oars in the water, put forth all your power, and bend all your endeavours to put away and part with all things that ye may gain and enjoy Christ. Try and search His word, and strive to go a step above and beyond ordinary professors, and resolve to sweat more and run faster than they do for salvation. Men's mid-day cold and wise courses in godliness, and their neighbour-like, cold and wise pace to heaven, will cause many a man to want his lodging at night, and to lie in the fields. I recommend Christ and His love to your seeking; and yourself to the tender mercy and rich grace of our Lord. Remember my love in Christ to your wife. I desire her to learn to make her soul's anchor fast upon Christ Himself. Few are saved. Let her consider what joy the smiles of God in Christ will be, and what the love-kisses of sweet, sweet Jesus, and a welcome home to the new Jerusalem, from Christ's own mouth, will be to her soul, when Christ will fold together the clay tent of her body, and lay it by His hand (h) for a time, till the fair morning of a general resurrection. I avouch before God, man, and angel, that I have not seen, nor can imagine a lover to be comparable to lovely Jesus. I would not exchange or niffer (j) Him with ten heavens. If heaven could be without Him, what could we do there? Grace, grace be with you. Your soul's eternal well-wisher Aberdeen, 1637. (a) acquisitions. Foot Notes to the above. S. R. (b) To drink anything over the board, to formally renounce it, as a seller formerly did when he drank to the purchaser on delivery to him of the goods sold, and wished him luck in the purchase. (c) Awful. (d) Laid aside, as finished. (e) A rush. A windlestraw is a withered stalk-crested dog's-tail grass. (f) Acquisition. (g) Means. [There are various expressions used in the foregoing letter which many will undoubtedly deem legal; but if taken in the sense Rutherford intended, and according to the times in which he lived, and the regenerated state of the person to whom he wrote, this opinion will be softened down. It is searching and likely to do good to supine souls, although we should hardly feel justified in expressing ourselves in such terms. Nevertheless we view it as signifying no more than "Give diligence to make your calling and election sure. -THE EDITOR.] RESIGNATION. "Not my will, but Thine be done.” A REPRINT. Thy will be done;" whate'er betide 'tis best, In Thy safe keeping I can calmly_rest; Nothing shall harm the lambs of Jesu's fold, Guarded by love unmeasured as untold. If dark my path, I cannot, cannot fear, Whilst by such tender arms Thou draw'st me near; "Tis there I learn to know, close by What 'tis to trust in Thee, e'en tho' Past-Present - Future -All-is in Every event doth come at Thy com- "All things shall work for good;" I fain would leave, and lean upon Thy Father! I would not take one step Lead through this Wilderness Thy May all my joys and all my sorrows be Thou Kindest of the kind, to Thee I Mid earthly changes let me cling to Oh let me nestle 'neath Thy fond Resting till I shall see Thee face to face. 121, Kensington, Liverpool. M, J. S. HODGES. LOVED, WASHED, AND DIGNIFIED. A SERMON BY MR. GRACE. (Continued from page 275). Now there is another evidence, and that closes all I say. There is faith. "Without faith it is impossible to please God." Saul was very zealous, as he thought; but it was not according to knowledge. The Lord met with him going to Damascus, and said to him, "Saul, Saul! why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art Thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus Whom thou persecutest; it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks." And Saul, trembling and astonished, said, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do." Well, when the Lord appeared unto Ananias, He said unto him, "Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and enquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus, for, behold, he prayeth." Now, we have no evidence that that man prayed till he was quickened by God the Holy Ghost. And in the same way the poor publican. Here are two characters in opposition to each other; the one resting on his good deeds. And perhaps there are some of you come up here, this morning, who think you can almost come up to him. That man's prayer was not prayer at all; it was telling the Lord what good things he had done for Him. But here is a poor man brought to the place of the stopping of mouths. And here is the turning point between the professors of the day and real possessors. One that really knows what it is to have the law brought home in its internal power. The law can never give life; it makes a poor sinner quake. It takes hold of him and binds him fast. But it is the blessed Spirit of God in the heart of that poor, quickened sinner that puts up a prayer, "God, be merciful to me a sinner." Ah, dear friends, if ever that prayer has gone up from your heart, depend upon it God has mercy in reserve for you. Because you have prayed? No, no: the Spirit of God makes intercession for you. He always prompts the poor sinner to lift up that prayer that He intends to answer. The Lord will have mercy; He is waiting to be gracious; "And blessed are all they that wait for Him." "Now unto Him that loved us." I have been more particularly speaking of the love of God the Father, and the Holy Ghost in His quickening manifestations of love to a poor sinner; but this is an open manifestation of the love of Christ in the work of redemption. Christ entered into covenant with His Father that He would give full satisfaction for all the sins of all the election of grace; not one left behind. I tell you how it used to be with me when I heard such things as these. It always came short. I said, 'It is true; but have I any interest in them? I know that by His Own sacrifice He has for ever put away sin from the elect, and it never can be charged on them. But is it for me?' But is it for me?' I would give God no rest till He had given me a feeling of it in my heart; but oh, as Mr. Hart says, "What wondrous grace was this! We sinned, and Jesus died! We ran the score to length extreme, And all our debt was charged on Him!" Well, now, He accepted at the hands of His Father, His church, His bride, and in the fulness of time;-on the very day, the very time appointed from everlasting-" God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law; that they might receive the adoption of sons." And in the eighth of Romans it is said: "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak, through the flesh, God sending His Own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. Mark you, dear friends, in the likeness of sinful flesh-not sinful flesh itself. That shows the humiliation of Christ, the condescension of the Son of God, "that He passed by the nature of angels," and took our nature. When? (as a godly man, an old divine, asks), When in its virginity, before Adam fell? No; He took the nature of the virgin, but "He was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners ;" and though made in the likeness of sinful flesh, what was it for? "That He might condemn sin in the flesh. That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." “Unto Him that loved us.' "Christ's love was manifested in taking our nature into union with His Divine person. Look at the Ancient of Days becoming an Infant of Days! And it is well for us when by the teaching of the Holy Ghost, we are led to consider the humiliation of Christ, and the wondrous love of Christ, when He became, as it were, an Infant of Days-born in a manger! Now come, poor tempted child of God; you perhaps are sometimes ready to say, 'Well, I do think there is no one so tried and exercised as I am; I am thwarted and crossed in all I put my hand to. If I think I am going to do a little here or there, everything goes wrong.' Look, for a moment, at the Lord of Life and Glory; everything at His beck and control; Who lives in the bosom of His Father, and yet becomes an Infant of Days-lies in a manger, where the horses and cattle lie; for His parents had no money to pay for a lodging when they went up to be taxed-there He was, laid in a manger; and, as Mr. Hart says, 66 "The crowded inr, like sinners' hearts, (O ignorance extreme!) For other guests of various sorts, Had room, but none for Him! What a description of the state by nature of the human heart! Room for every abomination, but no room for the Lord Jesus Christ. Ah, here was love! He passed by the nature of angels, and took our nature upon Him. Now, if we trace the love of Christ, -all His days were days of suffering, and He is expressly called, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;" and you never read in the scriptures of truth that Christ was ever seen to laugh: but He was seen to weep-a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief! All suffering and ignominy was cast upon Him in the day of God's anger, when He calls for the sword of justice to awake against the Shepherd, against the Man that was God's fellow. Here was His love!-His love from everlasting. Then we come to the open manifestation of it in the work of redemption for us poor sinners. "Who hath loved us." Now we find when John is speaking of His love, it is first recorded that "Jesus having loved His Own which were in the world, He loved them to the end." In the epistle to the Romans it is said, "Scarcely for a righteous man would one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die." Just take notice how this reads: "Scarcely for a righteous man." Supposing that a good man did dare to die for another that was a good man; did he die to make expiation for his sin? Impossible! It must be love prompts him; and it must be great love to step in his shoes and die for him. But yet a man could never make an atonement for sin; not even by his death. "For, the redemption of the soul is precious, and it ceaseth for ever." Now comes the sweet text, full of sweet breasts of consolation: "But God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." Now, recollect, it is for some special and particular persons: and Christ, speaking to His disciples, says, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Only look, my dear friends, and wonder with holy astonishment-" Friends!" But such was the case, that our blessed Jesus laid down His life for us-when ?— when we were traitors, rebels, in open rebellion again Him! It was then He laid down His life for us. "Unto Him that loved us." Now go and see what that love is. Look at Him in the garden of Gethsemane! when the weight of God's wrath alighted on Him, as the Head of His church; when that load must have sunk a thousand worlds to the lowest hell! But He came forth. He undertook as the Covenant Head, and He had strength to bear-and but strength to bear. "What shall I say? Father, remove this cup from Me." I think the passage ought rather to be read thus: "What! Shall I say, Father, remove this cup from Me? For this very end I came into the world.” He came by covenant arrangement to fulfil it, and here we find that God did not spare His Son in the least; and not the least particle of that wrath due to the church of God but what was poured out on Him, and He suffered the full wrath of God for every sin that ever the church of God did commit, or ever would commit. "Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd; against the Man that is My Fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts; smite the Shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered, and I will turn My hand upon the little ones.' He had signed His hand and could not go back; neither did He wish to do so; for it was love that brought Him to it, and carried Him through. But now trace Him a little further,-to Golgotha, to Calvary, where the cross was erected, that He at that time should render a perfect satisfaction. The sword of Divine justice was drawn from its scabbard. Here alone it was that that |