minds. You do not hear of their demurring-" Why, we have been roughly handled, scandalously treated, cast into the common jail-if we begin to preach again we shall be ten times more roughly handled." One might have thought, if unbelief had been strong, they would have pleaded their Lord's commission, "If they persecute you in one city, flee to the next;" they might have said, "We will gladly go out of prison, and preach this eternal life again; but let us go to another city.' But here are special orders from the throne: "Go, stand and speak in the temple." They had not got a temple like that in any other city. God marks the place where His people shall labour, as well as the time; He tells them what to say and how to say it. "Go." There is no delay about the matter: "Let us go home and dress our wounds first." "No, no; you must go directly." "Let us go and get something to eat.' "No, you must go immediately. Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people." Why it must have been a voice supernatural-it must have been an authority which they at once felt-none other than that of their mighty Deliverer. We will presently touch upon the messenger employed; but the power was Christ's, the power was from above. The opening and the closing of the prison doors, the giving them strength and energy to go forth, and the firing of their hearts with zeal to preach His precious name, and stand and preach in the temple very early in the morning, all came from above; and they felt it to be a mighty touch from on high.

Now I want here to pause a moment on what may be accounted a digression. Woe to those men who run forth as preachers unsent of God! I would have none engage in so solemn, and awful, and glorious a work, without full satisfaction in their own souls that they have heard the "Go" pronounced from the throne; and the mighty influence that moves the soul thrusts out the labourer, and he can no longer hold back. "Go, stand and speak in the temple all the words of this life." Oh! what wonders might we not expect on earth amidst the living churches, even in the present day, if all the preachers had their commission from the throne of God? I would not, I could not, I dare not stand up before you, if I did not as firmly believe, as I believe my own existence (and I have no doubt many believe it for me too), that my commission came from the throne. Oh, that God would send many such forth! and if He had not the temple for them to go in, or if human laws be such that His people would not be admitted thereto, let them go forth and publish the name and fame of Jesus anywhere and everywhere. Be sure of this, beloved-this is another of the proofs of what I advanced in the exordium-that all real Christianity is superhuman, that all real Christianity comes from above. If your Christianity comes not from above, it is not worth your having; if your Christianity does not come from the Spirit of God, it is spurious. Both he that preaches and they that hear must receive mighty communications from the throne, or it is not worth having. Now it does not appear to be of much importance, as far as regards myself, whether men like my preaching or whether they dislike it, I can gladly leave that with my Master; because I know that if the solemn and pointed truth which I am accustomed at least to attempt to deliver, is administered to you by the Holy Ghost, you can no more resist it than you can resist a flash of lightning or a thunderbolt-you can no more resist it than you can resist Omnipotence, for it is Omnipotence that brings it down to the heart and conscience. Oh!

I love the doctrine of invincible grace! And, therefore, when this mighty Deliverer puts forth His authority, it is accompanied with deliverance. The prison door is opened, and the prisoners are brought out; locks, bars, bolts, chains, priests, and guards, all stand for nothing-Jehovah will have His heralds go forth.

Now in this way God sets them at liberty. He does not send them forth bound in legal bonds-He does not send them forth wrapped up in infamous Arminianism-He does not send them forth wrapped up in Popish idolatries and superstitious; He takes them out of the prison-and the Son makes them free, and then they are free indeed; and I would have no man go to lift up his voice to God in preaching, until he is positively assured from on high that his soul is delivered from death, and his eyes from tears, and his feet from falling. Then he can go and walk before God in the land of the living, and say, "I speak it because I believe it." These are the preachers we wantthese are the preachers I would have multiplied-these are the labourers that I would pray the Lord of the harvest to thrust out inte His vineyard.

"But we read of His angels," say you. Truly; and it is our mercy that Jehovah employs His angels as ministering spirits, sometimes for mercy, sometimes for vengeance. He sent them out into the Assyrian army, to slay (I think) 185,000 (Is. xxvii. 36) enemies in one night; He sent them out on other occasions in the Old Testament wars; He sent forth His angels to visit both the Virgin Mary and her sister. When Christ was upon earth, angels came and ministered to Him, in His forty days' temptation and fasting in the wilderness; and we have little apprehension but that invisible angels are employed, day by day, and hour by hour, in the Church of the living God. This is one of the Lord's secrets, but Christ tells us that they are so employed. An angel smote Peter on his right side, and bade him stand up and go out free; an angel visited John in the isle of Patmos, and when the vision was opening to him, the Lord Jesus said, "I, Jesus, have sent my angel;" and in order that John might not be mistaken, and look at this created angel, this messenger or servant of God, as if he were God Himself, when he fell down to worship him he was immediately rebuked; and the angel said, "No, worship God, I am thy fellowservant"a messenger or servant-the meaning of the term. From these Scriptures, and many more, we plainly discover that angels are secretly employed as ministering spirits, to minister for them and to them who shall be heirs of salvation; and, if I understand that Scripture of my beloved Lord aright, where he says, "There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth," I think it must mean this. How should the angels, the created beings round the throne, know anything about it, but for those who in myriads are sent forth in secret to watch and witness what is going on in the Church of the living God, and carry the glad tidings to heaven; and I think it no presumption, I think it no rhapsody, I think it no enthusiasm to say, I believe there is never a time in which this house of prayer is open but these silent, secret, invisible messengers, or ministering spirits, are present, to carry the tidings to heaven of what God is doing by His grace upon earth. The angel smote the apostles. Aye, when God employs them, either for vengeance or mercy, there is no withstanding them, because there is no discovering them; the work is done, and the Lord has all the glory.

But look one step further. What authority, what sovereignty, is there in our precious Jesus to employ His angels! And hence He is called "the Lord of angels"-having them all under His authority, saying to one "Go, and he goeth, and to another Come, and he cometh." And mark, that while Jehovah Jesus thus employs His angelic hosts with His own power, and repeats His commission to His disciples, to go, and stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life," necessity is laid upon them, and a woe if they preach not the word. This very sentiment Paul acknowledges: "Woe unto me," he says, "if I preach not the gospel :" for "necessity is laid upon me." There is no escape you know. If any of them are reluctant, as the prophet of old, who complained that he was slow of speech, and not eloquent from a child, neither before God had spoken to him nor afterwards, a necessity was put forth-" Thou shalt go where I send thee, and say that which I command thee." There is no appeal from this. "But I am not educated, I am not authorised by mortals, I have not gone through the boasted line of succession"-the high road to the devil-"I have not obtained the sanction of patrons and great folks." Away with all this if you have the sanction of Jehovah Jesus, King of kings, who has spoken, and who will speak, to the hearts of every one of His sent servants. "Go, and stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life." I love that kind of preaching which squeezes truth out of a man, so that he cannot keep it in which bursts from his heart, as it did from Elihu's, when he said that he was like a new bottle, ready to burst-which comes "in demonstration of the Spirit and of power," proving the authority with which the commission is given, and the mighty power that accompanies the Lord's commissioned servants. Tell me no more of human authorities; in their proper place, and under proper circumstances, we will not despise human authorities, nor human education, nor any of the means that may be employed to assist the Lord's servants, provided they are in accordance with His word; but when we speak of His authority, I say, every man who goes forth to preach Christ's gospel ought to have his commission direct from the throne, and so believe what some falsely assert, that he is moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon him that office.

III. Now let us pass on to notice the intention. Here are the apostles liberated from prison, with their commission renewed, and they starting forth again to deliver "all the words of this life." Now what is the intention or design? Not to make proselytes merely, not to establish a sect or party, not to increase any peculiar name or denomination among men. That is not the object. What then? Why, just that the life I have been speaking to you of, and have given you some of "the words" of, might be published and imparted. This is our first object. That life, the hidden life of God in the soul, the life of the gospel, may be published and imparted. The first is the minister's business, under Divine commission-the second is the Lord's business, and no one else can do it. It is our business to publish that eternal life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord-it is our business to proclaim, that "this is life eternal, to believe on thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent "-it is our business to publish that life, the life of God in the soul, is God's sovereign gift, and that there is no Christianity without it—it is our business to take

our stand where Phineas did, with his censer in his hand, and fire in it from off the altar (God Almighty never let me be without a spark of holy fire) and stood between the living and the dead, and the plague was stayed. I want all God's ministers to take their stand be tween the living and the dead, and always mark the difference between those who are dead in trespasses and sins," and those who are alive to God by quickening grace, that they may comfort and console the latter, in the very manner the apostle did the Ephesians: "You hath He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins." Then the imparting of it. Oh! this is the grand work—this is what I am anxiously seeking for, and pleading with God to bestow on you day by day, that Jehovah the Spirit will condescend, as often as we preach here, to impart a new life to dead sinners, that those who have only an animal existence, and mental powers, may be blessed with a spiritual existence, a new life, a new creation. This is His work. We publish life Divine-Jehovah communicates it. He did so by Paul, and He has done so here in hundreds of instances; and I trust, if my life is still spared, He will do so in many more. Paul puts it down thus to the Thessalonians: "The gospel was preached to you by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." What was the result? They knew their election of God. There is no other way of preaching that can be successful. Oh! the solemn thought—and very solemn it has been to my mind for a long time past-that many congregations, and multitudes in congregations, deserve no other designation than congregations of the dead; for "he that departeth out of the way of understanding," said the Holy Ghost by the wise man, "abideth among the congregation of the dead." You may trim up the dead with fine flowers, and pretty ornaments, but they are dead after all. All the eloquence of eloquent preachers, and all the ornaments of a beautifully decorated place of worship, are only like the ornaments of the dead body, if the life of God be not in the soul. Oh, for quickening grace! Lord God, send down quickening grace among this people, that new life may be bestowed this morning, while I am attempting to speak about it.

It is in this manner that Jehovah is gathering in His elect. "He shall send forth His angels"-messengers, ministers, or servants"and shall gather in His elect from the four winds under heaven." This may refer literally to the great day of judgment that is approaching; and it may have a secondary meaning; and I believe it has, in the largest sense of the word "angels," because most of you, I presume, are aware, that the word originally signifies a messenger. Some of those supernatural but created beings are in glory, constituting Jehovah's host, and the ministers of His Church are called by that name in each of the characters they sustain in the Apocalypse, as "the angel (or minister) of the Church of Ephesus," and so forth. Now the fact is, that our Lord Christ has liberated many of these from their bondage garments and prison fetters, and sent them forth, with "Go, preach all the words of this life," with the very purpose and intention of gathering in His elect. He shall send His angels and gather in His elect from the four winds under heaven." Oh! how vast the importance, then, of the ministers of God looking for the Spirit's work. They are nowhere told to gather goats, they are nowhere told to gather swine, they are nowhere told to gather dogs, much less to attempt to make the one out of the other; but their

business is to go and preach the truths of the gospel, and it is God's work to find out His own, and gather them in; and our precious Lord assures us, that there shall be no mistake or lack about it, for, says he, "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me; and, "it is the will of my Father which sent me, that of all whom He has given me I should lose none, but raise them up again at the last day." So that He will gather in His own, as a shepherd gathereth together his flock on a cloudy and dark day.

Advance a step further in this intention, and mark, that while Jesus is thus accomplishing His own design, victory crowns the faithful preaching of the gospel. I have been an eye-witness of this for more than forty years, and my soul rejoices in it; while leanness, and want of success, is and has been mourned over by some good men, and gospel preachers, to a certain extent, and they have asked why it is and how it is. If I were of their assembly I would tell them, Why it is because "the words of this life," such as I have named, are kept back. When they are faithfully proclaimed, the preaching is always crowned with success. "I will teach transgressors thy ways," says David (and these are God's ways), "and sinners shall be converted unto thee." Here is no probability, no uncertainty. Many of these instances may be hidden from our eyes for a length of time, but they pop out now and then; we get the information somehow or other, sometimes before they go to glory and sometimes after; proving that the faithful proclamation of "the words of this life" is invariably crowned with success.

I feel that I have gone to the extent of my strength; but there is another point that I must a little insist on. Eternal life is pledged; and this is the sign-that while His servants "spake all the words of this life," as invariably, as zealously, and as extensively as He has commanded, eternal life shall come down and take possession of the soul-eternal life be thereby pledged and secured to the soul—and eternal life anticipated by the soul. Eternal life comes down and takes possession of the soul, for "we that have believed do enter into rest; and again, says the Son of God, "He that believeth hath everlasting life, abiding in him, and shall not come into condemnation." I have said that this hidden life of godliness is nothing less than all the persons of the Trinity taking up their abode in the heart. Is not that eternal life? When the heart of the sinner is brought to believe it, and to be positively assured of it, why, he has the beginning of eternal life, the foretaste of heaven, in his soul. Nay, it is secured to him beyond the possibility of failure, for Jehovah is "of one mind, and none can turn Him; "He never repents of what He has donehaving given the pledge He will give the consummation; and therefore it is written, "the Lord will give grace and glory "-He never gives one without the other-and if He has given grace to a poor sinner, even though his faith be but as a grain of mustard seed, He has thereby bound Himself to give glory. Oh! the preciousness of this certainty of eternal life to the people of God! It is the gift of God the Father, and He never revokes His gifts; it is the fulness of God the Son, and He cannot be emptied; it is the operation of the Holy Spirit, and He cannot be conquered. But the semi-popery of the present day goes so far as to say, that the poor sinner can conquer the Holy Ghost-can conquer Jesus Christ, and jump out of His hand— can conquer the Father, and provoke Him to turn His love into hatred.