God's delight in that righteousness in humanity justifying to us the Son's offering it, and the Father's accepting it on behalf of man to be the righteousness of man.

We see further that what is thus offered on our behalf is so offered by the Son and so accepted by the Father, entirely with the prospective purpose that it is to be reproduced in us. The expiatory confession of our sins which we have been contemplating is to be shared in by ourselves to accept it on our behalf was to accept it as that mind in relation to sin in the fellowship of which we are to come to God. The righteous trust in the Father, that following Him as a dear child walking in love which we have been contemplating as Christ's righteousness, is to be shared in by us: to accept it on our behalf as the righteousness of man, was to accept it as what pleases God in man,-what alone can please God in man,—therefore as that in the fellowship of which we are to draw near and live that life which is in God's favour.

In the light of the atonement this is seen clearly; and the light, as our eyes become able to bear it, reconciles us to itself. We soon are thankful that what God has accepted for us in Christ, is also what God has given to us in Christ. As to our past sins, we not only see that the atonement presented to our faith is far more honouring to the righteous law of God against which we had sinned than any penal infliction for our sins, whether endured by another for us, or endured by ourselves in abiding misery, could have been; but are further able to accept, as a most welcome part of the gift of God in Christ, the power to confess our sins with an Amen to Christ's confession of them, true and deep in the measure in which we partake in His Spirit. We are contented and thankful to begin our new life with partaking in the mind of Christ concerning our old life, and feel the confession of our sins to be the side on which the life of holiness is nearest to us, the form in which it naturally becomes ours, and in which it must first be tasted by us: for holiness, truth, righteousness, love must first dawn in us as confessions of sin. So we welcome the fellowship of the mind

in which Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man as the first breathing of that life which comes to us through His death. As to our interest in the righteousness of Christ, we see that God's acceptance of that righteousness on behalf of man, with the purpose of imparting it to man, is more glorifying to the divine delight in righteousness than any other conception that has been entertained; while we also feel the confidence toward the Father which we cherish in receiving Christ as our life to be the only confidence towards God which can meet alike the desires of His heart for us, and the need of our own spirits as God's offspring.

And thus we are in a light in which all drawing of us by the Father to the Son,-that is to say, all testifying to our spirits by the Father of our spirits that He has given to us eternal life in His Son,-comes to us as the personal application to ourselves of that eternal will of God which we have seen revealed in Christ's dealing with the Father on our behalf. This drawing is felt to accord with, and to be interpreted by, the offering of the Son, and the acceptance of that offering by the Father; and as our faith realises the work of atonement,-Christ's confession of our sins, Christ's presentation of His own righteousness in humanity in relation to us, and the Father's acceptance of both on our behalf,—we are more and more able to understand and to believe the testimony of God in the Spirit, that God has given to us eternal life, and that this life is in His Son.

In proportion as the light of the divine counsel thus strengthens to us, and in proportion to the growing awakenedness of our spirits to the proper consciousness of God's offspring and realisation of what the divine fatherliness must be,-what it must desire,-what alone can be satisfying to it,--we come to see the work of redemption in the light of our ultimate and root relation to God as the Father of spirits, with whom abides the fountain of life. We see that, however we had departed from God, our true well-being continued to be, and must ever continue to be, so bound up in what God is to us in

Himself, and what the aspect of our mind is towards Him, as that nothing external to this,—nothing in God's outward dealing with us,-nothing that He can give or we can receive,-nothing that is not included in the state of our own spirits towards God, and the response in our own hearts to that which is in His heart towards us,can be our salvation.

I have noticed above how much we may deceive ourselves if we expect that light from the typical sacrifices under the law which can only be shed upon us by the antitype itself. But there is an error from which these services might have saved men, which yet has been fallen into. What these services present to us as the picture of God's spiritual kingdom is, a temple and a worship, -the participation in that worship being the good set forth, disqualification for that worship the evil,—and sacrifices, and participation in these sacrifices, the means of deliverance from that evil and participation in that good. Not to deliver from punishment, but to cleanse and purify for worship, was the blood of the victim shed. Not the receiving of any manner of reward for righteousness, but the being holy and accepted worshippers, was the benefit received through being sprinkled with the victim's blood. In the light of this centre idea of worship, therefore, are we to see the sprinkling of all things with blood, and the remission of sins to which this related.

Accordingly, when we pass from the type to the antitype, we find worship the great good set forth to us,— that worship in spirit and in truth which the heart of the Father craves for,-that worship which is sonship,-the response of the heart of the Son to the heart of the Father. We find the disqualification for worship to be not a mere fact of guilt, but the carnal mind which is enmity against God, the law in man's members warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin that is in his members. We find that when the Son of God came to be the needed victim, and to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, He

indicated the nature and virtue of His contemplated sacrifice by the words, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God;" so that by this will it is that we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Christ,-the blood shed for the remission of sins being the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God, which purges the conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

Thus we are taught the strictly moral and spiritual relation of the sacrifice to the worship, we see the fitness of the blood shed to fit the spirits which shall be washed in it to partake in that worship, we see the mind of Christ, which is in that blood, to be that mind in the light of which and in the fellowship of which the worshipper will cry, Abba, Father. Finally, we see why the High Priest and the head of this worship is the Son of God; and why His relation to the worshippers is not "the law of a carnal commandment,"-not a mere institution or arrangement, but a spiritual relation, viz. "the power of an endless life," so that He is their High Priest in that He is their life.

All this, while it accords with the place of sacrifices under the law, is to us, when we see it in the light of our relation to God as the Father of our spirits, of the nature of necessary truth; that is to say, we see that that access to God which shall indeed be to us a way into the holiest, must accord with the spiritual constitution of our being, with the nature of holiness, and with the nature of the separation from God which sin causes; therefore, that no permission or authority to come to God can be of any avail to us, apart from the mind in which alone he who has sinned can in truth draw near to God; and this mind we see is just that into which the sinner enters in the Amen of faith to the voice that is in the blood of Christ, viz. Christ's confession of our sins. In the faith of God's acceptance of that confession on our behalf, we receive strength to say Amen to it,—to join in it—and, joining in it, we find it a living way to God; and at the same time we feel certain that there is no other way,

that we get near to God just in the measure in which in the Spirit of Christ we thus livingly adopt His confession of our sins,-in this measure and no further.

Permission to draw near to God, seen thus in the light of the mind in which to draw near,-that is to say, the remission of our sins seen in connection with Christ's confession of our sins,-this is the way of life open before us; a way which is to our faith a part of the gift of eternal life. For though the right feelings for us to cherish, though the suitable feelings in which to approach to God, and in truth, the only feelings in which the consciousness of having sinned can coexist with the experience of communion with God, still these feelings altogether belong to the Son of God,-to the Spirit of sonship, and are possible to us only in the fellowship of the Son's confidence in the Father's fatherly forgiveness, being quickened in us by the faith of that fatherly forgiveness, as uttered in God's acceptance of Christ's confession and intercession on our behalf.

I have above insisted upon the importance of the difference between a legal standing and a filial standing, and on the necessity, in considering the nature of the atonement, of keeping continually in view that in redeeming us who were under the law the divine purpose was that we should receive the adoption of sons. This necessity is becoming, I trust, more and more clear as we proceed. The virtue required in the blood of Christ is seen to be necessarily spiritual-a power to influence the spirits washed in it by faith, when our need is seen as the need of those whose life lies in God's favour, whose well-being must consist in communion with God, whose salvation is joining in that worship of God which is in spirit and in truth. And the spiritual virtue needed is determined to be the law of the Spirit of the life that is in Christ, the life of sonship, when it is understood that the worship in spirit and in truth is that which the Father seeketh as the Father, the worship which is sonship, that of which the son is High Priest and head. But it further appears to me, that this conception of the