A Goodly Heritage

On the cross the work was finished,—the Father’s work which the Son loved to perform. There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. The death of Jesus perfects for ever all his own. The truth and the power of God are pledged here. An omnipotent sovereignty shields the disciples of Jesus. “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am.” After the manner of a king, the Saviour of sinners speaks. He knows his own power, and we may safely trust it. A half-hesitating faith dishonours the Lord, and mars the happiness of his servant. What pains he took that his work should be complete, and that its completeness might be manifest! There is sovereign power in this shed blood! “The blood of Jesus Christ God’s Son cleanseth us from all sin”—“Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is Christ that died”—“I saw in the midst of the throne a Lamb as it had been slain.” Righteous Abel,—that blood of the Sacrifice washed his sin away, and...

“ If ye then be risen with Christ,” says the apostle Paul, “ seek those things which are above : — For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God^.” When the Lord Jesus was in the world, the world hated him, and used him very unkindly ; and when he died, he parted from it, to return as an inhabitant of it, no more. “ And now,” saith he, “ I am no more in the world The quietest lodging that ever the world allowed him, was a grave ; and having come out thence, he never slept another night in it. And though after his resurrection, he staid forty days in the world, yet still he was dead to it. He sometimes con¬ versed with his own, but no more with the world. If then thou have his satisfaction for sin, imputed to thee ; thou art also, in conformity to him, dead to the w'orld. Being crucified with him, “ the world is crucified unto thee, and thou unto the worlds” Union, and communion with Christ in his righteousness, have laid thee down dead in his grave ; and so have separate...

O astonishing love ! God only could be the fountain, and man only, the object of such love. This amazing love, was not only stronger than death, and mightier than the grave ; but (with adoring reverence be it said) was, in a sense, mightier than — the Most High himself ; and brought Him down to flesh and blood, to the likeness of sinful flesh, to the dust of death, and to the chambers of the grave. It is owing to this redeeming love, that the covenant of Jehovah is as firm, as immutable, as his very being. It is as well ordered, as his unsearchable wisdom can make it, and as sure, as his almighty power can keep it. Remember then, O redeemed soul, that it is thy privilege, to trust for and to seek, not unco¬ venanted favour, as many do, but covenanted, pur¬ chased, promised grace ; grace, which could never be procured by thee, and which can never be taken from thee. O love thy covenant-God, and thy Kinsman-redeemer, with a supreme, an ardent love : so love Him, that thy constant pleasin...

The green pastures The image, so clear and beautiful in itself, is singularly forcible and suggestive in relation to our inner life. Is not the background of the picture true to the facts which we everywhere witness around us, and the needs and aspirations we have felt within us? How much there is in life to remind us of the long tracts of desert sand, the fierce and scorching rays of the sun, the lassitude and ennui of worn-out and wearied hearts. Without attempting to push the details of the imagery to excess, we may assert that the green pastures and still waters find their counterpart in the truths and doctrines of Scripture, in the ordinances of the Gospel, and the means of grace established for our sustenance and growth. For permanent comfort and strength we are dependent upon the revelations of the Divine Word. God Himself is the source of our satisfaction and peace. When our hearts, “ceasing from self,” can stay themselves upon Him, and find in their obedience to His will the g...

How go begin every day with God I. THE GOOD WORK ITSELF THAT WE ARE TO DO. To pray. A duty dictated by the light and law of nature, but which the gospel of Christ gives us better instruction in. See how David expresses his pious resolutions. 1. My voice shalt Thou hear. Understand as promising himself a gracious acceptance with God. “Thou wilt hear.” It is the language of his faith, grounded upon God’s promise, that His ear shall be always open to His people’s cry. Wherever God finds a praying heart, He will be found a prayer hearing God. Understand as David’s promising God a constant attendance on Him, in the way He has appointed. God understands the language of the heart, and that is the language in which we must speak to God. We must see to it that God hears from us daily. He expects and requires it. Thus He will keep up His authority over us: and testify His love and compassion towards us. We have something to say to God every day: as to a friend we love, and have freedom with; as ...

is knowledge of God.—The one thing needful for men, the great cry of our nature, in which all other cries are swallowed up, is for knowledge—the knowledge of God. To know the true God has been the deep desire of living souls through all time. Wearied by the changes of a fleeting world, finding no repose in the best that the finite can give, men of earnest minds long to know the Eternal that they may rest in Him. An old mystic has said: “God is an unutterable sigh of the human soul.” With greater truth we may reverse the saying, and affirm that the human soul is a never-ending sigh after God. In its deepest recesses there lives or slumbers inextinguishable longing after Him, and the more we consider the nature of that longing, the more we discover that what it aims at is not a mere intellectual apprehension of God, but a personal relationship to Him. It is essentially of a practical nature. It is an impulse to draw nigh to God, to place ourselves in personal fellowship with Him from the...

THE FUNCTION OF THE TRUE MINISTER IS TO PREACH THE GOSPEL. Paul was not a politician, to turn the church into a party club, and the pulpit into a hustings — not a mere orator, to give his hearers an hour's entertainment; not a devotee of science; not a philologist, to spread out before immortal souls scholastic criticisms; not a mere moralist, to discourse of flowers that never grew around the Cross. No! his was a nobler and more difficult work, viz., to preach the gospel! To do this is — 1. To proclaim all the precious doctrines, promises, precepts, and duties recorded in the Scriptures. Some confine themselves to a few favourite topics. They are afraid to preach the whole gospel, lest its truths contradict each other. Away with such idle fears! One truth can no more clash with another truth than one sunbeam can quench another sunbeam. 2. To preach Christ crucified. Some excuse their non-preaching of Christ on the ground that He is not in the text. I should not like to live in a ...

Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ? v. 15. If the soul be united to Christ by faith, the whole man is become a member of his mystical body. The body is in union with Christ as well as the soul. How honourable is this to the Christian! His very flesh is a part of the mystical body of Christ. Note, It is good to know in what honourable relations we stand, that we may endeavour to become them. But now, says the apostle, shall I take the members of Christ, and make them the members of a harlot? God forbid. Or, take away the members of Christ? Would not this be a gross abuse, and the most notorious injury? Would it not be dishonouring Christ, and dishonouring ourselves to the very last degree? What, make a Christ’s members the members of a harlot, prostitute them to so vile a purpose! The thought is to be abhorred. God forbid. Know you not that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with hers? For two, says he, shall be one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord is ...

The creation I. THEN ATHEISM IS A FOLLY. Atheism is proved absurd — 1. By the history of the creation of the world. It would be impossible for a narrative to be clearer, more simple, or more divinely authenticated than this of the creation. The very existence of things around us is indisputable evidence of its reality. 2. By the existence of the beautiful world around us. The world standing up around us in all its grandeur — adaptation — evidence of design — harmony — is a most emphatic assertion of the Being of God. Every flower is a denial of atheism. Every star is vocal with Deity. 3. By the moral convictions of humanity. There is probably not an intelligent man in the wide universe, who does not believe in, and pay homage to, some deity or other. II. THEN PANTHEISM IS AN ABSURDITY. We are informed by these verses that the world was a creation, and not a spontaneous, or natural emanation from a mysterious something only known in the vocabulary of a sceptical philosophy. Thus the ...