravenous by nature, and keen by hunger, being set to devour, have, as it were, religiously adored the very flesh of a faithful man, what is there in the world that shall change his heart, overthrow his faith, alter his affections toward God, or the affections of God toward him ?"

CHAPTER VI.

Experimental Acquaintance with the Message

"I know that my Redeemer liveth."-JOB xix. 25.

WHAT the patriarch saw in a bright vision across the period of two thousand years we have heard and known-what to him was prophecy is to us authentic and inspired history; and, what is no less delightful, it is to many of us matter of inward and heart-felt experience.

It is plain we need a Redeemer; for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and all have therefore become the victims of the overflowing curse, the subjects of its terrible power, and the doomed heirs, unless restored and reinstated, of its interminable woe.

It is no less clear that we cannot redeem ourselves. The law remains an everlasting and immutable fact, demanding perfect conformity, and all the attributes of Deity stand around it like sentinels to guard its sacredness and to sustain its penalties; and we can neither exhaust its curse by enduring it, nor magnify its demands by doing them. We are alike without strength and without merit.

The Lord Jesus is therefore presented to those who are in this state as a complete Redeemer. Soul and body are retrieved from ruin in him-partly by substitution, for he hath redeemed us from the curse of tho