loved of the Father, as Jesus himself is loved of Him. How interesting to trace the common elements in all blessing; and yet for the Church to see what is distinct and peculiar to herself. How it illustrates the grace of God how it manifests the value of the Cross, thus to regard what it has pleased God to reveal! But how deeply important to the Church to know the Holy Ghost the eternal Spirit-the one who has quickened in every dispensation, in his own special relation to herself, "the earnest"-"the other Comforter""the one Spirit" animating that "one Body" which has a place here, whilst its risen and glorified Head is in heaven. I believe, therefore, that the study of prophecy from a Church position will not only be safe, but remove many difficulties which present themselves to the spiritual mind, even at the outset.

I would lastly advert to that which is a very practical difficulty in the way of profitable study, I mean the want of a mind so disciplined, as to enable us to enter on it in a right spirit, even the spirit of Him who wept over Jerusalem, when contemplating its fixed and settled doom. The closure of this present evil age, out of which we have been rescued by Jesus giving himself for our sins, according to the will of God and our Father, is fearfully portrayed in the scripture of truth. To study this profitably, there is a needed preparation of soul. Exclusiveness of study of the final development of evil often tends to self-complacency, harshness of judgment or legality. The great professing body of Christendom is to be cut off, because it has not continued in the goodness of God. The safeguard of Christians, therefore, is continuance in the goodness of God. Then they are able to exercise spiritual discernment as to the principles of evil, and to find that there is nothing manifested in the close, the beginning of which is not marked by the Holy Ghost as already working, when there was apostolic power both to discern the evil and to provide the safeguard. When the Apostle Paul opens to Timothy the perils of the last days-he solemnly charges him before God and the Lord Jesus Christ" preach the word," "do the work of an Evangelist." The Apostle Peter closes the exposure of

the awful ungodliness of the last days, with this safeguard "Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." And Jude, testifying of the fearful manifestation of evil in turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, thus guards the saints:-But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life." Now, all these forms of evil are viewed by the Holy Ghost from the place of that blessed grace in which God had set the Church, and therefore to see them aright we must get into that place, and then we shall be able to detect in many more trivial evils the same principles working, the fruit of which will be fully ripened in the actual close.

The Prophets of old were faithful protesters against the corruptions of their day; but we see from the sacred word they needed previous discipline of God in their own souls, lest they should protest with any measure of selfcomplacency; also that they might fully justify God in his judgment on the evil. The vision of the glory of Jesus to Isaiah, made the prophet feel that he himself was a man of unclean lips, as well as that he dwelt in the midst of a people of unclean lips. He would not have been a suited instrument to go and blind his countrymen, had he felt himself better than they were. The Prophet must feel that he, himself, was simply spared by the grace of God, and as deserving of the judgment as his countrymen. It was needed, for Daniel the "greatly beloved," to have his comeliness turned into corruption," that he might understand what should befall his people in the latter day." Ezekiel and Hosea had to go through most painful and revolting discipline, in order to lead them into a realisation of the baseness into which Israel had sunk in the estimation of God. It may, indeed, now be God's method to discipline his servants by special circumstances, in order to train them to study the future aright. But the special peculiar training, is a conscience exercised before God. It is the habit of the soul which leads it into the presence of God to judge things there. spiritual man judgeth all things." And however fearful

"The

may be the crisis of evil, the soul exercised before God can discern in itself principles which, if unrestrained by the grace of God, would lead to it. Hence the soul becomes more rooted in grace, experiences more consciously what a debtor it is to grace. And, in this manner, the firmest protest against evil becomes linked with personal lowliness. And whilst there is increasing thankfulness for the promise of being kept from the hour of temptation, which is to try all that dwell upon the earth,there is real self-judgment of the evil principles which are to be manifested in the crisis, and sympathy and intercession for those who are blindly helping it on. I believe the way of God to enable us to meet the growing evil of the last days, is practically to unfold to us the deeper resources of his grace, because the study of evil by itself is most injurious to the soul. The recognition of the faithfulness of God-of the abiding presence of the Holy Ghost in the Church, and of the untouched blessings of the Church, in Christ, notwithstanding all which has failed here, will lead us farther outside the camp to Jesus, bearing his reproach. And thus shall we be in principle, in position, and in spirit, enabled to take our place in "the Wilderness," and from thence to learn "THE MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH," and at the same time to take our place on "the great and high mountain" — thence to survey the graces and glories "of the Bride, the Lamb's Wife." PRESBUTES.

"The Basket.”

MY DEAR BROTHER.-When our Master had fed the multitudes, He said to His disciples," Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost" (John vi. 12). And they gathered together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto the five thousand that had eaten!

I think I have the mind of the Lord, both in endeavouring to gather up the waste scraps of present teachings by the Spirit, whether in conversations, readings, musings, etc., and in offering them, under the above title, to you. The fragmentary character of the offering may encourage some to cast in their widow's mite to the general stock, and help others to remember, that "he that gathered much had nothing over, as he that gathered little had no lack." When God orders the measure, or gives the increase, the results proclaim His praise, as well as refresh the people of His choice.-Yours.

G. W.

SYNOPSIS OF THE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE.

MY DEAR BROTHER:-I propose sending you a short synopsis of the principal subjects of each book of the Bible, to aid in the study of this precious volume that our God has given to us. I do not at all pretend to give the full contents of each book, but only (as God shall grant to me) a sort of index of the subjects, the divisions of the books by subjects, and (as far as I am enabled) the object of the Spirit of God in each part, hoping that it may aid others in reading the Book of God. The Bible is a whole, which presents to us God coming forth from His essential fulness to manifest all that He is, and to bring back into the enjoyment of this fulness with Himself those who, having been made partakers of His nature, have become capable of comprehending and loving His counsels and Himself. The creation has served as sphere to this manifestation of God; but as a manifestation it would have been altogether imperfect, though in a measure it declared His glory. Sin, moreover, having entered, the state of the creation and the effects of Providence, which regulated its order and details, tended, in the state in which man was, to give a false idea of God. For if he referred this creation and this government to God, while seeing a power which belonged to Him alone, there existed evil which overthrew every idea he could form of powerful goodness. The mind of man was lost in the effort to explain it, and superstitions and philosophy came in to complete the confusion in which he found himself. On one hand, superstitions made falser still the false ideas that man had formed for himself of God; and on the other hand, philosophy, by the efforts which his natural intelligence made to get rid of the difficulty, plunged him into such obscurity and such uncertainty, that he finished by rejecting every idea of God whatever, save the need which had made him seek one.

These superstitions were, in truth, nothing more than that Satan had possessed himself of the idea of God in the

so;

heart, in order to nourish with it its lusts, and degrade it in consecrating them by the name of a god who was in truth a demon; and philosophy was but the useless efforts of the mind of man to rise to the idea of God—a height which he was incapable of attaining, and which in conse quence he abandoned, making it a subject of pride to do without it. The law even of God, while declaring the responsibility of man to God, and thus asserting His authority, only revealed Him in the exercise of judgment, requiring from man what he ought to be without revealing what God was, save in justice; and in no way revealed Him in relationship with the scene of misery and ignorance which sin had brought upon the human race; did not shew what He was in the midst of that, nor could do for its office was to require from man a certain line of conduct, of which the Legislator constituted Himself judge, at the end of the career of him who was subjected to it. But the Son of God is God Himself in the midst of all this scene, the faithful Witness of all that He is in His relationship with it. In a word, it is the Son of God who reveals God Himself, and who becomes thus necessarily the centre of all His counsels, and of all the manifestation of His glory, as well as the object of all His ways. We shall find then three great subjects in the Bible-the Creation (now subject to the fall); the Law, which gave to man a rule, to man in the midst of this creation, to see if he could live there according to God, and be there blessed; and the Son of God. The two first, namely the Creation and the Law, are bound up with the responsibility of the creature. We shall find all that is connected with these two either guilty or corrupted. The Son, on the contrary, the manifestation of the glory of the Father, the expression of His love, the express image of the subsistence of God, we shall see suffering in love in the midst of this fallen creation and the contradictions of a rebellious people, or accomplishing all the counsels of God, in uniting all things in blessing by His power and under His authority; those even who with hatred have rejected Him being forced to own Him Lord, to the glory of God the Father; and at last, when He shall have subjected all things, giving up to God the Father the