their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another. For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified." (Rom. ii. 13—15.) Of the salvation of many of the heathen there cannot be a doubt-God is not unreasonable. The exclusion of all the heathen from salvation, because they know not the gospel, is an idea nowhere taught in Scripture. It would be much more reasonable to entertain the belief that after a man actually feels himself to be a believer in Christ, that if he commits sin it is the unpardonable sin, than to hold the doctrine that all who die unenlightened by the gospel must necessarily perish. Know ye not that God's purpose in the present state of being is a purpose which permits all His children to be placed in circumstances of humiliation and shame? Know ye not that in order to their fitness for that great exaltation of honour and glory, to which He purposes to raise them, they must learn a lesson of humility? Know ye not it was the want of any motive to humility which necessitated the giving of a law in paradise, that the declared will of God might operate upon man's nature as a counterpoise to his aspirations upward, and his desire to be like his God? Know ye not that the deeper the pit out of which deliverance is granted, the greater will be the gratitude, the stronger the affection, and the louder the praise of them delivered? Know ye not that an ignorant heathen, taken from this world in a state little removed in point of intelligence from the inferior animals, and crowned with honour and glory, will be not a star shining in the firmament, but will be most assuredly a greater triumph of divine grace in eternity, and will declare in a manner far exceeding the salvation of the apostle Paul, the

height, and the depth, and the length, and the breadth of the love of God, which passeth all knowledge? Ye who judge otherwise, are ye not judging God? and what do ye know of God in this matter? He has sent salvation to you; have ye believed, and do ye now keep perfectly the law of God? Ye do not: ye sin hourly in thought and word, and ye sin daily, and sometimes most heinously, in conduct. Ye who know the gospel, and yet live not according to that gospel, in godliness, sobriety, and righteousness, are surely more worthy of condemnation than the heathen to whom the glad sound has never been made known; and yet it can be said to you there is forgiveness with God that He may be feared. "If any man sin, we have an advocate. with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." (John ii. 1, 2.) Enlarge thy heart; open it and be liberal; thy God is not straitened in you, but ye seek to straiten Him. Know it and rejoice, that two-thirds of all who have inhabited this world were men, and not one man originally created in the image of God in Adam shall be missed out of heaven. Oh, rejoice, rejoice, the whole world of men has been redeemed! The whole human family will be for ever crowned with honour and glory! There were among us, and there are still among us, incarnate devils-children of the wicked one-sons of Belial. They are not of the race of mankind, although in human form, any more than men are of the seed of the serpent, although in this life the children of wrath even as others. They are the locusts which ascended out of the bottomless pit, and which have covered the earth with thick darkness. They are the vessels of

wrath fitted to destruction-the children of the devil, whose they are, and the works of their father they do. The Jews in our Lord's time were a generation of them; and of all the evidences of atrocity and cruelty, the annals of creation will not furnish one of more heinous enormity. They wickedly slew the Prince of Life, and hung Him on a tree; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among them by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by Him in the midst of them—of which the rebellious spirits among them never repented, and, like all of their kind, would do the same again if permitted. Such spirits know nothing of self-control, except to serve their self-will; and to such our Lord in His day said, "Verily, I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah, in the day of judgment, than for you." Nevertheless, their judgment, and the judgment of all such, shall be in strict accordance with their deeds, and it will be just and righteous judgment. Only one out of every hundred of the nine-tenths of God's children have lived and reigned with Christ as priests, suffering in the flesh for welldoing, having a conscience void of offence towards God and man, and these, with Christ, are a kind of first-fruits of God's creatures. This is the first resurrection, that is, the first-fruits from the death of sin. But all the dead are to live. The time is near when none shall pass out of this world without living and reigning with Christ, not only as priests, but also as kings upon the earth. His people shall be triumphant, each within himself; for it is written, "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember

no more." (Heb. x. 16, 17.) "Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." (1 Tim. iii. 16.) God was manifest in the flesh. This is truly a great mystery. God-the Eternal and Almighty Creator-the blessed and the only Potentate, was made of a woman, and made under the law. He made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. It is a great error to suppose that human nature alone felt and suffered in the person of the great Messiah. The two natures of God and man became one in Christ, and shall for ever remain one. It was not that sinless humanity might suffer that God sent forth His Son made of a woman. It was that God might suffer Himself; for Jesus was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man. "For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil." (Heb. ii. 1014.) It was the Lord of glory in the veil of humanity that suffered, being tempted, when an hungered in the wilderness. It was the Lord of glory, and not a man, but clouded in humanity, and thus made susceptible of sorrow and poverty, that said, "The foxes have holes, and

the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." It was the Lord of glory, Jehovah of hosts, and not a man, but in union with flesh and blood, and therefore liable to fatigue, weariness, and thirst, who thus sat at Jacob's well. It was the Lord of glory, the God of angels and men, and not a man, but possessed of all the sympathies and tenderness of sinless humanity, because of its union with His own nature, that groaned in spirit, and was troubled and wept at the tomb of Lazarus, when He saw Mary whom He loved weeping, and the Jews weeping with her, because He loved His friend, His human friend, His brother man. It was the Lord of glory, the upholder of creation, and not a man, who being in an agony in the garden of Gethsemane, sweat, as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. It was the Lord of glory, the Prince of Life, who was mocked, and scourged, and set at nought by the Roman soldiers, and afterwards nailed to the accursed tree. It was the Son of God, eternal and well-beloved, and not a man who, agonized in spirit, bleeding upon the cross, cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" and who when He had said, "It is finished, bowed his head, and gave up the ghost." Wondrous mystery, into which angels desire to look! God not only united to man in nature-the Creator and creature in one-but God, in that mysterious union, justified in Spirit by suffering even unto death-the death of the cross-and seen by angels, who never before thus saw the invisible Jehovah. Say, oh say, professing christians, was love so incomprehensibly great deserved by you? Do ye even now believe it? It was thy God, thine own God, who fills all things, and is above all heavens, who lived like thyself, a man upon earth, suffer