in Him as our Father, so to exercise confidence in the Son is to welcome the life of sonship which we have in Him. And this is the manner of our being alive to God through Jesus Christ, and it is self-evidenced to my mind. as the truth of sonship, as what and what alone we can believe to meet and satisfy that fatherliness in God which presupposes, and by the revelation of which to our spirits by the Son it is quickened.

I cannot recognise this truth of sonship, in what, in connexion with the other conception of the atonement, is held as "adoption;" of which I desire to speak plainly, yet warily, knowing how much more difficult it is to do justice in the choice of one's words to the faith of others, than to one's own faith; and having, also, the awe on my spirit of the true savour of the life of sonship, which it has been my privilege to meet in connexion with the form of thought on this subject which yet I feel constrained to reject.

The adoption of us as sons, as superadded to justification by faith, no element of sonship being present in the faith that justifies us, nor exercise of fatherliness contemplated as an element in the divine acceptance of us, the adoption itself a boon bestowed upon us in connexion with the imputation of Christ's merits to us, this is a manner of sonship as to which it is obvious that the confidence with which we may so think of ourselves as sons of God, and draw near to Him expecting to be acknowledged as such, is no direct trust in a Father's heart at all, no trust in any feeling in God of which we are personally the objects as His OFFSPRING, but is in reality a trust in the judicial grounds on which the title and place of sons is granted to us.

I know that it is held that, when in connexion with the faith that justifies God bestows on us the adoption of sons, He gives us also the spirit of sonship, that we may have the spiritual reality as well as the name and standing. But the spirit of sonship is the spirit of truth, the Son himself is the truth—“ I am the way, the truth, and the life." That the Son should say, "I am the way 66 no man cometh unto the Father but by me," teaches us that sonship alone deals with fatherliness as fatherliness; that

we must come to God as sons, or not come at all. On this co-relativeness of sonship and fatherliness I have dwelt above. So also that He should say, "I am the life,” fixes our faith on Him us our proper life, according to “the testimony of God, that God has given to us eternal life, and that this life is in His Son,"-but that He should say, and say in humanity, "I am the truth," teaches us, that not only is it the case that to come near to the Father we must come near in the Son, and that the life of sonship is the life to which we are called, but, besides, that to come to God in the Son, and so to come to Him as sons, is, and alone is, in harmony with THE TRUTH of our relation to God.

I have in some measure anticipated this contrast between sonship towards God as quickened in us by the revelation to us of the Father by the Son, and sonship conceived of as added to our legal standing of justified persons through the imputation to us of Christ's merits, when noticing above the practical difficulty of harmonising in conscious experience two manners of confidence so opposite in their nature as a legal confidence on the ground of the imputation to us of a perfect righteousness, and a filial confidence such as the faith of a Father's heart is fitted to quicken. In truth the assumed filial confidence being cherished in this dependence on the legal confidence, and the fatherliness conceived of being, not a desire of the heart of God going forth towards us as His offspring to which sonship is the true and right response, but the divine acknowledgment of a standing granted to us according to the arrangement assumed, though our conception of the mercy and grace of which we assume ourselves to be the objects may still be high, the true and simple feeling of dealing with a Father's heart is altogether precluded.

But thus to think of the intercourse with God which eternal life implies as resting for its peace and security on another ground than its own essential nature;—to think of sonship as cherished freely otherwise than as the natural response to the Father's heart, to think of the Father as rejoicing in this sonship as present in us otherwise than as the Father ;-to feel that the prodigal son feels secure

in the welcome of his forgiving father on any other ground than the fatherly forgiveness itself which has embraced him, falling on his neck and kissing him ;-to feel that the Father is justified in his own eyes, or would justify himself in the eyes of the rest of His family, in the gracious welcome which he accords to the returning prodigal, on any other ground than that which he expresses when he says, "My son was dead, and is alive again ;"—to suppose that the filial standing must rest on a legal standing, and that all this intercourse between the Father of spirits and His redeemed offspring must be justified by the imputation to them of Christ's righteousness, and that this reality of communion with the Father and the Son must be reconciled, in this way of at least seeming fiction, with the moral government of God, instead of recognising that communion itself as what is the highest fulfilment of moral government, and the ultimate and perfect justification of all the means which God has employed in bringing it to pass: these are thoughts which can have no place in the light in which the Apostle says-" It became Him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings."

The natural character now claimed for the consciousness of sonship as belonging to our communion with God in Christ, that is to say, that it shall be felt the due response to the Father's heart, and not the mere using of a privilege and right graciously conferred upon us, corresponds with, or, I should rather say, is one with the self-evidencing character claimed above for justifying faith.

The liberty to call God Father, which we feel in the light of the revelation of the Father to us by the Son, we in that light cannot but feel: for in that light we not only apprehend the divine fatherliness, through the perfect response of sonship yielded to it by the Son of God in humanity, and, at the same time, the sonship itself, which is that response, but we have this apprehension necessarily with a personal reference to ourselves.

How important this statement is-assuming its truth

those will feel who are acquainted with the questionings on the subject of adoption by which the most earnest and deeply exercised spirits have been most tried, while their right to call God Father has been conceived of by them as turning upon the previous question of their justification through imputation of Christ's righteousness, and that again upon the soundness of the faith from which justification has been expected. What is here taught is that to call God Father, and draw near to Him in the confidence of sonship, is simply to conform to, and walk in, the light of life which shines to us in Christ.

Assuredly that word from heaven-"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear ye Him"each man that hears is called to hear as a word addressed to himself, a revelation of a will in God in relation to him. This is not to be questioned. Why is this divine sonship manifested in humanity? Why, brother man, is our attention called to it? Why are we told of the Father's being pleased in the Son and in this connexion bade to "hear the Son ?" Surely the fatherliness thus presented to our faith is fatherliness in which we are interested, for surely it is interested in us—has desires with reference to us; and surely the sonship on which our attention is thus fixed concerns us, yea, can be nothing else than the very condition of humanity which these desires of the Father contemplate and seek for us. Therefore when we are turned to the kingdom of God within us,-when that spiritual constitution of things, which the words that have raised our eyes to the Father and our hopes to sonship have pre-supposed, is revealed to our spiritual apprehension ;— when we know "that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world," as these words state a condition of things with the advantages of which we are encompassed, and the truth and reality of which is to be known by us in our own inner being;-when that testimony of the Father to the Son, and of the Son to the Father, which pervades the Scriptures is known by us as also in ourselves, then what is contemplated by the call addressed to us-"Hear ye Him," is understood by us ;-we understand how, in the

love of the Father of our spirits, the Son, in whom the Father is well pleased, has in Him the life of sonship for us, and how, through Him, and in Him, we also may be sons in whom the Father shall be well pleased.

Thus are the outward preaching of the kingdom of God, and the revelation of that kingdom within us, known in their unity, in the experience of salvation; and the light shining in the scriptures and the light shining in man are known as one light,—at once universal and individual, as is the nature of light. When I hear, in the most general reference to men, the words "God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son,"—"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear ye Him,”—I hear what connects me in my own thoughts, as by a revelation of truth, with the fatherliness that is in God the Father, and the sonship that is in the Son of God: and so, still, as the light of life dawns on me and brightens, and I become a child of light and of the day, when I know, in my own inner being, the Father drawing me to the Son, and the Son moving and quickening in me the cry, Abba, Father, and have the illustration of a personal experience shed upon the words of Christ "No man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and He to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him;" still the fatherliness that is thus calling me to sonship, the sonship that is enabling to respond to that fatherliness, I know as one receiving knowledge of the truth of things; my experience is that of conforming to what is a revelation to me at once of God and of man,—that is to say, as I am a man, of myself. In obeying, I am obedient to the truth. I do not, I should

say, I dare not, doubt the voice of that fatherliness by which I am drawn to the Son, or doubt that the Son is revealed to me by the teaching of the Father for this very end, that I may know the desire and choice of the Father of my spirit for me. I do not, I dare not, doubt the light of that sonship, or that the Son is truly teaching me, as well as lovingly teaching me, how it is right for me to feel towards the Father of my spirit-the response to His heart which accords with the truth of what that heart is in relation to me. I do not