his soul; so saith the Scripture, "being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom also we have access into this grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God," Rom. v. 1, 2, they are justified by faith, and have peace-they stand in a state of grace, and rejoice in hope. Jesus" has made peace through the blood of his cross," Col. i. 20, and so to know him and to enjoy the peace he has purchased through the grace that is given to them, is the subject of the apostolical prayer and benediction,-" grace be to you, and peace."

And, as then, so now it is our consolation to remember the source from whence alone grace and peace can flow. It is not from Paul, or from Apollos, or Cephas; but "from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ." Jehovah, the Father, the fountain, and Jehovah, the Son, the channel of all blessings. "Jesus the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." Heb. xiii. 8. The Fountain of living waters, as redundant as at the creation-the Sun of Righteousness with undiminished effulgence-the Ocean unfathomable in the depths of love and mercy, an ocean with out bottom or shore." Oh how lamentably we live below our privileges, my friends. How little we bathe in that fountain! how little we bask in that sun!-how little we ride buoyant on that ocean with our anchor cast within the veil! "Lord increase our faith."

"BLESSED BE THE GOD AND FATHER OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, WHO HATH BLESSED US WITH ALL SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS IN HEAVENLY PLACES IN CHRIST."

The Apostle bursts, as it were, into a strain of praise and thanksgiving at the contemplation of their present position, and the present blessings they enjoyed through grace. He ascribes all those blessings to the source of all blessing, to Jehovah, the Father, and he calls Him, "THE GOD AND FATHER OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST," conveying thereby the ideas included in the amazing manifestation of His love in giving His Son to die for us, and the unity of the divine will in the salvation of all the Church of God. If it is "a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners," 1st Tim. i. 15, it is no less so that "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John iii. 16. The Father cannot be separated from the Son in the whole covenant and completion of the work of Redeeming love, nor the Holy Ghost from both. The revelation of that love in the glorious person and work of Immanuel, is the revelation of the Father's character, government, and love to sinners in Jesus. "No man knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." Mat. xi. 27. The "light of the knowledge of his glory" is revealed "in the face of Jesus Christ." 2 Cor. iv. 6. In the great work of salvation it may be affirmed that the unity of the divine will in the blessed persons of the Trinity is manifested

through all the Sacred Volume, in the salvation of all His Church. Our Lord saith, "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out." And He gives as the reason, "For I came down from Heaven, not to do mine own will but the will of Him that sent me, and this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which He has given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of Him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life, and I will raise Him up at the last day. John vi. 37-40.

It is manifest from these words of our Lord that all His Church are the gift of His Father to Him, they shall all come to Him and He will in no wise cast them out. Again, the love by which they are given to Him by the Father, and received by Him, is immutable; it carries them on to the end, for it is the Father's will that "of all which He hath given Him He should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day;" and again it is the same will which causes that " every one who seeketh the Son and believeth on Him," or, as our Lord saith in another place, "who have not seen and yet have believed," "may have everlasting life." "The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord," and so whosoever hath come to Christ that he may have life, whosoever has been drawn to Him as the hope and refuge of his soul, is warranted to ascribe, as the Apostle does here, the blessing of all their mercies to "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." We see the Apostle Peter uses the same language; "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, &c., 1 Pet. i. 3, and so the song of the redeemed before the throne is "Blessing and honor and glory and power, be unto Him that sitteth on the Throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever." Rev. v. 13. We perceive here for what the Apostle ascribes this blessing to God. "WHO HATH BLESSED US WITH ALL SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS.” They were blessed with them, all things were theirs-Christ is all and in all, and they were Christ's-as the Apostle says, 1 Cor. iii. 21-23, "All things are yours, and ye are "Christ's and Christ is God's." This is a truth of which believers, alas! are lamentably ignorant, and of which even those who know most, know but very little. How little are our hearts and hopes lifted up above their natural state! how heavily we drag on our spiritual life, compared with our high and holy privileges!

The Apostle, in the second chapter of this Epistle, enters more fully (as we shall see, if it pleases God to spare us,) into this subject. He contrasts the position of sinners in their natural state with that of sinners in their spiritual state-they were "dead in trespasses and sins," "children of wrath,"-now "quickened together with Christ-raised up together and made to sit together

in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Chap. ii. 1, 5, 6. The believer may ask, how can this be?-how can I feel this to be so? It is not proposed to you as an object of feeling but of faith-God speaks it-Jehovah declares it to be a fact, and it is firm as the foundations of eternal truth. We considered this subject at length, in reading the 6th of Romans, and it will come more at large than in this verse, under our consideration in the 2nd chapter, but you recollect what the testimony of the Holy Spirit is in the 6th of Romans-"We are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life”. again, "Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord," verses 4, 11,—again in Colossians, ii. 12, "Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead," again, in chap. iii. 3, 4, "ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." Their actual state of spiritual life and union with Christ is the subject not of sense indeed, but of faith. The Lord declares it to them, for it is so seen in his eye, "according as he hath chosen them in Christ before the foundation of the world." v. 4. God views all his own mighty works in progress as in completion. The architect surveys in his mind's eye the building of which he has laid but the foundation stone, as a complete and perfect structure, according to the plan and elevation he has laid down for it,—the shipwright when he lays the first beam of the keel of his vessel on the stocks, views it as complete as if it were sailing on the bosom of the deep, with every sail expanded in the breeze--and if architects and shipwrights were infallible and immortal, their works and their conceptions and plans must ever correspond. But how often do we see that they who lay the foundation may never live to raise the superstructure! how often do their structures vary from their plans, and how often do their resources fail! so that in all these senses we may say, "this man began to build and was not able to finish.”

But God is the omnipotent, infallible, eternal architect. When the foundations of his church were laid before the foundations of the world, it stood as perfect and finished in His view as it shall appear when the "head stone shall be brought forth with shoutings of grace, grace unto it." Zech. iv. 7.—And the mind of Jehovah shall be reversed-and his plans be changed-and His resources fail—or, He Himself shall cease to exist, before one stone shall fall and perish of that building which he viewed as complete from eternity. Jesus the living head of His church is exalted at the right hand of His Father, every member of His mystical body is beheld complete and safe in Him, "raised up together with him, and made to sit together in the heavenlies in him.”—not one of them shall be lost-his sheep shall never perish, John x. 28. It is as true of His mystical as of His natural

body, "a bone of him shall not be broken." John xix. 36. Prom ises and means are given us here, but it is the privilege of every believer in resting on those promises, and in the use of these means, to look beyond this tabernacle, to rise above this poor world of sorrow, sin, and death, and to enter by faith into those mansions, of which his Lord spake when He said, "I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." John xiv. 2, 3. He is made unto His people, "wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." 1 Cor. i. 30.

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"How am I to feel thus," some poor believer will say, "when I feel so deserving only of hell, so bowed down beneath this body of sin and death-struggling under the pressure of this corrupt and wicked heart-constrained continually to cry out, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!" Rom. vii. 24. Paul was constrained to cry out thus before you but you see when he records this sad experience of his own evil heart, and the power of sin in his members-even then in the midst of his complaint of sin and of his body of flesh, he bursts forth in the exercise of faith, and while groaning he asks the question, "who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Faith answers in the same breath," Ithank God through Christ Jesus our Lord." Rom. vii. 25. It is our privilege and our joy to rise upon the wings of faith and hope, and to soar up to our heavenly home above the strugglings of these dying bodies: how often do we see the believer even in the depths of suffering, and in the hour of death enjoying this blessed privilege.

I had a dear friend,* a physician, who died very lately of this disease that has been so prevalent and so fatal, this influenza ; and there was another dear friend of his and mine, who had the privilege of watching by his bed of death; his daughter who would else have occupied that post, lay dying of consumption at the same time; indeed it was to a devoted attendance on her, humanly speaking, that he fell a sacrifice, for when he caught the disease, he would not omit his late and early watching, nor give up till he was beyond the reach of human aid. This lady who attended him told me some circumstances of his death, which evince how a believer may rise above his earthly tabernacle, and look down on it as it were while he sees it crumbling into dust. before his eyes.

The day before his death he requested his medical attendant to read for him the 23d Psalm in Buchanan's Latin translation of the Psalms; he requested him afterwards to read the same Psalm in the Bible-he repeated with great joy the 4th verse, "yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."-When this was done he said, "As all his concerns were arranged for eternity, he would now settle his affairs for * Dr. Samuel Robinson,-he fell asleep in Christ, January 29th, 1837.

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time," accordingly he arranged his will and all temporal matters. That night about eleven o'clock, a violent fit of coughing came on, he said to his dear friend who was sitting beside him, in metaphorical language, to the use of which he was very much addicted, "That was a heavy blow from the iron mace of death—I thought I should have gone off about twelve o'clock to-night, but I see from the strength of that cough that I shall last three or four hours longer"—this was precisely the case, for at four o'clock in the morning he fell asleep. Soon after he had spoken thus he added, "Now my dear friend, you will see my hands and my feet swell, and then they will grow cold and bluish in their color, if you will be so kind when you see this to roll a little warm flannel round them, it will alleviate the bodily suffering, you see my hands are swelling already-then you will see the cold sweat of death breaking out on my forehead, and just wipe it off with a warm cloth—I shall then fall into a sort of stupor, but I shall not be dead for some time, and let them not touch me till I am dead." He spoke this and gave these directions, just as deliberately as if he was giving them for another dying man, and seemed just to speak of his body as of that of another person, then, after a little time he said as it were with a sort of playful triumph, "Who would have thought that I should have won the race from Sophy after all?"-alluding to his daughter, who was so near the goal, that he had been daily expecting the termination of her race. Soon after this, he fell asleep.

Thus, is it the privilege of a believer to rise above his earthly tabernacle, and while he sees and feels it sinking into the dust of death, to behold with the eye of faith his immortal spirit risen with Christ, and to long to burst the fetters which bind him here below, and spring at once to the realms of light. It is his privilege to turn his eyes away from the shroud, the coffin, the clay, and the worm, and to behold the glorious company of his brethren around the throne, and to hear the song of the redeemed as they cast their crowns at the feet of Jesus. Death is his as well as life-his, for good and glory too. "All things are his, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are his, and he is Christ's, and Christ is God's." 1 Cor. iii. 21, 22, 23.

He is “blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ." Oh! consider this, believer-you have all thingsthough now for the present you do not enjoy all things. It must be so, the Holy Ghost assures us, that the premises must involve the conclusion-the reasoning on them is infallible, "He that spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" Rom. viii. 32. How shall he not? that is to say, it is impossible but that he must. Therefore it is our glorious privilege to look out of ourselves in the flesh, and to behold ourselves by faith safe in our blessed Lord-"Surely shall one say in the Lord I have righteousness and strength." Isaiah xlv. 24-in ourselves we have neither one