A Goodly Heritage

'I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord!'— Gen. 49: 18. IT is not easy to say exactly in what sense Jacob used these words, in the midst of his prophecies in regard to the future of his sons. But they do certainly indicate that both for himself and for them his expectation was from God alone. It was God's salvation he waited for; a salvation which God had promised and which God Himself alone could work out. He knew himself and his sons to be under God's charge. Jehovah the Everlasting God would show in them what His saving power is and does. The words point forward to that wonderful history of redemption which is not yet finished, and to the glorious future in eternity.  22 They suggest to us how there is no salvation but God's salvation, and how waiting on God for that, whether for our personal experience, or in wider circles, is our first duty, our true blessedness. Let us think of ourselves, and the inconceivably glorious salvation God has wrought for us

My soul waiteth only upon God [ marg:  is silent unto God]; from Him cometh my salvation.'— Ps. 62: 1 (R.V.). IF salvation indeed comes from God, and is entirely His work, just as our creation was, it follows, as a matter of course, that our first and highest duty is to wait on Him to do that work as it pleases Him. Waiting becomes then the only way to the experience of a full salvation, the only way, truly, to know God as the God of our salvation. All the difficulties that are brought forward as keeping us back from full salvation, have their cause in this one thing: the defective knowledge and practice of waiting upon God. All that the Church and its members need for the manifestation of the mighty power of God in the world, is the return to our true place, the place that belongs to us, both in creation and redemption, the place of absolute and unceasing dependence upon God. Let us strive to see what the elements are that make up this most blessed and needful waiting upon G

 "He that is in the world is great." And his greatness lies in this, that he operates in a two-fold way. He forms and fashions the world spiritually; and he finds for it, or makes for it, appropriate and congenial spiritual food. The world, in a sense, lives, and moves, and has its being, in him. He is in it as the spring of its activities, the dictator of its laws, the guider of its pursuits and pleasures; in a word, "the ruler of its darkness." The darkness of its deep alienation from God, he rules. And he rules it very specially for the purpose of getting the world to be contented with an image, instead of the reality, of godliness. He takes advantage of whatever may be the world's mood at the time, as regards God and His worship, throws himself into it, controlling or inflaming it, as he may see cause, so as to turn it to his own account. And then he contrives to bring under his sway prophets or teachers, not always consciously false, often meaning to be tr

I.  "Love is of God." This does not mean merely that love comes from God, and has its source in God; that He is the author or creator of it. All created things are of God, for by Him all things were made, and on Him they all depend. But love is not a created thing. It is a Divine property, a Divine affection. And it is of its essence to be communicative and begetting; to communicate itself, and, as it were, beget its own likeness. "Love is of God." It is not merely of God, as every good gift is of God. It is of God, as being His own property, His own affection, His own love. It is, wherever it is found, the very love wherewith God loveth. If it is found in me, it is my loving with the very love with which God loves; it is my loving with a Divine love, a love that is thus emphatically of God. "Everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." 1.  None but one born of God can thus love with the love which, in this sense, is of God; therefore, one who

Ver. 7. And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is purged. Thine iniquity is taken away,—how impure soever before. This free grace is wonderful to make some who have been notoriously unclean, by the change wrought by this fire, the touch of a coal, to become eminently gracious, and messengers of grace to others, carrying this and spreading it. They, though originally of dark clay, are by this fire made transparent glass, through which the light of the Gospel shines into the Church. This coal taken from the altar, may denote the deriving of the Spirit from Jesus Christ, our Priest, Altar, Sacrifice, and all, by which we are purified and made fit for His service. He is the fountain of light, and life, and purity, and all grace to His messengers, and all His followers. His grace is indeed a live coal, where heavenly heat is mixed with earth, the fulness of the Godhead with our nature in human flesh. Thereby we

 An inheritance incorruptible .  As he who takes away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon niter, so is he who sings songs to a heavy heart . Worldly mirth is so far from curing spiritual grief, that even worldly grief, where it is great and takes deep root, is not allayed--but increased by it. The more a man who is full of inward heaviness is surrounded by mirth, the more it exasperates and enrages his grief; like ineffective weak medicine, which removes not the disease, but stirs it up and makes it more agitated. But spiritual joy is seasonable for all conditions; in prosperity, it is pertinent, to crown and sanctify all other enjoyments, with this which so far surpasses them; and in distress, it is the only cordial of fainting spirits: so,  He has put joy into my heart . This holy mirth makes way for itself, which other mirth cannot do. These songs are sweetest in the night of distress. Therefore the Apostle, writing to his scattered afflicted brethren, begins his Epistl

"It may be a use of a great deal of encouragement to all the ministers of God to preach to people. It may be that sometimes even they are discouraged, and think to themselves, "Lord, how hard are the hearts of men, and how difficult it is to work upon the hearts of men! I have labored with all my might. I have studied and sought to invent all the arguments I possibly could, the most moving arguments that I could possibly imagine. When I have been in my study, I have thought to myself, 'Surely if the Lord is pleased to bless these truths that I am to deliver, they will work upon the hearts of people.'" And when it comes to the preaching of that sermon, perhaps the minister finds that they are not at all stirred one whit. "Why, Lord, what shall I do then? I cannot think ever to speak things that are more powerful than those that I have spoken, and those have done no good. Therefore I am afraid I shall never do good." "Oh, no, do not say so and do

According to the foreknowledge of God the Father.   Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world , says the Apostle James. He sees all things from the beginning of time, to the end of it, and beyond to all eternity, and from all eternity He foresaw them. But this foreknowledge here relates peculiarly to the elect. To 'know' in Scripture sometimes denotes love.  For the Lord knows the way of the righteous.  And again,  You only have I known of all the families of the earth.  And in that speech of our Savior, relating it as the terrible doom of reprobates at the last day,  Depart from me, I know you not--I never knew you . So then this foreknowledge is none other than that eternal love of God, or decree of election, by which some are appointed unto life, and being foreknown or elected to that end, they are predestinated to the way to it.  For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstb

It is a significant, suggestive fact, that the work of the Holy Spirit is historically coeval with the work of creation. The Divine Being who inspired the Bible appears upon its first page, a mystic centre of light and beauty in the midst of an universe of darkness. And St. Paul tells us that God the Holy Spirit, who first illumined the dark world of matter, still illuminates the dark world of mind. All is midnight in the heart, mind, and soul of a sinner, until He, the Light of Life, saith, "Let there be light." I.  The work of the Spirit in the NATURAL man. The force of Paul's allusion to the creation in Genesis implies that man's original earth, in its perennial darkness, waste, and submersion, is a type of man's heart, as nature moulds it, and sin corrupts it. "The earth was without form and void"; and the heart is without grace, or capacity of spiritual discernment, till the Spirit of God moves in His creative, enlightening energy, upon both the

Systems of nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion; and all experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and square miles, The course of nature's phases, on this our little fraction of a planet, is partially known to us, but who knows what deeper courses these depend on! What infinitely larger cycle (of causes) our little epicycle revolves on! To the minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native creek may have become familiar; but does the minnow understand the ocean tides and periodic currents, the trade winds and monsoons, and moon's eclipses; by all which the condition of its little creek is regulated?

Man naturally asks for some account of the world in which he lives. Was the world always in existence? If not, how did it begin to be? Did the sun make itself? These are not presumptuous questions. We have a right to ask them — the right which arises from our intelligence. The steam engine did not make itself; did the sun? In the text we find an answer to all our questions. I.  THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE. There is no attempt at learned analysis or elaborate exposition. A child may understand the answer. It is direct, positive, complete. Could it have been more simple? Try any other form of words, and see if a purer simplicity be possible. Observe the value of simplicity when regarded as bearing upon the grandest events. The question is not who made a house, but who made a world, and not who made one world, but who made all worlds; and to this question the answer is, God made them. There is great risk in returning a simple answer to a profound inquiry, because when simplicity is not the la

When man looks out from himself upon the wonderful home in which he is placed, upon the various orders of living things around him, upon the solid earth which he treads, upon the heavens into which he gazes, with such ever-varying impressions, by day and by night; when he surveys the mechanism of his own bodily frame; when he turns his thought, as he can turn it, in upon itself, and takes to pieces by subtle analysis the beautiful instrument which places him in conscious relation to the universe around him; his first and last anxiety is to account for the existence of all that thus interests him; he must answer the question, How and why did this vast system of being come to be? Science may unveil in nature regular modes of working, and name their laws. But the great question still awaits her — the problem of the origin of the universe. This question is answered by the first verse in the Bible: "In the beginning God created," etc. And that answer is accepted by every believe

Look not upon me, because I am black. Song of Solomon 1:6 I.  THE FAIREST CHRISTIANS ARE THE MOST SHAMEFACED WITH REGARD TO THEMSELVES. The person who says, "Look not upon me, because I am black," is described by some one else in the eighth verse as the "fairest among women." Others, who thought her the fairest of the fair, spoke no less than the truth when they affirmed it; but in her own esteem she felt herself to be so little fair, and so much uncomely, that she besought them not even to look upon her. Why is it that the best Christians depreciate themselves the most? Is it not because they are most accustomed to look within? They keep their books in a better condition than those unsafe tradesmen, the counterpart of mere professors, who think themselves "rich and increased in goods," when they are on the very verge of bankruptcy. In his anxiety to be pure from evil, the godly man will be eager to notice and quick to detect the least particle of d

We will remember Thy love more than wine The Hebrew word for "love" here is in the plural: "We will remember Thy  loves.  Think not, however, that the love of Jesus is divided, but know that it hath different channels of manifestation. All the affections that Christ hath, He bestows upon His Church; and these are so varied that they may well be called loves" rather than "love." We will remember, O Jesus, that love of Thine which was displayed in the council chamber of eternity, when Thou didst, on our behalf, interpose as the Daysman and Mediator; when Thou didst strike hands with Thy Father, and become our Surety, and take us as Thy betrothed! We will remember that love which moved Thee to undertake a work so burdensome to accomplish, an enterprise which none but Thyself ever could have achieved. We will remember the love which suggested the sacrifice of Thyself; the love which, until the fulness of time, mused over that sacrifice, and longed for the

Let us note, first, what it is the Church desires — what every pious soul must desire who would make a prayer to Christ at all: "Draw me, allure me, bring my soul under the power of a holy and Divine captivity. It is a prayer of the believer that he may feel all the oppositions of the unregenerate nature giving way; that, by the spell of some holy fascination resting upon him, he may feel his will drawn into absolute and entire concurrence with the Divine will. "Draw me," says the Church, "with lovingkindness, and compassions, and mercies. Allure me to Thee by Thy Word — its promises drawing me after them, like the sweet strains of distant music; or by Thy Spirit, His holy and gentle compulsions leading me onwards, by an influence the methods of which I know not, save that thereby I am brought nearer to Christ, by having Christ brought nearer to me. Many are the things I have need to be drawn from. Draw me from the bondage of sin, which holds me; from the alluremen