begin, and go on, in the study of the revelation made of it in the person, words, and works of Christ. "The truth as it is in Jesus," the faintest perception of which given by the Holy Ghost from the word, is eternal life, is the life of the soul in every stage of the walk of faith. "Growth in grace," consists in, and is produced by, the indwelling of the word of faith in the heart, and may be comprehended in its taking deeper and deeper root in the mind, by which the believer grows up into Christ in all things.

It may here be remarked, that though the life of faith is all simplicity in its acts and exercises, receiving all its support and increase from the word of God; yet, the allotment and disposal of all things that are creature and temporal, by the Lord concerning his people, in the individual course he is pleased to take with them in the present state, is made by him subservient to their life and walk with him in the spirit. It is, however, to be insisted upon that it is only by the incorruptible seed of the word, as the Holy Ghost calls forth faith by and upon it, that the spirituality of the mind is kept in exercise, and the life of God drawn forth and made manifest in the soul.

The scripture I have chosen opens with one of the deepest mysteries of grace, and contains a declaration, which proposes the most exalted consolation to the weary minds of the saints, under the oppressions arising out of the peculiar situation in which they do, or will, find themselves to be, sooner or later, in the course of their christian pilgrimage. If not, more or less, groaning under the whole of their time here below,-if there be a fainting in the day of adversity, it is because their strength is small; and believers are exhorted to "turn to their strong hold." A believer in the Lord Jesus Christ wants no less a refuge and tower of defence than his Lord and Head had in the days of his humiliation; when he was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, and exposed to all the sorrows that the nature of man is capable of enduring. The life which Christ our Lord lived here below, in our nature, and in our world, as the Head of his church, as well as the Surety, Representative, and Redeemer of his people, was for the nature and degree of his sufferings, (in certain important respects his church will never have conformity to him) as well as for the ends to be effected by them, peculiar to our Lord only. "There never was sorrow like unto his sorrow!" He needed, as the Head and Saviour of his people, all the mercy and all the grace that was in God to exercise, when purging out the sins of his people, and enduring the curse due to them, to bear him up under it, and to give him an outgate from it: though this was through the merit of his own blood, by which God brought him back again from the dead.

The mercy of God lay in his appointing the blood of Christ to such an end; not in his pronouncing his church to be clean through the shedding of it; for, as the blood of the Son of God, and the blood of the everlasting covenant, it had sufficient virtue in it to cleanse the church from all the guilt and filth of sin, and that for ever. It was the will of God to perfect Christ, in the scripture sense of the word, through

sufferings, as well as to perfect his church by the same for evermore; and our adored Lord endured all, according to the ordination and appointment of God to a certain end; which end, according to the marvellous riches of God's grace, has been fully and eternally effected, by which his church is perfected, cleansed, and justified in his sight, and before him, and that for ever. Heb. x. 10. And how can we proceed without stopping to exclaim, "O the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" O the depths of his unsearchable riches of grace, all hid in Jesus Christ! all opened in the revelation of his person, of his mediation, of his atonement, sacrifice, and death!

God's predestination in Christ Jesus reaches to all the riches of his grace in him: he has interested his church in all. And though it is a coming down from far greater, higher, and more exalted subjects, as we glance at the summary of them touched upon in Rom. viii. 29, 30. which might well be enlarged on to the spiritual delight of the renewed mind; and it is hardly prevailed upon to look at any thing below them, while introduced by spiritual meditation into this open field, where it longs to walk at large, roving over in faith the heights, and breadths, and lengths, and depths of the unfathomable love of God in Christ Jesus, which passeth knowledge ;-yet, it is a subject not below the faith of the Lord's people to consider the Lord's fatherly preservation and care of them, in this present evil world; his attention to their particular individual cases, and circumstances, as the objects of his special favour and regard, as his saints, his beloved, his redeemed and called in Christ Jesus.

Our Lord, whose lips dropped with myrrh, and whose words were nothing but grace and truth, directs the minds of his saints to this subject, saying, "for the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God;" and here, in the words before us for our meditation, we have him uttering a saying which lays a foundation for joy and triumph in God, of the most exalted kind. To "joy in God" as our own God and Father in Christ Jesus, is more than to believe that he hath removed our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west; it is a further step in that life which we are called to live by the faith of the Son of God. Peace with God through the belief of the gospel, in which God is declared to be "the justifier of the ungodly who believe in Jesus," is the first blessing partaken of by faith, which makes way for the enjoyment of every other; we have it through the knowledge of the remission of sins, and justification unto life, by the obedience and death of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ :-but, not only so, it is our privilege as believers in Christ to go further, to "joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ." "No man," saith Christ," can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him ;" but being drawn, having "received the atonement," by the grace of God our Father, what remains, but to exercise the mind upon the favour and good-will of God towards our persons, as being one with Christ, and joint-heirs

in and with Christ, of all the blessings of life everlasting? And to this end we may ascend where Paul leads us, Eph. i. 4, 5, 6. or to where the same Spirit by Isaiah directs us, chap. liii. 6-10. or we may come down to the consideration of God's love towards us as his saints, separated to this holy calling through the belief of the truth, to which our Lord points the eye of our faith, as before noticed, John xvi. 27. and then we are well prepared to understand and consider the present ministration of grace; under which we are as sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, all the time of our sojourning in this present world; in which we not only never cease to be the objects of his favour and love, but are under a certain dispensation to a certain end; the results and effects of which are with himself, to be produced by him according to the mighty working of his power.

Though there is much revealed to the spiritual perception of the Lord's people, through the means of faith, in the general and particular declarations of God in his word, which leads the mind to certain and happy conclusions in and under that variety of suffering in the flesh, with which the saints are exercised; yet, the subject is to be taken up in faith, which is the proper rest of the soul in God; and a holy reckoning is to be made, which will always amount to more than ever will be actually discerned or perceived, understood or enjoyed, by the greatest saint this side heaven. As the saints of God, we enter into rest; as God resteth in his love, so should the saints. "He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him," saith one infallible in the truth: 'tis good to rest here! God in his love in Christ Jesus is the center of the souls of his called people. May God enable his beloved ones to see the immutable ground they have in the revelation he has made of his free, unconditional grace in Christ Jesus, by the gospel; to assure their hearts before him, and to take up the song of triumph put into their mouths by the Lord himself, " unto him that hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood!" "For this God is our God for ever and ever."

Most truly is it to be lamented, that the gospel as it stands opened and fully revealed in all its glory in the scriptures, is mutilated, corrupted, and lowered, by the comments and reasonings of men, who darken counsel by words without knowledge: rather should we say, that the minds of the Lord's people are by such means diverted, and corrupted from the simplicity which is in Christ. And though the gospel commonly preached amongst men is "another gospel," and not that preached by our Lord and his apostles, yet is it not another, for though there are that do pervert, yet is there but one gospel,-the everlasting gospel of the grace of God, at this moment shining in all its glory in the book of God, incapable of any change, or of being affected by the devices of devils or of men. It is pure as God is pure, and true as God is true; and the glory, excellency, and beauty of it will never be impaired. May the Lord remove out of the way every let and hindrance to its finding an entrance into the hearts and minds of his redeemed people; that it may have free course and be glorified,

and that the fruits of the simple reception of it in the love of it, may abound to the praise and glory of his name. Yet none of the fruits and effects of receiving God's truth will ever amount, in glory brought to God, to that which he receives by the obedience of faith to the gospel itself. It is the submission of the mind to God's revelation of his Son in the gospel, that God obtains his highest glory by, in his church here below, and the church her highest good.

May God, in his own time, hear and answer the spiritual desires and breathings of his people and servants, for the prosperity of his Zion, which lies in a languishing condition, and as one expresses it, "bleeding at the corner of every street;"" for there are scarcely any to guide her among all the sons whom she hath brought forth;" nevertheless, "the Lord liveth," and he will regard the prayer of the destitute, and will not despise their prayer. This is written for the generation present, that we may be encouraged to plead with the Lord to appear in his glory, and build up his Zion, by sending labourers into his vineyard, who shall labour to direct the minds of his people to the full, perfect, and complete word of his grace, contained in the holy scriptures, "which are able to build them up, and to give them an inheritance among all them that are sanctified by faith which is in Christ Jesus," as therein revealed. Amen.

(For the Spiritual Magazine.)

SIMILARITY BETWEEN CHRIST AND HIS BRETHREN.

"As he is, so are we in this world."-1 John iv. 17.

THE foregoing words of the apostle John are true with respect to the saints' likeness to God, as they are "born of him," for they are then "partakers of the divine nature," 1 Pet. ii. 4. and bear resemblance to God, even in this present state of things; and they strive to be, and desire to be like him; holy as he is holy; and to be merciful even to wicked men, as he is merciful; and to love the saints as he loves them; and to be kind and tender-hearted, and to forgive one another, as he for Christ's sake has forgiven them. But I think it is clear by the context, that the apostle is speaking of Christ, and that his meaning is, that "as he is, so are the saints in this world.”

Let us see then in what respects the saints bear resemblance to Christ. First, now, as they are the sons of God. It pleased God before he ever formed the world, or the inhabitants of it, to determine in his divine mind who among the sons of men should be preserved from the ruin of that transgression, into which he foreknew the first man, Adam, would fall; and the effects of which, it was his will, should extend to his posterity. These, as St. Paul tells the Ephesians, "he predestinated to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will," Eph. i. 5. and these persons, whom the same apostle speaks of as "a remnant according to the

election of grace," he gave to Christ to be saved by him, as he himself says, "thine they were, and thou gavest them me;" and they were given to him in the relation of children, and were considered as such before his incarnation; for St. Paul says, "forasmuch (or because) the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself took part of the same." Heb. ii. 14. It is clear then, that they must be the children of God, before Christ suffered and died, yea, even as early as God's choice of them, which was before the foundation of the world. Eph. i. 4.

And Christ betrothed these persons to himself in eternity; he asked them of his Father to be his spouse and bride, and being given to him he betrothed them to himself in loving kindness. And as in

natural and civil marriage, if a man marries a king's daughter, he becomes his son-in-law; as David was to Saul: or if a woman marries a king's son, she becomes the king's daughter; so the elect of God, his church and people, being espoused to the Son of God, they become the sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty, the King of kings; and hence in the 45th Psalm the church is called "the king's daughter." The elect of God were taken by him into the covenant of his grace as children; the sum and substance of which runs thus, "I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." 2 Cor. vi. 18. Moreover, through the incarnation of Christ, he not only became the Goel, the near kinsman, but even a brother to those whose flesh and blood he partook of; and because he and they are of one, of one and the same nature, he is not ashamed to call them brethren," Heb. ii. 11. and if his brethren, then, as he is the Son of God, they must be sons of God too: yes, and God in his own good time sends forth the Spirit of his Son into their hearts, to enable them to claim the relationship of children, and to call him Father. Gal. iv. 6. Well, then, as Christ is the Son of God by nature, and the saints by grace and adoption, they may say, "as he is, so are we in this world."

Is Christ loved by the Father with an everlasting and unchangeable love? so are the saints loved by him with the same kind of love, even whilst they are in the world; for Christ, in his memorable address to the Father, says, "thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me; and thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world." John xvii. It was because the Father loved them, that "he chose them in Christ before the foundation of the world;" made a covenant with them in him; sent him into the world to obtain salvation for them; quickens and calls them by his grace in time; takes care of them in the world; supplies all their wants; supports them under all temptations; delivers them out of all their afflictions, and causes all things to work together for their good, till he brings them safe to glory. Thus, as the saints are loved with the same love as Christ, they may say in the apostle's words," as he is, so are we in this world."

Was Christ God's elect, chosen of him and precious? Yes; God speaking of him by his prophet says, "behold mine elect," Isa. xlii.