like very sheep when the trumpet shall sound, and the heaven and earth shall come to judgment against them; when the heavens shall vanish like a scroll, and the earth shall consume like fire, and all the creatures standing against them; the rocks shall cleave asunder, and the mountains shake, and the foundation of the earth shall tremble, and they shall say to the mountains, Cover us, fall upon us, and hide us from the presence of his anger and wrath, whom we have not cared to offend. But they shall not be covered and hid; but then shall they go the back way, to the snakes and serpents, to be tormented of devils for ever.-Henry Smith.

Verse 17.-There is a kind of omnipotency in prayer, as having an interest and prevalency with God's omnipotency. It hath loosed iron chains (Acts xvi. 25, 26); it hath opened iron gates (Acts xii. 5-10); it hath unlocked the windows of heaven (1 Kings xviii. 41); it hath broken the bars of death (John xi. 40, 43). Satan hath three titles given in the Scriptures, setting forth his malignity against the Church of God: a dragon, to note his malice; a serpent, to note his subtilty; and a lion, to note his strength. But none of all these can stand before prayer. The greatest malice of Haman sinks under the prayer of Esther; the deepest policy, the counsel of Ahithophel, withers before the prayer of David; the largest army, a host of a thousand Ethiopians, run away like cowards before the prayer of Asa.-Bishop Reynolds,

HINTS TO THE VILLAGE PREACHER.

Verse 1.-The answer to these questions furnishes a noble topic for an experimental sermon. Let me suggest that the question is not to be answered in the same manner in all cases. Past sin, trial of graces, strengthening of faith, discovery of depravity, instruction, &c., &c., are varied reasons for the hiding of our Father's face.

Verse 3.-God's hatred of covetousness: show its justice.

Verse 5.-" Thy judgments are far above out of his sight." Moral inability of men to appreciate the character and acts of God.

Verse 6.-The vain confidence of sinners.

Verse 9.--The ferocity, craftiness, strength, and activity of Satan.

Verse 11.-Divine omniscience.

Verse 13, (first clause).—An astounding fact, and a reasonable enquiry.

Verse 13.-Future retribution: doubts concerning it. I. By whom indulged the wicked. II. Where fostered: "in his heart." III. For what purpose: quieting of conscience, &c. IV. With what practical tendency: "contemn God." He who disbelieves hell, distrusts heaven.

Verses 13, 14.-Divine government in the world. I. Who doubt it? and why? II. Who believe it? and what does this faith cause them to do?.

Verse 16.-The Eternal Kingship of Jehovah.

Verse 17, (first clause).-I. The Christian's character,-" humble.” II. An attribute of the Christian's whole life "desire :" he desires more holiness, communion, knowledge, grace, and usefulness; and then he desires glory. III. The Christian's great blessedness: "Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the humble."

Verse 17, (whole verse).-I. Consider the nature of gracious desires. II. Their origin. III. Their result. The three sentences readily suggest these divisions, and the subject may be very profitable.

BY PASTOR JOHN OFFORD, PALACE GARDENS CHAPEL. YODHEAD is one and indivisible. The three glorious persons in the

Go Trinity constitute but one essence; so that, though the Father is

God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, yet are there not three gods but one God. Such is the truth taught in the Old Testament, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord." And such is the truth taught in the New Testament: "To us there is one God." This great and unchanging verity is the source of the unity of the one family of faith. "As thou Father art in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us." Of the blessed truth of the unity of all redeemed men we now propose to speak. May the One Eternal Spirit

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who dwelleth in the one Church in heaven and on earth, guide us into the reality of this divine doctrine.

I. The thought of the essential unity of all redeemed men could only be of God; the conception of the One Eternal mind; the offspring of the One Infinite heart. So grand a design could originate in no finite intellect. Essential wisdom beams forth in every line of the wondrous plan. The blessed purpose has ever been before him, of whom, and through whom, and to whom, are all things. It well accords with the unchanging unity of the ever blessed God, that he should choose and redeem an innumerable multitude of sinners of mankind, and constitute them one glorious, united people and family, in whom he might display the riches of his grace unto eternal ages.

II. The unity of the faithful embraces believers of every age of time, and from every clime of earth; from the first fallen man who rested his soul on the promise of God's grace and truth in the dawn of time, to the last child of that fallen man, who shall hear and believe the Word of the gospel, in the moment ere it shall be said that time is no more. It is a unity that gathers into its vast and sacred enclosure, within the heavenly places, the countless throngs who from age to age find refuge from doom under the sheltering wings of divine mercy, and beneath the cross of God's spotless sacrificial lamb. It is a unity from whose priceless privileges shall be excluded no child of man, that shall rest the faith of his heart on the word of his God, whether that word were spoken of old time, or is uttered in this day of grace, or shall be heard in the coming age of the glorious millennial reign of the Son of man.

We grant that there is a great and marked variety in the dispensational position and experiences of the children of the one family of God. We grant that the grand old patriarchs who lived well nigh a thousand years, and were found righteous before God, when wickedness increased upon the earth, who trusted in and loved the same God as ourselves, and possessed the one life and the one faith of the saved; nevertheless, had not the light which has beamed upon us from the person of the risen Son of God, at the right hand of the Father on high. We grant that the believing Jews, though they had much advantage every way, knew not the calling and the standing in Christ, and the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places, as we know them, we with whom the Comforter, the Spirit of truth and the Spirit of adoption now dwells, to testify of the fatherhood of God to the many brethren of his risen Son. Let it be admitted too, that the saints of the coming age will not have the privilege of suffering with their rejected Lord and head, in a world that has despised his claims, and that consigned him to the felon's doom; and that they will not have the honour of wrestling against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual wickedness in high places, seeing that these will be shut up in the abyss with their mighty chief. All this, and much more of a like kind, we thankfully own, rejoicing the while in the special grace of God towards his people in these days of gospel light. Yet, notwithstanding these dispensational diversities, the whole body of the faithful is, and will be for ever, one. This essential truth of the Word of God, underlies all the differences of condition and position in which the various generations of the redeemed have been

or can be found. The perfect and everlasting unity of the faithful can no more be disturbed by the circumstances of the Church below, than the oneness of the mighty ocean can be destroyed by the tempestuous winds which, ever and anon, toss its surface into foaming billows. The phases through which the Church may pass in the land of her sojourn can no more extinguish the light of this blessed truth than can the changing atmosphere of earth extinguish the light of the sun. Dispensations belong to time. They are the moods of the divine sovereignty in its dealings with the successive generations of the redeemed. They are the unfoldings of the plans of infinite wisdom in developing the one great purpose of the one Jehovah, and they will all issue in the one great result for which they have been successively introduced into the grand economy of redemption. All the dispensations of time are tending, like the great rivers of earth to the one ocean, to that final and endless dispensation of the fulness of times, in which God will gather together in one, all things in Christ. The fulness of the times that have been, the fulness of the time of grace that now is, the measureless fulness of the ingathering of the millennial age will all be gathered under one head into one condition of blessing, and into one sphere of glory in the dispensation of the new heaven and the new earth. Yes, the family of faith is one. Loved by one everlasting and distinguishing love; born of one eternal Father; possessed of one holy life; redeemed by the same precious blood; renewed by the one Holy Ghost; united to one living head; destined unto one heavenly home; the family of faith is one, essentially and eternally one.

III. All the redeemed have been loved with one distinguishing and special love. A love unequalled in nature and unparallelled in degree. A love bestowed on no other creatures in the vast universe. The deepest paternal emotion in the infinite heart of God, has been from eternity cherished towards those whom he has loved with and in his only begotten Son, the Son of his love. The deepest affection in the heart of the eternal Son is that which he has ever cherished toward the chosen bride appointed to him of the Father. The love of the most tender dove-like Spirit has been manifested by him as the Quickener and the Comforter of the children of God. But that love of the precious Jehovah, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost enfolds in one everlasting embrace every member of the redeemed family. The Divine Father does not cherish one kind of love towards one portion of his family, and another kind of love towards another portion of his family. The blessed Saviour does not confer a higher degree of love on some of his own people, and a lesser degree on others. That there is a character of love in the heart of God towards some of his children whom he has chosen in Christ, from which others of his redeemed ones are excluded, is a thought impossible to be conceived in the mind of one who has known the Father, whom that Father has received and embraced as a returning prodigal, and welcomed to his bosom and his home in divine compassion and affection. For God to have declared that there was a state of nearness to himself, and of fellowship with the Father and the Son, designed for some of his chosen ones, into which others could never be permitted to enter would have been a distinct avowal on his part, that these excluded ones had never possessed the same place in his fatherly heart as the more favoured objects of his grace. I know not whether those godly men and teachers

in the Church who so urgently enforce the claim of the saints of this dispensation to essential pre-eminence and everlasting blessing with and in Christ beyond all other redeemed men, are aware of this only legitimate inference which can be drawn from their teaching; but certes, there can be no more deplorable notion fathered upon the truth of God, and therefore upon the God of truth, than that which this doctrine involves. On the other hand, the inference is plain and undeniable, that if the eternal Father has loved his children with one special and unchanging love; if he has enfolded them all alike in his infinite heart with and in Christ his beloved, from eternity; then the longings of that heart could not be satisfied without giving every child of his love the richest and the highest blessings that he could bestow. Loved, therefore, with one distinguishing love, by the ever blessed God, the whole family of faith shall share alike the fulness of his favour, the joys of his home, and the fellowship of his bosom; they shall be essentially, perfectly, and eternally one.

IV. The unity of the faithful is derived through their being born of one Father. "Of his own will begat he us, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures." "To as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God," "which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." All the children stand in the same essential relation to the one Father, and become through his grace entitled to the same glorious inheritance. A royal father may assign to his sons different offices in the state, or diverse ranks in his army, but these will make no difference in their one condition of princely dignity, or in their relation to that father himself; and God may place one portion of his family in one position on earth, and another in a different position, yet does he not thereby alter their one relation to himself as their Father, or their state of equality before him as brethren.

Besides, the life by which the children of God are born unto him is one essential life, derived from him who is "The Life," even that eternal life which was with the Father, and which has been manifested unto men. No fallen child of man was ever renewed in the spirit of his mind, save by the incorruptible life communicated from the Son of God; and Christ does not impart two distinct kinds of life to his redeemed people, the one fitting them for union with himself, and the other preparing them for a lower condition of being, in some nearer or remoter connection with himself as Head of the Church. If every redeemed man has eternal life at all, it must be a life from Christ, and the life of Christ can only exist in union with himself. While, then, it is true that God is the Father of all who believe, and that all believers possess a common life from Christ, there can be no difference of circumstance or position, in time or eternity, which can touch their spiritual oneness before him.

V. This unity is grounded on the glorious fact that every saint and chosen sinner has been redeemed by the same precious blood of Christ. I take it that every sinner, who through Divine grace, stands before God in all the value and preciousness of the one obedience unto death of Jesus, becomes justly entitled to every privilege and blessing flowing from his one all-sufficient sacrifice. It were a thing impossible to be supposed that the God of all grace and truth should not give to

any sinner trusting in the merits of the one Redeemer, and resting in very truth upon his precious blood, all that that blood could claim on his behalf. Can it be imagined that among those who were afar off, and who are made nigh by the blood of Jesus, there should be multitudes who shall never know the blessedness of nearness which is granted to others. God can never so deal with the wondrous sacrifice of his well-pleasing Son, as to allow one single soul that shall rest in its merits before him, to be deprived of any good that that sacrifice could claim for that soul. God has based everything on the blood of his own Son. It is his, and his only, to estimate the full value of that precious blood, and to assign to it the reward which it merits. Well may it therefore be said, "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?" And what less reward can be given than that which the fulfiller of the Father's will has sought at his hand in his own memorable and recorded plea? "Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me." These words are sufficiently decisive. All whom the Father has given to Jesus, are to be with him for ever, to dwell in, and to behold his glory. Hence it is clear that all the redeemed, not merely those of the present dispensation, but those saved from every generation of man through all time, shall be found in the same position of glory with their exalted head in the presence of the Father for ever. And this accords with another plea in that wondrous intercessory prayer of Christ, "Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are." And again, "That they ALL may be ONE." Not a few of them; not those passing, through special scenes and circumstances on earth, and favoured with certain privileges while here; but ALL loved of the Father, and given to the Son as the fruit and reward of his one obedience unto death whereby he glorified the holy name of his Father and God.

VI. Spiritual oneness is peculiarly the "unity of the Spirit." The Holy Ghost is the great agent in the renewal unto eternal life of the souls of men. Hence the apostle adds to his testimony concerning the "one body," that "there is one Spirit." One Holy Ghost who quickens all the members of that one body, who implants each member into the body, who maintains its vital union with the glorious head, and who maintains the union of all the members with each other. The same Holy Ghost which renewed the hearts of the ancient saints, and led them along their pilgrim path and opened before them the prospect of the coming Messiah, and the hope of the better and heavenly country, is the same Spirit which now dwells as the Spirit of adoption and as the Comforter in the hearts of God's people; and he is the same Spirit that will quicken the dry bones of the whole house of Israel in the day of Christ's coming; and who will work the wonders of grace to be accomplished in the ingathering of the great harvest of the millennial age. He is the Spirit which shall quicken the bodies of the sleeping saints with life immortal from Jesus; and who will finally flood with light and fill with love the minds and hearts of glorified just men in the world of bliss, for ever.

Other thoughts on this subject may follow in a future number.