Gleanings, Volume 3.

G. V. Wigram.

Gleaned by B.D.

"And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives." Sweet thought! The Lord's voice will yet be heard singing His song again amongst His brethren, singing the song of praise to God, as it was sung so often here below.

When one thinks of the wondrous glory of Christ, how astonishing that He can join with us! But more, when one thinks of His bringing many sons to glory at such a cost, one is lost in adoring amazement.

What was the first Adam, when set in his little territory in the garden of Eden, to the eye of God, compared with the second Adam? — that One, the Giver of eternal life, the smitten Rock, who in a moment could fill ten thousand souls with streams of living water. What a contrast! he whose days in the garden of Eden were but a span; whose beginning — a little handful of dust — God breathing into his nostrils the breath of life; and that One, the eternal life in the bosom of the Father before all worlds; He who could speak the word and give life to corruption; He, the One in whom God could accept those taken out of the pit where they had fallen, having chosen them in Him before the foundation of the world, to fill them with all spiritual blessings in Him.

In the wilderness it was the Lord trying the heart, to see if He Himself was enough, and whether they were a people who, as "strangers and pilgrims with God," had their hearts so packed up that when they found no water they could say, "But we have God with us and Canaan before us." Whether they found such a measure of joy in the wilderness as to show that their hearts were packed up to go forward.

We are in a system where everything turns on fallen man as the main object. That which separates me from it, is the thought that I am Christ's in heaven, chosen in Him before this system I am in had a beginning. This thought gives a great steadiness to the mind in all that we lay be passing through. His, and kept by Him in everything, and waiting on Him to see what He will do. If I left my body tonight, I should go straight to Him; and when He leaves the throne to come and take His people home, my body will go too; the dead raised, the living changed, and made like Himself. All to stand round Him — He the centre, and they covered with all His beauty.

If you are not walking in practical holiness, you will be made to find it out in chastening. He cannot separate between the Head and the members; but He looks at our ways. The Lord is sanctifying us, body, soul, and spirit. What! is this corruptible body to be put apart for God? Yes! whether I eat or drink, or whatever I do, all is to be for the glory of Christ. Are all the affections of my heart, all the thoughts of my mind, to be put apart? Yes I as a member of Christ I have to walk in childlike faith; most watchful not to commit Christ to anything unlike Himself, because of being in vital union with Him. I may be but a hair of the head, the tiniest member, but God has blessed me with all spiritual blessings in Him, and being so blest, ought I not to walk accordingly — holy and without blame before Him in love?

Ah, it required faith in the poor widow who could bring her farthing to cast into the coffer, with the gold and silver of those ostentatious givers; but it alone was of value in the Lord's eyes. All the rest was nothing at all. I would mention another poor widow who, when asked if she had any particular want, anything pressing on her, replied, "Yes, I have: I have never been accustomed to pass the box, and it cuts me to the heart that I cannot put in something for Christ." She had not even the two mites which the other poor woman had to cast in, but, ah, there was the heart for Christ; and the desire of the heart was accepted by the Lord of the other poor widow.

It is my Master who has given me eternal life in Himself. He is the eternal Lover of my soul, and I want to be like Him. Not one will ever taste what the Son of man tasted down here, and the billows which reached Him can never touch me, but He is the model of my life. He would take nothing here below, and I will take nothing either. He is the touchstone of everything down here, as to the connection of everything with the Father. If any down here were connected with Him, they made a home for that One whom He had sent. If not, they knew Him not.

It comes to my having the mind of God, do I want to be like Christ in everything? If born of God, I have power to overcome all that is not of God, and to walk according to God.

There is nothing we less expect a recompense for than the "patience of hope," but nothing is more precious to God, and nothing more marks a believer's life in the light. If I have got Christ as the spring of my heart, I must expect nothing but conflict down here; but what is there for me up there? "The glory which thou gavest me I have given them." He says, "I make over to you the glory which my Father has given me, I share it with you, I keep back nothing from you." Have I got it yet? No, I have to wait for it.

There was to be a space between His going up there, and our getting up there. We have got His heart all the way, but the interim is to be a time of suffering, a time of patience. Are you girded up for it? You know you are in the Father; has He not shown a Father's bosom, and love flowing out of it to you? Not saved only, but the greatness of the Father's love bringing me into fellowship with Himself; so that I can say, "I mind heavenly things, my fellowship is with the Father, and the Son in heaven."

Everything comes by permission to search the believer, but if God says, "I have shed my love abroad in your hearts!" can Satan take out of a man's heart that love? The character of love is abiding. Some, alas, do turn aside, but what single thing down here can you covet, if looking up in the patience of hope, waiting for Christ's coming?

Paul went down full of zeal and energy against the Nazarene, and directly that Nazarene looked on him, directly he turned full of zeal for Him.

The Lord had said of Paul, "I will show him what great things he must suffer for my name's sake." And it was not go much in service as by suffering, that all in Paul which was like the Lord came out. If Paul was nearest in likeness to Him, he would have the most to suffer. He had been brought to the feet of the Man of sorrows.

If all the glory of Christ could shine down upon you from Christ, you would, in nature, see no beauty in it. This is a fact, and it displays in the most awful aspect what the heart of man is. When Christ is revealed to any one, He Himself becomes the object of the soul. I have to do with a living person, it was Christ Himself I beheld when I got rest.

It changes everything directly I get Christ shining in on my soul. There may be the same routine of things without, the same difficulties and trials of the wilderness, but everything is entirely changed, because it is all seen in connection with Christ; and everything has a different value, because Christ is the centre. When the glories of Christ break into the soul, what thought can there be of settling down in the wilderness, or laying up a comfortable provision for old age?

How came testimony to be broken up? From seeking our own and not the things of Christ. What maintained unity at first was simply going after Christ as sheep after the Shepherd, not seeking anything else.

Ah! it is a very good thing to be brought down very low, not only by "Just as I was," a poor lost sinner, but by "Just as I am," a poor tottering Christian, as unlike Christ as possible. But still, He is leading me on, and God is conforming and fashioning me to His image.

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, This day shalt thou be with me in paradise." Who is this, coming out with His "Amen," when about to give up the ghost? Who is this whose eye could, before closing in death, turn on a poor sinner and dart a ray of glory into his soul? Ah! it was He who alone could say it, and give to that poor sinner the full consciousness of who He was.

As Nazarites do we feel the humiliation and glory of the cross as our strength of heart, all through our course in the wilderness.

Oh! the sweetness of the closing verses of Ephesians 3! Have we not had to put our Amen, and to say, "Yes, the church is heavenly, divine, soaring up from earth, inseparable from the Lord Jesus in heaven! We do know that love of Christ, we do look for each soul individually to be filled up with that love. Cannot you say you have tasted it as a divine portion, something that hangs altogether on Christ?

Oh, to be able to look up there, saying, "That Lord Jesus did give Himself for the church." How our affections ought to be stirred by seeing what Christ has done! Whose affections are exercised about the church? Christ's! He formed her, and gave Himself for her, that He might present her to Himself, a glorious church, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.

In the closing chapters of Revelation, we have yet more that calls us to see the church's unworldliness and weanedness from earth. "Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb's wife." The glory of God and the Lamb are upon her, showing her to be something not of earth, but heavenly and divine. Is that the thing your soul is going forth to?

All the glory of God gathered up will shine out, in, and from Christ, to be reflected by the church of the living God — this church used as the tabernacle to contain it. If Christ is looking on you and me as vessels to display the glory of God, He must love us. Love is a very real thing, not a flickering thing, but something connecting us with heaven and Christ. If Christ's heart is occupied with caring for the church as something which is to be the curtain round the divine glory in that day, surely we ought to be occupied with it! We shall never get an idea of what an unworldly thing we belong to, if our hearts are not in living communion with Christ in heaven.

Revelation 3: 14. What answer is there in my heart to that title of Christ, "the Amen?" Is my heart set on His glory? God's heart is turned round to seek it, and has my heart never been set to seek it? What! has the glory of God never in my heart had the Amen? Seeing where it is, and saying. "Amen" to it, the heart gets rest at once.

"Buy of me gold tried in the fire." That is a part of divine wealth. Who has got divine wealth? if I am a pensioner of Christ, He is my gold. I let all I got in Egypt drop on the shores of the Red Sea, and now what have I got? I have got my Saviour God. He is my wealth, He is the gold tried in the fire, He is enough.

Are you so living to Christ that you take up all the duties that lie in your path, and do what your hands find to do unto Christ? Satan often blinds the eyes to the omnipotency of Christ, leading one to say, "I cannot expect Christ to come into such a little thing." What! does not Christ fill little things as well as great? All the omnipotency and might of God is found in the heart of that risen man. If not, prayers could not be heard. I get His whole attention when I speak to Him in prayer, as if there were not one more save me. If I say that anything so small cannot occupy Him, it is only pride denying His omnipotency.

How often one has had a powerful consciousness in the soul that prayer has been heard, when no word, or half a word, has been uttered: one has suddenly felt that the Lord has come in to answer.

None can overcome the world and self, save by something divine and unworldly being shown them. Christ always puts some personal glory to draw hearts out of the world. If He looks at you, wanting to remove all that hinders your soul, He never tells you to look inside, but puts something outside as a lever to raise you out of it. If I want to get out of Laodicea, what is my lever? Why, that I have got to share the throne of Christ. Is He not on the Father's throne now? And does He not tell me to lay hold of that thought? If I am in deep miry clay, He says, "Why be cast down? I can give you power to overcome and to sit down with me on my throne." And I know He will rise up from His seat to take me up to Himself; that thought gives the heart present power over all circumstances.

If I am a saved soul walking round the wilderness, that heavenly man on the throne of God is with me, His eye watching me. If I am out of my place He sees it in an instant. When one thinks of Christ looking at us down here to see if we are in our proper place, the heart goes forth at once in praise to God, saying, "It is His work from first to last." He brought us out of death into life, translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son, because He wanted us there. If God takes me up to glory, I shall say, All is of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Not a fragment of nature remains in the place you are in, in Christ. All your connections are new with God. There is a walk that becomes this place. If I know the heart of God toward me, am I walking as a child with Him?

Are you ready to go at once straight into heaven, if the gates were thrown open? What manner of persons ought we to be to say it! Are we walking in a way perfectly consistent with stepping tonight at once into the glory, to be at home in the Father's house?

Paul said, "I cannot take a step without the sentence of death rolling through everything."

It was a strange thing, the only-begotten Son of God coming into the world as a babe. All in heaven would be saying, "Why, what palace can be good enough for Him?" And man saying, "Turn a crib in which the oxen have been feeding upside down and that will be good enough for Him."

After He had risen, His love shone out individually; it shone out to poor Mary weeping over His dead body, as she thought, and to others also: but when He left them and went up into heaven, what was the expression of love that came out? That Christ, looking down, saying, "Those poor things could not go through the wilderness, they have no power save in my death. I want them to know that I am up here for them, all the living water flowing from above; they are not to be turning aside a stone in the wilderness to find water, but finding it all in me up here." And what does He give us to do? "show forth my death, till I come." If faith in that Christ has brought you into the light of heaven, and you know a Man on the throne, and that that One has sent a letter to you through Paul, a letter in which He specifically tells you that He wants you to carry in your heart and to show out in your life down here, His death, what answer are you giving? Do you count this death as that which is cutting you off entirely from the world and the things of the flesh? Could the world tell by the character of the things that occupy you, the state of your heart and mind as to Christ? In this place between the cross and the glory, are you telling out what Christ's people have to do until He comes? We have not got the glory yet, but we have Him in whom it is secured to us. And till He comes, it is dying daily carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that His life also may be made manifest in us. I repeat, that is all we have to do down here. How blessed! everything finished, and He, at leisure in the Father's presence, occupied about poor feeble things in the fog down here; and they being made to know that all through the time between His death and His coming again, He has not once forgotten them; telling them to show out His death until He comes a second time, for the full manifestation of His love, and to take them up to the Father's house.

He comes to take those who honour the Father's counsel up to Him. He will come out in light — light streaming forth — and the first effect will be His changing their bodies, and with a steady hand moving them up into the Father's house. It might be when we are sitting round His table, that the Father, on whose word He counts, might say, "Rise up," and He would come forth to take us up, saying, "Behold! I and the children whom Thou gavest me."

Are our souls individually feeding on the thought that that risen Man at God's right hand has not forgotten that He is coming forth for us? And are we remembering His death till He come?

We shall find it very solemn if we are not pilgrims, if the door be not shut to everything of the first Adam, if not walking as citizens of heaven, and as children of the Father; we shall not be able to dwell in spirit above; not be enabled, like Paul, to pass through all forms of death, dying daily to everything because he had got life in Christ and power to carry it out and make it manifest "through deaths oft."

The secret of all power in the people of God to show forth Christ's death and make manifest His life, is to find themselves shut out from the world below, where their feet tread; and shut up to another world above, where their life is hid with Christ in God, hid in Him who is coming; and who asks where my heart is whilst He is absent.

Paul was a blessed man, he had put down all selfishness, he would live only to Christ. Yes, come what might, he would live to the One who had been the giver of eternal life to him. Oh, if you could say, "To me to live is Christ," would you not in everything be more than conquerors? Paul was a man of the strongest character of any man who ever lived on earth, but he mastered that and brought everything in him into subjection to Christ. In everything he did, he dropped into the mind of Christ.

You will find immense strength, if you know what it is to get before your soul the reality of a Person, a living man, in a body of glory, being up there as the prize to attain to. You may have to go through a dark passage, but saying, "Never mind, there is that One in the glory, and I am pressing on till I reach Him." It was not merely a doctrine with Paul, but the working of his heart's affections about a distinct person, and the certainty of attaining to and of being made like that person's own glorious body. Not merely was bright light shining into Paul's soul, but the love of Christ was telling its own tale in the heart of Paul.

I have felt much lately about the want of power in saints to be the exhibitors of Christ. I feel we want exceedingly to have our hearts more occupied with Him up there. What would give such brightness of heart as the being able to say, "To me to live is Christ"? Are our eyes fixed on the risen Christ, and our hearts set on, being with Him in the glory? Are we holding fast what He has given, keeping His works unto the end?

Not a glance of my eye, nor a thing that occupies me, but Christ notes. Why? Because He loves me, and He wants all and everything in connection with me to be according to His mind.

Two very simple things are telling the state of any soul: are they saying, "To me to live is Christ, and to die gain?"

When Stephen was being stoned, what was the Lord thinking? That Saul, the bitterest of all persecutors, should step in and fill up the ranks.

On which ground would you rather be — that of an upright man, or that of a poor sinner, saying, "Christ came and died for me, and I am justified, by faith in His blood?" Justification means that there is no claim of God not met by Christ. But am I saved altogether? No, not yet. When Christ comes at the end, He will come as a Saviour who has to save those who are His, out of this world. He has property down here, the bodies of saints, and when He comes, it will be to take them up.

Revelation 5: 8. Where is this song of redemption-praise sung? On earth, or in heaven? Although now in a place where you feel more and more what the worth is of that blood on your crimson sins, (so that, as David said, Give me the sword of Goliath, for there is none like that, so you say, Give me the blood of Christ, and nothing else), yet there is no place where, in connection with that blood, its worth is more intrinsically appreciated than the throne of God. That song is sung, and has been sung, down here since the Lord took His seat on high; but when the time comes for shifting the scene, the twenty-four elders (that is, the church) will sing before the throne, "Worthy is the Lamb!" What so precious as the thought that this lip of mine will never be weary of singing, "To him who has loved me and washed me from my sins in his own blood, be glory and dominion for ever and ever?" Not one of the angels, nor any other creature can touch that note with regard to His blood.

Next we see in Revelation 7: 9, a company arrayed in white robes — robes made white in the blood of the Lamb. That is something which we want. Our consciences are purged, butt' we want our robes washed too. That company is fit outwardly as well as inwardly. One might have a cleansed conscience, but a soiled robe. A believer ought not to allow a spot. Your robes are to be spotlessly white as you go along — fit to walk with the Lord. The conscience may be clean before the robes are.

Do I walk as a heavenly man — my ways, my conversation, the ways and conversation of a man whom Christ has stooped to wash in His blood?

Walk is an immense thing to us — it is everything to have a walk which tells that the feet are washed by Christ day by day, because we have been washed in His blood. Are we exercised about it? Exercised as to whether outward walk has a voice that tells out we are a peculiar people, not only washed from the guilt of our sins, but our robes white, everything about us in harmony with it.

Next turn to Revelation 12: 11. "They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb . . . . and they loved not their lives unto the death." We find there what every one of us requires to have, that is, a screw put on us. "You have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin." That is what I call putting on the screw. The calling of a redeemed people is to be overcomers, not to shrink from suffering. We find something like it in Hebrews 10: 32. In Revelation 12: 11, we see a company who, when the whole energy and activity of Satan in every form was put forth against them on earth, overcame him by the blood of the Lamb. That was their power to worst him.

Shall I say, "I cannot overcome," to that Christ who resisted unto blood, and shed His blood for me: He now crowned with glory at God's right hand, because He overcame, putting that blood forward here, as that which tells of Satan being a worsted foe?

Ah, as we go on we shall find, and do find more and more, no one thing so precious to us as that blood. The blood of Him who was God manifest in flesh, and who came down here to shed it for us.

Never was there any character down here like that of the Eternal Son of God as Man — a character that has a depth and height in it that could be found in none but in God Himself, and could have been sketched only by the Holy Ghost. Satan would have done all in heaven and earth to have dimmed its perfectness, but he could not touch that holy undefiled One. It was God drawing near to man according to His own character: the whole thing, from the manger to the cross, was divine.

It is a very real thing to have to do with Christ; when you receive Christ, you meet all the moral glory of God in the face of that Christ; not merely His glory shining there, but all the tender affections of the Father's heart of love displayed in Him who took our form and dwelt among us as Man.

Why was He to leave heaven and come down here — this perfect, matchless, peerless God-man? What was this world to Him? people might say. Ah! God had all His plans centred in that One. From the foundation of the world it was ordained that He should take up the question of sin; and whatsoever the ruin and the misery brought in by it, Christ was perfectly equal to turning all the ruin to His own glory.

No one but the Son of God Himself could look up in God's face and say, "I can settle the question of sin." None save He could look down into the heart and mind of a sinner, whether Jew or Gentile, and say," I know exactly what you are, and I can do a work of which God can say that He has found His rest, and through which He is perfectly free to deal in grace with the most wretched sinner.

There is no part of the life of the blessed Lord in which He stands forth so conspicuously as God able to meet the whole volume as when on the cross, of God's wrath for sin; bearing in His own body sins heaped up without number, and by the sacrifice of Himself making clear God's right to be just in justifying the sinner. The character of God as Love displayed too, in giving His Son to be the accepted sacrifice for sin. God had never before been revealed after this fashion.

The doctrine of the gospel as in the person of Christ is a lost thing in the present day, because it is always presented on the side that meets man, and not God's side.

When one gets to see the beauty of Christ, how the heart owns it as something altogether matchless. Now on God's throne in human form, He could not but be set forth in heaven and earth as the most divinely beautiful of all beautiful objects.

When the high priest went into the holy place he took a quantity of sweet-smelling incense which was burnt to go up as a cloud to cover the mercy-seat. Is there nothing like a cloud of incense in God's presence for us? Yes. Christ is up there for us, with such a sweet smelling savour, that its fragrance is filling heaven.

As the whole mind of Christ, when down here, was set on showing His delight in the Father, so now in heaven it is the whole pleasure of God's mind to show out His delight in that Christ, seated at His own right hand, as the accepted sacrifice. He wants our hearts to be filled with nothing else, and when occupied with that, no question can come in as to our perfect acceptance.

No one who has got Christ in the light as his pattern could deny that the eternal life flows out from us in the proportion that it flows in. If it flows in, it sets my whole heart praising. Why does it not flow out in rivers of blessing? Ah! the water from the Rock of Ages is pure, but not so the channel through which it is to flow out. Just when going to praise, some foolish thought, something of self comes in. Blessed it is that none knows this save God, and that the more the light comes in, the more one knows what is of God, and what is not: while in that which comes out it discovers to me how unlike all my ways and habits of thoughts are to those of Christ. But the very light that tells me this, comes in with blessed healing; not only telling me what He is, and that I am not like Him, but ah! how sweet! as the light shines in, it tells me too that I shall not always be what I am. I see by faith Christ in His glorious body, and I know that I shall be like Him  when I see Him as He is. Not only is Christ revealed to me in the light, but a whole chapter of glory yet to come is revealed as the light shines.

I know a dear believer who is afraid of death not of what comes after, but of the pain; but what is the pain of any one if he is in the light? Is it the same thing if there? Certainly not. Ah, when till these questions come out in the light, we see the answer to everything there; see how magnificently Christ has done everything. I had rather not settle any little detail; He settles everything; why should I be occupied by any question about pain? Whether I shall go by death into His presence, or whether I shall be down here when He comes, I am in the light, and He has settled everything about me. All these questions just catch us, like thorns that wound us as we go along. Let them make you ask whether you are looking at everything in the light. If you are in the light, and soon to be in the glory, will He, think you, let you be in want of a scrap of bread, by the way? The waves may come in, rolling against you, but when it breaks you will see it came to show you some particular thing the Father had to do in you, something He wants to bring into the light, because He would have it to shine out just there.

What keeps people nestling down in a little dark valley, when the eternal light is given by God to shine down in order to make their hearts rejoice?

God, in every dealing with His people, finds a way to make love and light shine down on their wilderness path, so that the soul goes on finding fresh joy unto the end.

No sin the believer brings to God, but when it comes to be weighed, is not outweighed by the blood. Broken down as Peter was, which was greatest, the divine love in Christ, or the sin in Peter? Ah! did He not give him a piercing glance? Is He changed? I am very vile; but that love is infinite: my sin has been very bad against that love — but it is infinite.

I can be before God just as I am: take care not to pass that by: it is a wondrous part of the glory of Christ, that a person with sin in him can be in the presence of God in perfect favour. Sin could not be there, but it was all borne by Him, who is the accepted sacrifice in His own body on the cross, and put away for ever. By faith in Him I am brought into the light with nothing to hide — and I do not want to hide anything. There is sin and mortality about me, but all that I am cannot separate me from Christ. God says, "He is the accepted sacrifice, and I have nothing to say against you as to all you are in self; in Him you are perfectly accepted, the blood cleanses from all sin." But I have need to be in the light to keep up a walk that becomes such a place. If I turn aside, I shall forget that I am purged from my old sins, and God must come in with a rod. You must keep your walk up by having your eye fixed on Christ.

If any turn aside — the heart hankering after the leeks and cucumbers of Egypt, and the eye looking for the well-watered plains — they will forget that the blood has purged them. It must be ever on my mind and soul, and I am to walk in communion with God to keep it fresh.

There can be no selfishness allowed if walking in the light. Look at Christ if you want to know what to do with selfishness. See what sort of God your God is, look into heaven and see that Son of. His love, all that He is, and all that He has given you — your portion is there. In the place where Christ's light shines, all selfishness is detected and judged, and then we can have fellowship. Christ enables the believer to know the place where He is, and to have all his pleasure in walking separated unto Himself whilst down here. It is only as the soul is in communion with God, that it gets a taste of the glory, and brighter and brighter it beams as the night is darker here.

Can I say "I know the cross of Christ?" A person may know the cross as his salvation, but not know the value of it practically. I got all my blessing by the cross; but to enjoy my blessing I must view everything in the light of the cross, so as to have God's thoughts about it; and I have to walk as a witness that no one is worth thinking of but the crucified One.

What God first raises in the mind of a sinner the awful thought of his own existence, world without end, for ever and ever — disappearing from all here, but not from the sight of God; when He puts before him a continuity of existence in that place where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched — ah! what a contrast to put before him life eternal in Christ!

What a thought that God has found me, a poor sinner, and given me that eternal life which is in His Son!

I believe all the glories of Christ are connected with the rivers of living waters; every one who believes can say in one light, "God has made us as the lign aloes and cedar trees beside the waters." (Num. 24: 6.) Every stone might be heated, and not a drop of water to cool them; but there is one place in the wilderness where there was not only a drop, but rivers of living waters.

Christ is the smitten Rock, from which eternal waters flow to the soul; the water from that Rock rises up and flows in the heart of a believer. The water of life is flowing through my soul, witnessing of heavenly things; it is flowing down from Christ to me, leading me on in the bonds of life in the Spirit.

By grace ye are saved, not of works. All human power and energy is at an end; man excluded and God put into the place of supremacy. Amazingly different the clay on the potter's wheel from the potter who can mould and fashion it according to his own will. He knew how to take up Saul, the stiffest-necked sinner, saying, "I can take you up and wash you in the blood of my Son." Ah! God know how to do it, so that the Son of His love, having gone down to the death of the cross, and being raised up to the highest glory, should not be there without the poor people saved by grace, to show out in the ages to come the exceeding riches of that grace. And what can you and I say, except, "Oh! the depths of the riches of it," having so saved us that we can call Him Father, in Christ God our Father and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?

That I am "created unto good works" could not be put more clearly than it is; but it sweeps work clean out as a foundation. What are these "works?" We see them plainly shown out in the Apostle Paul. Before the light shone down he had been entirely occupied with things down here; when the light shone into his heart, he found that he was to be occupied with the interests of Christ up there, and the whole thought of his heart was what he could do to show out down here the character and ways of Christ; and could he seek occupation in Judaism, or seek anything for himself? He had made manifest the Satanic power working in him, before, but when light shone into his heart he thoroughly and whole-heartedly gave himself up to it, and found some of the very sweetest tastes of the grace of God, and of the sympathy of Christ: every minutest thing fell under the eye of Christ.

All is bondage if work is set before me as a fallen creature; what a contrast when, because He has called me to that glory where He is, He calls upon me to bring forth works meet for it!

No! not a single spot in nature where anything can grow for God. Everything that comes out of you as work for God, if mixed with what is of the flesh, bears nothing but the curse of sin with it, as does all religious work done by the world.

The last Adam is the fountain of life; not, like the first Adam, a vessel made to contain it. the "I am", the One who could communicate a new nature, as a life-giving Spirit. There was a glory in the first, standing in innocence in Eden; but what was that compared with the glory of the second — the life-giving Spirit, standing at the grave of Lazarus with the word, "I am the resurrection and the life?" When does the glory of the "I AM" begin? When He created the world? No! it never had a beginning. One cannot have a correct thought about Him, save as Lord; cannot begin with Him, save as in Philippians 2, the object of all God's delight, and of the worship of heaven.

Is there one single unwrecked thing of Eden to be found? No! it was the entire failure and wreck of everything, all having fallen under the power of Satan leading man where he would.

If, as a creature, I had not been found in ruin, God's gospel would not have suited me at all; it is all about the grace of God, and nothing in the creature but ruin. To the mind of God, "Dead in trespasses and sins" is the state of the whole human family. If the rolling stone rolls on in its course without God's intervention, it rolls on till it rolls into hell. When everything was in the most direct opposition to God, then He showed Himself rich in mercy. Satan's specimens dead in sin, whether Gentiles or Saul of Tarsus — such specimens, Satan's dark black crown, only setting forth more brightly what the riches of God's mercy. Ruin in self, ruin everywhere — and God's rich mercy.

When one thinks what God has done, and what the grace that has brought us into such a place that there is no blessing He could give us in Christ, which He has not made ours, what are the results as to our walk? If we look at it practically, have we the same blessed comfort as the apostle Paul? Are we a people who have such thoughts flowing through our hearts as those that flowed through his? Not that he was blest a bit more than we are; he took his place as a member of the body; but what a contrast the thoughts that came flowing through the heart of Paul, from the state of Christians now — in the besetment of things down here! Let us compare ourselves as Christians with the apostle, so as to see how far we understand the spring of what he had, and whether we have his full flow of joy through our hearts. God wants you to have joy as the result of understanding the place you are brought into. Paul had to turn to what was wrong in the state of other Christians, but his own joy was not disturbed by the state of other people. How do we find the Spirit of God acting on souls now? Is that river of refreshment flowing through their hearts? Can we recognise them as a people of God's delight, practically walking before Him in love?

There is something very sweet when we can connect that which leads to suffering with the Lord Jesus. If more testimony were borne by us as to all power being connected with Christ, there would be more mockery from the world. The individuality of our place before God, in connection with Christ, gives liberty to leave everything that is not connected with Him; and pressing this raises the world's answer, just as it did when they thought that that Nazarene whom they rejected had the thought of a kingdom.

One sees not only beautiful light and glory for the comfort of one's heart under all sorrows and difficulties, but looking at the person of that blessed Lord, I find in Him everything I want as a poor sinner passing through the wilderness.

Not only many sons brought to glory, but He in their midst to lead their praises. He had tried to lead their prayer down here, but the flesh was, weak, and they fell asleep: but here He identifies Himself with the most blessed thing man has, that is, praise.

One has one's own experiences of the wilderness, the light from above searching Everything round about us; and in a scene connected with Satan, all searches us; but all joy and hope is founded on the fact of a Man being at God's right hand, Himself the title-deed for glory to all who believe.

This Christ is nearer to us than all the circumstances Satan brings against us. We find in Him the perfect answer to every trial and sorrow. Faith sees ever at God's right hand that risen Son of man waiting to lead the praise of His people.

Do not leave it to God to press home things in you that are unlike Christ; go to Him and condemn it in yourself, and go on doing so if it comes up again and again. It is uncommonly sweet to a soul that is walking with God in the light, to say to Him, "Ah! there was a time when I brought this thing or that to Thee, and Thou didst help me against it, and that again and again, as often as I brought it; and now I bring another to condemn and judge myself for." What a sweet time for the soul when one thinks of those things which one has thus brought to God, which He has met, and given one power to go on warring against. Someone said, "Do you think we are all soldiers? What! any one not belonging to the church militant? I may be an inconsistent one, but I must take the word broadly."

Could any one say, "I do not want to be like Christ?" If God comes in and says, "You are not like Christ, my son; there is evil, and you are passing it by." The very value God has for the eternal life in you, will not let Him suffer you to go on in it. If He does not come in, the life of a saint becomes unbearably wretched. You say that you are a son, a daughter of God — does God see you walking as such? Does He say of you, "There is one of my children judging himself, and walking in the light?" What you need to have more vividly before you is, the reality of God seeing you on earth; let it be as one seeking to purge himself to walk with God in the light.

Should I like to be marked off as a "man of God?" That word is not more for Timothy than for me; Christ, having set me in the light, and I seeing everything in myself that is inconsistent with Him, and saying, "these things will not do, I mean to be a man of God, judging them."

What a subject to be occupied with is the eternal life that Christ has given me! Is it eternal life tomorrow? No! it is eternal life to me today. It has come down to my own soul from Christ, and ought to flow in streams of blessing. It will show out the weakness of the vessel, and show out that the power is of God. Do you and do I begin every action down here with the thought, "I have to act in this as one who has eternal life; I have to, show it out?" If so, it will give you to see the excessive weakness of what you are; but there is blessedness; and the secret of all joy down here is the walking in the power of eternal life, in the consciousness of all the delight of God in Christ, saying, "There He is at the right hand of God as the expression of His delight, and He is mine, and I am His." If living in the power of that life which is hid with Him in God, you will have nothing but joy all the way. What then can disappoint you, what difficulties can daunt you? All earthly things drop off. If you have got Him and eternal life — God having given you the pledge of eternal life now — your soul can be happy under all circumstances. Paul lived in a dark day, all was gone to the bad; but he could ask Timothy not to be ashamed; the promise of eternal life was given, and he could make up his mind to go through all difficulties and trials, having God's pledge.

One thing is often overlooked by persons in trial, and that is the peculiar privilege of speaking for God. See Daniel, and Jeremiah who was peculiarly a man of sorrows, and Elijah who stood alone in the place of testimony for the God of Israel. And to be in the position of Jeremiah and the prophet when a stand for God is connected with peculiar trial, is what God would have us count as a peculiar privilege; to be saying, "If all are seeking their own, I have got Christ and I will seek Him." God would have us to cultivate, to count it a peculiar privilege to be whole-hearted for the Son of His love.

There is a great difference between the coming and the kingdom. The appearing of the Lord Jesus to the church, is the expression of peculiar love to His people; the kingdom is the expression of His power. He knows His people as one with Himself; He will come and fetch His bride first. He went to take the kingdom without her. Looking at the Lord's love to us in that way, it is quite distinctive, and separate from all other grace He ever will or can show He will not show forth the kingdom till He has come to get a heavenly people. Are my sorrows greater than Israel's? They are to have an earthly kingdom; but external power would not do for a Christian. I am part of the bride; the Lord has given Himself to her; He Himself is what I wait for.

The sway of the Lord Jesus in that day will extend to, and take in, the range of every thing. The people now associated with Him in sorrow, will reign with Him. The thought of being a king and a priest is beautiful for glory and dominion, but ah! it does not touch that blessed thought of relationship, the Lord Jesus being the First-born among many brethren, or the thought of the affections of my heart as bride.

The Christ who looked down on Stephen is the Christ to whom we say, "Come!" Suppose we should ask Him to come tonight: are you ready? You cannot be, without a personal love to Him. No desire could exist to enjoy the presence of any one without this, and I, as part of the bride, a pilgrim and stranger down here, having neither rest nor home, may I say, "Come!"

There is an immense difference between saying, "I am set, with eternal life, battling with circumstances down here, because I have to overcome the world," and the realising in my heart that I have got the eternal life, unfolding itself in communion with God, and tasting the sweetness of being a partaker of the divine life, the new nature rising up and finding itself in fellowship with the Father and the Son.

People often say, "Let us not do so and so, because if you do, we shall be sorry for it afterwards." But if they said, "This is not worthy of the coming, not worthy of the kingdom," there would not be the finding of sorrow but the strength of joy in giving things up, saying, "That is of the flesh, and not something. that will shine in the glory."

Looking at it as a fight, how few in this day could say with Paul, "I have fought a good fight." it had been a hard struggle, but Paul's course was just finished, and he was going home. Believers now have not that abounding spring of joy at the thought of departing, saying, "Oh! I am going home joyfully, I have had nothing but fighting, and the thorough struggle makes the thought of going home a matter of rejoicing." If there is not joy, it is because we have not found the wilderness a place for the faithful fight that Paul found it.

My power to judge the flesh proves my association with God. The flesh is not my Rock, there is no stability in it — it can have nothing to do with God. I pass it by and condemn it. Part of our state of warfare is to separate the flesh from the Spirit in all within and about us: our skill turns upon dividing between the flesh and the Spirit. If surprised by the flesh, we are to bring the sentence of death on it. Circumcision in the flesh, marked a man in covenant with God: circumcision in the Spirit, marks one who has faith in Christ, so that God can unfold all in Him to that one. The Jew bears the mark in his flesh; the Christian in himself, it is a mark in the mind. The question is not how the flesh must walk through the world, but that in the glory there is the One we are to seek, the One with whom — if practically heavenly-minded — we must be occupied.

He had a cross all through His course, and you have to take up the cross and follow Him. You will always find sweetness in the thought of you doing Christ's will, and suffering for it you will find none elsewhere. The only thing in connection with the body in the experience of Christ, was the being a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: if carrying that out as our experience, we shall find inexpressible sweetness in the thought of having fellowship with His sufferings.

Faith sees Christ where He is now before God for us, as the alone foundation of all our blessing. The One coming again, the One in whom all the round of God's thoughts centre: and there it is that worship comes in. With my eye on that Christ, I know that God is for me, because I know what God's thoughts are about that Christ; and I can lift up my head and rejoice in Him. Paul could glory even in infirmities; there was something in Christ up there that enabled him to do so. If any are not holding this position as to the flesh, what will they do at the table of the Lord? Have you your bodies of sin and death, or have you left them behind? How could any have no confidence in the flesh, if all is not set right for them in Christ before God? Only as you know it, can you get your place as sons worshipping in the Spirit, and finding that the only One whom God delights to know is the One who is the joy and delight of your heart.

Christ does not love people according to the flesh. Those only who do the will of the Father are the blessed beloved people, of whom He says, "Such are my mother and sisters and brothers; these are my nearest, dearest relations, they are the Father's children, they are those who receive my word; and they are the fruit bearers dear to my heart."

Have you counted on God as an opened fountain in which your empty bucket can be let down to be filled? In the midst of the wreck and ruin of the creature, can you say, notwithstanding it all, "I have found a spring in Thee, O God! and can count on Thee to give me all blessing in Christ; not to fill me once, and then all gone, but filling again and again?" I would have you judge yourselves about the sort of faith you have. Is it a living faith? It is the living God upon whom His people hang, drawing daily supplies from the fulness of the living springs in Him. Ah! if you have found that God, no depths can be too deep for the heart of that living God, who meets us according to the circumstances in which we are.

Once we were in nature, and in the flesh, and now we are in Christ. Well! one of the things that become me in such a place, is to mortify the flesh, counting myself dead to everything which I cannot connect with Christ: drawing, as it were, the stroke of my pen through everything that is not of the Father, saying, "I am against it all." I do not speak of things necessary for the body, we have the name of the Father in connection with all things needful, and everything is sanctified by the blood to the children, and freely given and received with thankfulness. But what hundreds of things there are which are not needful! whims of the flesh, things not connected with Christ, something that minds for want of proper occupation are taken up with. Do those who have ways of their own apart from Christ, ever test themselves by saying, "If Christ were to come and find me doing this, would He like it?" I say, "Are you not practically hindering yourself if occupied with things connected with the pit whence you were taken, rather than with Christ?"

There can be no dying to sin if not walking in the way of eternal life. It will only be a teasing and vexing of the flesh till we get to the cross, and there see that having died with Christ, and being quickened and raised up with Him, we have cot power to count the flesh a dead thing. There is a Romanism which only torments self in order to sanction itself. We are to keep under the body, and have it in subjection; directly we dare to cease mortifying the flesh, we cease to enjoy Christ.

Am I occupied with the life that will unfold itself in the presence of Him whom the Father delights to honour? Ah! if we get to the sphere when that eternal life is to be displayed, we find a range of glory beyond what the heart can take in. It includes the whole range of the Father's delight in the Son, and ministers to joy as nothing else does. Eternal life is yours now, as a thing to be rejoiced in. When trouble comes, oh, lot your hearts be in communion with that One in whom your eternal life is, and you will find that you have a portion, a fulness of joy that no circumstances down here can interfere with. You have a life above in Christ, soon to be made manifest in the day of His appearing.

People talk of eternity as the beginning of eternal life, but it will not begin with me there, it began with me nearly forty years ago, and is to go on in God's eternity; manifested then outwardly — revealed within now in blessing.

How the light discovers the position of any one who is under law! Once I laboured hard under it, thinking that when I had done so much, God would do so much. When light shone on me, how could I carry out that thought, saying, "I will do," when God said, "I have done it all, have given Christ, and the true light now shines down?"

God will not be in the second place, He takes the first place, proclaiming life to the poor sinner through that Son raised from the dead. I am in a scene where God is everything, and I must get out of the way. Ah! how blessed when the soul can say. "Let God have His proper place as God, let Him act, and I will put myself out of the way." Does He say there is forgiveness by the blood of His Son? Let Him have His own way. Has He given the light? Let it shine. The effect of light shining in the heart of a sinner is beautiful — it gladdens the heart. Let there be no putting a curtain over my ways to prevent the inshining of the light. If walking in the light I shall see failure and confess it at once. I shall love the light that discovers it and shall judge it; and the blood cleanses from all sin.

In early days there was an extraordinary power of communion amongst Christians, they seemed to be of one spirit and mind simply because they walked in the light. If I want to get the power of fellowship, I must have the full light shining down and walk in it.

The religion of a country does not deal with the question that the heart of an individual wants life. You hear of persons belonging to churches, without life: but that will not for God — it is not the incorruptible seed. Adam in the garden of Eden was corruptible, but if a man is born again he is born of incorruptible seed. Like a little seed dropt into the ground, there it is in me, something formed within me, that cannot be corrupted, cannot see death. If called to be absent from the body. the body must go down to the grave. but the life God gives can never die. I dwelt for nineteen years in the things of the world, dead in sin, never alive then. And then I found Christ as my living Saviour in heaven, and I got a life that could only be occupied by Him. I found too that I had got a Father up there — not only an incorruptible seed, but I dwell in God, and not only that, God dwells in me. He makes our bodies to be temples of the Holy Ghost; and in Ephesians 3: 19, we remark a larger expression: "Filled with all the fulness of God." What love! God thus dwelling in me and I in Him now, and heaven opened for me to dwell eternally with Him.

It is not "The church, the church are we," but it is "Am I a Christian through knowing Christ as my Life-giver, as the propitiation for my sins, and as my living Saviour on high?" And if so, I have to build on Him. It is this Christ, and this Christ only, that will do for me, a poor sinner.

The faith that God gives His people is an energetic principle by which the soul learns how to act with God — they who, by faith, receive the word of God's grace. Faith always supposes that man has been in solitude with God. Man has to learn God's plan — His projects. See what liberty a person has, like Rahab, like the Syro-phenician woman; Christ had His thoughts about Israel, she had hers about Him; deep need gave her a wonderful sort of liberty in the presence of the grace which she knew would meet it. Is there not the same liberty for faith now to be before God in simple confidence? If I have to do with God, I can certainly calculate on finding in this God a blessing, whatever my circumstances may be.

Is it nothing that God wants your heart and mine to be comforted? saying, "I want you to be partakers of my prospects; I put before you that my prospect, after caring for my people awhile in the wilderness, is to rise up and show that they are not under the power of darkness; that because I died for them the waters of death which have risen up and swept off all Adam's race, have no power over them: I mean to show out before the universe, that I have a people who are waiting for Me to appear without sin unto salvation."

When it comes to the question of what Christ suffered as my substitute, I must leave it to God. Never could I, in the measure of my little mind, conceive in the smallest degree what He suffered when that cry broke from Him, "My God! why hast thou forsaken me?" No! there I must bow my head and adore.

"God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." God's gift of His Son is the setting forth of His glory throughout eternity. When He is seen on the throne we shall never lose the thought, that because God used the personal glory of His Son to give weight to the sacrifice, we enter into glory. Most important it is ever to remember that we are saved sinners. I could not be in heaven, if I forgot when there that I am a saved sinner, forgot the power of the precious blood to wash away every spot of sin. It would not be the heaven of scripture, if I could not there speak about the love and mercy that had cleansed me.

If Christ is at the right hand of God to make intercession for me, I see Him there as the anchor of my soul within the veil: and if the effect of tearing open all in my soul, and showing me my wretchedness, be to show me that He who does it is there for me, conforming me to Himself to make me like Himself; is it not most precious?

I only know what a poor thing I am, when I got inside he veil; but there, I can be talking to God about Christ saying, "Is He not my Saviour? Is He not my Life-giver? Is not all to be found in Him? Is He not the portion of all who believe in Him?" If you can talk to God of what Christ is to you, and God is looking at that Christ as the answer to all your difficulties, can you go away unsatisfied? Impossible!

We are gathered around the Lord's table to remember that the One who is Jehovah's fellow gave His body to be broken, and His blood to be shed for us. As for all false worship, it is the denial of the Lordship of Christ. God uses the people whom He has given to Christ as a proof of His Lordship. He can claim the hearts of a company. He says, "If I have sent down the Holy Ghost, where could my power stop? They are to be filled with the Holy Ghost, and they are to be the manifestation of me at the present time." Weak and few perhaps, yet God being able to look down, saying, "They are gathered together as the expression of what my Christ is up there."

Ah! but how much more there is to challenge all our hearts in that word, "Do this in remembrance of me," than in the Lordship of Christ! I might be gathered as a proof of the glory of that Christ, but I can say, it is this heart of mine with all its feebleness, whose affections He cares to possess. What! has He now, in all that glory on high, a heart to think of us individually? And does He challenge us to think of Him, to remember Him as often as we eat this bread and drink this wine? The early Christians did that when they met together, because it was Himself they loved. Then, again, we are eating this bread and drinking this wine because we are overcomers. Ah! it is a very blessed and searching thing to be in the place where we are to be overcomers, where we are to be overcomers to the end. If riding on the top of a billow, it is blessed; and if not, why it is equally blessed to be in the place of an overcomer.

I could say to some aged saint, "If you are laid on a sick bed, and laid there to find out the right bearing of things, depend upon it, you will not find any comfort save in the word of the living God. It may be but a scrap of the old book, but with one word of the living God you will be more than a match for Satan, for all that is against you, because you are connected with a truth of the God who cannot lie."

If there have ever been hours of depression in any of you, the reason has been that you have forgotten the word, and are not bearing in your soul the touch of truth connected with the character of the God who cannot lie — forgotten that all His glory is concerned in His word.

It is quite contrary to nature to say that if God expects anything from me, He must first put it in me, and then He will have to tend and watch over it; and if I do bring him any fruit, it is only from His being able to create a second time: if not, there will be no fruit. If you talk of "good ground," what is the ground good for? It is good for the seed of the sower. Every seed He sows supposes that he finds nothing; it teaches the lesson of the entire ruin inside more strongly than all that tells of it outside. Do not make a mistake with regard to the good ground, as though God thought to get anything good out of the flesh. He has weighed you up on the cross; if you know that, you have surely learned there the end of your flesh.

Every saint knows that the good ground fitted for a Saviour is a soul dead in trespasses and sins, where Satan has had the mastery. He that had to do with me as a sower, had a seed not to be found down here — a new seed that gave a new nature. There is only that one Sower — not two — only that One who can drop seed into the heart, and cause it to quicken and produce fruit.

If I am to be part of a kingdom, I as a creature, can do nothing to bring myself there. How can you find your way into the Father's house? Are you fit for such a place? No! you need some one to fit you and make you meet for it.

God would have you absolutely without a will the moment you are in subjection you have the consciousness of being just where God would have you.

Ah! do let us see how far the anointing which made the soul of Paul in prison so full of joy, (whether cast there for life or death) has made us fellow workers with Paul; how far that anointing is enabling us to maintain our Nazariteship — enabling us to live out Christ.

If faith in Christ has brought you into the light of heaven, and you know a risen Man on the throne, and that risen Man has sent a letter, not to Paul only, but to yourself, in which He specifically tells you that he wants you to carry in your heart, and to show forth in your life down here, His death till he comes; what answer are you giving? He, at leisure in the Father's presence to think of poor feeble things in the fog down here, occupied about them, and they being made to know that all through the time between His death and His coming again, He has not once forgotten them, telling them to show forth His death till He comes in the full manifestation of love to take them up to the Father's house.

Unless the full grace of God has its place in the souls of Christians, they never can walk with God in the powers of that grace. If the least thing of self comes in, it is all over with the joy and liberty in which free grace enables a believer to walk. If grace be the groundwork, it does not give way; if I have failed (whatever may be the character of my failure) the light in which it comes out to be judged, gives my soul a fresh start to go on again with God. It is a solemn question whether am holding fast to free grace.

You may be saying, "Ah! I shall never get through this week without a fall or a spot on my garments;" but rather say, "Let me not talk of my difficulties; there is One up there going before them all, One who sees Satan, the world, and myself, and meets all for me. He can bring me through to the end of this week, as He did through the last. He ever lives, is He not competent to give me a fresh start onwards and fresh strength? And if I am not able to walk, He goes before to move difficulties out of the way. Yes! He is just the one for me to lean on through this week."

"He that believeth hath everlasting life." There is eternal duration of existence for all men, but those who believe have got present fellowship with God, they have now the life which will be unfolded in heaven, as the power of present joy to the soul.

If I meet a man in the street, I know by his very looks whether he has found peace or not, whether he can say, "Christ looked at me and gave me life, and I know Him as the One, who by going into death for me, put His blood between my sins and the wrath of God.

Is it as being one Spirit with Himself as members of His body that Christ looks upon you? Does He see the church as the pearl of peculiar value which He sought for the Father's house, and as a bride adorned for her husband? Is the thought that Christ is thus looking on you, the object and motive of your lives down here?

What we want is a rope let down from above — the strength of Him up there, let down into our souls.

On whom am I, as a creature, dependent? On Him who upholds the sun and all created things; on Him, now a Man at God's right hand, by whom all creatorial glory was displayed, who created the whole universe. That One, the chiefest among ten thousand, the altogether lovely, He is my Lord.

Ah! the eye of that Lord is on all His people before they know Him — an eye passing up and down, reading everything about and in them.

Three distinct things the soul has to recognise; the Son of Man who bore the judgment of God for sin — the Son of God who rose from the dead, a life-giving Spirit — and the Son of the Father, all things put under Him, all made over into His hand.

It is an amazing thing the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in glory, saying, "I have put forth a Man, and what I claim of you is to see in Him all that is true of me, you could not know me without Him. He is up there as your Security, and now you are to be filled with all My fulness in Him." A vessel floating in the sea, gives the meaning of being filled with all fulness of Christ, being filled like a vessel let into water. How the feeblest saint gets to be connected with the immeasurable glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The love of God is not satisfied merely to bless. He wants to have my heart happy in the blessing; He is not satisfied merely to heap up blessing, but wants to have all the inward feelings of my heart in unison with those of the Son of His love, and so in communion with His own heart.

You often say, "I have to serve God today." Is there nothing else? The very effort to maintain such a character is affliction, God letting you know the poverty in self, bringing in the deep sense of weakness and the prostration of self.

There was an immense deal whilst the people of Israel still abode in Egypt to minister to the flesh; they had something to give up. In the wilderness nothing but seas of sand to go through: it was something to try the heart as to whether they had gone forward in faith, with the land of Canaan before them. It could not be a question of returning to Egypt when they were clean outside it. I could not go back to Egypt; why? Because the death and resurrection of Christ have come in between. My feet may be tired by the sand of the wilderness, but the same mind that was in Him is to be in me. I am a son of the Father, I have the same eternal spring to gladden my heart.

God may take up bad clay and grit, and have to pass it through every sort of process, but the skilful Master-hand will form of it a vessel fit for His own use. If God means to place me up there as a vessel to display, His glory, is it not separation of a very peculiar character that He looks for now?

In connection with the names written on the breastplate . . . . every time the high priest breathed, the breastplate moved; and I am not on the breast-plate, but in the heart of Christ. I am connected with every throb of that living heart of Christ. I can see Him as my justification before, God, and God reckoning to me all that He is. God looks upon the blood of His Son sprinkled on me. That Son of His love is seated as Man on His right hand, with every capacity to feel as man, and to enter into things that affect us down here. Yes, He has the feelings of a man, and is entering into ours.

To meet the Lord in the air — what a volume in those words! Nothing can give cheerfulness in the thought of treading a path never trod before, but the Lord Himself being there — meeting Him there.

The hope of the Lord's coming is a divine hope, centred in Himself; not only rejoicing in hope of the glory of God — more than that, waiting for Christ Himself, who, being now in the very highest point of glory as Son of man in the glory which He had with God before the world was, will come forth from that glory to take us up. How are your hearts affected in regard to the thought of this Christ of God not only coming to throw open the Father's house, but coming Himself to be our joy? Can you say that the longing of your hearts is flowing forth in the invitation continually ascending "Come Lord Jesus?" That Nazarene has it in His heart to come, and if He speaks and says, "Surely I come quickly," have such words, dropping from His lips, the continual answer in your heart, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus!"

There is such a thing as walking with God. The invisible God is not hidden to the soul. Moses endured as seeing Him who is invisible. Enoch walked with God, the God of heaven, his heart was above, and he had the testimony that he pleased God. What else ought men of faith be doing, save walking with God! Faith says, "Ah, there is a man in heaven, and all the divine glory of God in Him, and connected with Him, I can walk with Him. I do not see Him with my bodily eye, but his eye is upon me; I hear His voice behind me."

There is the law of sin and death in the members, and what would it be if God did not keep up a constant process — obliged to send things to prevent the flesh in us from working, and to show us the necessity of our judging it? He can use Satan to bring out, not sin, but  - the utter and entire worthlessness of what we are. He can use the adversary to teach and make you know what the flesh in you is; and thus comes in, to use the very writhing — the lowness — to show forth His almighty sufficiency.

It was not the question of the measure of light they had who followed the Lord; it was Himself they thought of and loved. They felt it, no doubt, a wonderful thing to walk about with Him who had all power to heal the sick and raise the dead: but ah! They loved Himself. Can we not only say, "the Son of man made all things," but is this Lord Jesus Himself the one object before whom our heart is bowed?

I cannot merely accredit that which is bad in me as being the effect of a bad education; it is there because I am a sinner, it is connected with the whole system of sin and death. If this were shown to a babe in Christ, it would be scared; but it is nothing in comparison with what God shows a believer when He teaches him to measure his sin by the cross of Christ; as though He said, "How much more you will think of your sin when I tell you that My Son bore it for you in His own body. I had therefore to hide My face from Him, and the heart of that blessed One broke in woe that yours might throb with joy."

If failure comes in, you must not give up all for lost, but thank God that you have a connection with Christ in God, which your failure cannot touch. Satan cannot check the living water that flows forth to me in spite of all in myself, enabling me to be "up and on."

In Noah's experience we get what are God's thoughts of the things around. Noah was to be separated from the old earth. If we look around now — take London for instance, is it a city in which God's children are to find rest of heart? No! but a place they have to separate themselves from. Believers have to go through the world, but to keep themselves unspotted by it. By our very relations we often find ourselves hindered and interrupted, and cannot act separate for want of faith. We need the energy of faith. Noah's energy all flowed from faith following the line traced out by God; and when the judgment came it found Noah in the ark, laid to rest there with his family; and God saw in it the expression of his faith, as a person separated by that faith to God.

If we suffer with Christ, we shall also reign with Him. Suffering comes in as the consequence of our adoption into the family of God. It was quite different from sorrow, as a man connected with the first Adam. Paul desiring to be spent in filling up sufferings for Christ, was suffering on quite another ground from Adam — suffering.

There never was a higher life, there never were higher motives, nor higher hopes, than those in the apostle Paul! And all came out practically in the life of a man like this; his whole practice was correspondent with his heavenly position. His thought was, "God has given me as a sort of bell-bearer to His flock." God bethought Himself of His people, and gave Paul for a pattern to guide and, help them on, and they were to follow him as he followed Christ.

It becomes a very solemn question in a day like this, in which the name of Christ is taken up very easily, whether we are following after Christ, whether the cross is before the mind as that which crucifies the world to us. A very solemn question in connection with what the throbbing of the pulse of the inward life is, in those who are Christ's — do they know the cross? or do they show forth the spirit of the world? Is it in their hearts? Take any one passing through the street — the world is all about him, but is it in his heart, or is he living out of it? It is a blessed thing to say, We have nought to think of or to seek but heavenly things. "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God" that is our profession.

If there is a place strange to me, it ought to be this place where my Lord was crucified; and if it is not so, what is it but a place where I have been walking in the flesh — satisfied to have passed through the Red Sea, and that is all.

We know what it means to have fellowship with any one in the things of this world, namely, having things in common. What have you in common with a risen Christ? With Him to whom power is given to call the dead out from the grave — with such an One who, unless He can deny Himself, must raise you up with all believers from among the dead, and make you a partaker of all His glory, a joint heir with Himself! What a strong expression!

The door of Eden was shut against man, but the Lord opens a way, the whole way up, for a people to share the glory connected with Himself.

Christ was not only the repository of all the affections of the Father's heart, but He made Him to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ. Is it the perfection of what Christ is in Himself that we have as the ground-work to rest on before God? No! more was needed, but it was that divine perfection that fitted Him for the work He came to do. None but a Being absolutely and altogether perfect could be a Sin-bearer; the least thing God could find fault with in Him would have spoilt it all. The beauty of Christ is precious to the heart as showing forth that perfection. God can say of Him, "I let all My billows go over Him, and He only came forth the more bright;" and He was made the Substitute for sinners, and it is on the truth of that that I am standing before God and rejoicing in it. It is that that connects a soul with Christ. It is the only way my soul can get any power whatever to walk in joy. I remember how the great white throne used to stare me in the face; I could never get any rest of soul connected with what I was as a young man dead in sin. How, thought I, shall I be able to bear the light of it? What is the effect of it now when I think of it? Ah! I say, I shall see Him there who bore the whole wrath due to me. The whole power of that wrath came into His soul, and when He had borne my sins in His own body on the cross, and put them away for ever, God raised Him to His own right hand, soon to come again and take His people there too; and in the interval God sent me the message that He had been my Substitute. I have been very feeble in confessing Him as my Substitute, but it enables me to say I have done with the first Adam, God sees me in the last Adam. He could not set aside my guilt save by giving the curse due to me to the last Adam on the cross. It is only by closing with His offer that I can say I have set my seal to the truth of that work on the cross having saved me.

A believer is looked upon by God as dead, buried, and raised up together with Christ. Not merely Christ a Rock in the desert to which I flee and find refuge, but I get in Him a vivifying power by which to walk in newness of life. "He that is dead is freed from sin," not that the law of sin and death is out of his members, and that we have not still to watch against it, but the Spirit of God comes as the seal on my heart of the truth, that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. (Rom. 8: 2.) It is still there, but which is strongest, Christ in heaven, or that which remains in me? Which is strongest to overcome, the Holy Ghost sent down as a well of water springing up, or the weakness in man? Paul was a man of strong passions, and what is the testimony of the Spirit in connection with him? "To me to live in Christ." Is Christ my Life? What is the effect of that Life on my life? Ah! it is a most blessed thing to be able to say that that Christ at God's right hand is my Life, and that God looks at me only in Him, and I can be talking to God about Him; and the consciousness of being brought where I can have that communion, puts perfect peace into my soul down here.

Till changed and made like unto Christ's glorious body, I must have this body of sin and death; but I have power given me to reckon it dead. I am in a place of power, the power of the Communicator of life; and wherever life has been communicated, that power works to change those who have it into His image from glory to glory. The divine nature is communicated to enable me to walk with God and live unto God. Could I do that in nature? Could nature bring down the energy of a man like Paul, and make him wish to be nothing at all? No! only the power of Christ could do that.

I may close my door and say, "Now I am going to have happy communication with God," and soon I fall asleep; and why? Because I was going to set myself to do it, it was my own energy that shut to the door, and my energy was to be disappointed.

We may be often not in right circumstances, but Christ ever knows how to speak to us in them.

If God dwells in me I am a new man — and a new man knows how to peel off the things that are contrary to the Spirit.

If you and I love the world, it is incompatible with love to the Father. (1 John 2: 15.) The Father's love cannot beam on a heart where the things have a place. Many would make, as it were, an inventory of certain things answering in their minds to worldliness; but that is not what God does; He does not say, "Fine houses, costly furniture," etc., but, "The lust of the flesh and of the eye," and the child of God cannot detect this lust save when he is in the presence of God, and with the savour of the full acceptance in the Beloved. Out of His presence there is entire inability to form an idea of what lust really is; it is not in circumstances, but lies down in the depths of the heart alike in poor and in rich.

Ah! let not those passing things which Satan has in his hands, and whereby he keeps souls at a distance from the Father, be allowed a place in your heart.

If I had seen myself fifty years ago, a ruined creature in God's presence on the ground of grace only, satisfied to be there in all my ruin, drawing all from the springs of God's mercy in Christ Jesus, which could turn all my misery and ruin into an occasion of showing forth that mercy, I should have been saved years of anguish.

Surely it is a marvellous position the child of God professes to hold! not a citizen of earth, but walking in the path that leads to heaven. A son of God — sealed with the Holy Ghost — left in the world to have the opportunity of identifying himself with the earth — rejected One sitting at God's right hand.

It is not merely the glory of the Father's house, but the affections of the Father's heart which are ours. You cannot separate the love of God's heart from one to whom He has been pleased to turn and call a son. Oh! that we were more filled with the thought of it. Look at the people of God — what a poor wretched flock it is; what heavy hearts, what feeble strength; ever so occupied with our earthly work and our thoughts of heaven forgotten. Oh, turn to the freshness of the love in God's heart, that God who has called you with a heavenly calling, and made you the expression of the love which has brought you into the place of His affection for Christ, making you sons. Not ashamed to confess as sons such poor contemptible things — His love set upon us!

He appoints us our burden, and we must bear it, but He is looking on us as children passing through the wilderness, loved children. We may not like our wilderness burden, but we have the best portion now as sons. I shall never be more a son than I am now, never be more beloved than now. All the affections of God's heart are flowing to us now, we shall have His love more truly when we come to glory.

I may see a saint shining in every way, and say, "I will go and imitate Him;" but that will not do; you cannot carry any of the energy of nature into what is heavenly. If anyone can truly say, "I am more like Christ than I was," I am sure that result can never flow from the energy of human nature.

What false views we take of one another, if we look only at the exterior. The faces of many bear a look of peace and quiet repose, but how little we know all that passes within! The heart of Him who knows it all, the heart of the Son of man in heaven is changeless, and He has made Himself responsible for every lamb in the flock.

Whilst the sea of Satan's wickedness washes over the earth, Christ says, "I have servants on that earth, and I can make good in them works that I can recognise." Is it possible for you to be one of them, and fail to render service? Exceptional cases there are — a Lot dragged out of Sodom — or wood, hay, and stubble to be burnt up; but such cases are exceptional.

The Holy Ghost has made the church of the living God His dwelling place, and His desire is the coming of Christ. He has the character of servant till Christ comes. He will not be then, as He is now, the Comforter, the One who, in the absence of Christ, does as Christ would have done. He will not then be the Guardian taking care of the church in the wilderness; but ever the power of life and enjoyment — the power that knits up all to Christ.

To us it is not the great white throne, not the coming of the Lord to take the place of a Judge, but His rising up to come and claim us. and take us up to be with Him. God's first mark of approbation for His work on the cross, was that He should not be alone in glory but should have a people, the bride, the Lamb's wife, with Him there, in the midst of whom He will be; the light of His glory being enshrined in them and reflected by them: He in them. And also, that till He comes He should have a people down here who can look up to Him there, and know the character of His love for them. That is what we want for our, comfort. Who are they that can say, "Christ loves me, and He is going to glorify me, and I am waiting for Him?" Ah! they are those who have passed off the ground of the first Adam. A people, passed clean off that, to the ground where they are not only washed and forgiven, but where they can say they know nothing like Him; that one who, through death, delivered them from him who had the power of death; He, the holy harmless One. having been made sin for them, that they might be entirely free.

How sad that true Christians are not more practically separated to God — that the world should look at them, and be able to say, "There is this and there is that in you which does not savour of Christ;" why this looking to earth, that fretting care, that troubled forecasting thought, if looking up to the glory and seeing Christ there, and if He has come and opened His heart to you as God?

Think — if we realised practically that there is no separation between the Head and the body — that we are one with that Only One, who never had a will, never had likes and dislikes, whose whole course was the bringing out of "Thy will, not mine, be done." He went in obedience to the death of the cross, and was raised up to the Father's own right hand, where we see Him above the range of everything: and He says to us, "You are risen with me, and one with me; and if you walk in the power of that, you also will be above everything."

The blood shed on the cross puts me before God entirely clear as to sin. The worth of that blood is known by none who do not read it as it is read in heaven. If I look at it as read on earth, it calls for vengeance, but in heaven that blood is the expression of God's love in giving Him for us; and not only that, but it is the proof that He who shed it has triumphed over everything: those who know it, say, "Ah! I can never taste death, because of that blood. If I died today, I should not taste death; it is glory, whenever I die. I shall never taste what He bore in bearing my sins.

Has not the Lord often found you where you never ought to have been? And yet has not his love even come out just there, and shown you that He loved you above all your thoughts of His love; loved you according to God's thoughts about you, loved you above all your inconsistency, according to the place God had set you in; and yet you have had so little faith in that love that you have said, "Now the Lord is only going to upbraid me." Well, if He did, He never upbraids the worldling, but He does His own children.

If I look round, what is the state of everything now? Churches all ruined, candlesticks all broken; I cannot see one as it was after Pentecost. If the Lord were not the Restorer, where would all testimony be? What would become of His people in these closing times — the people that are waiting for Him — the poor weak ones who are saying, "Come"? He has ever been the Restorer of His people; if all has been ruined, yet all is so restored, that we have got everything which they had at Pentecost — the Holy Ghost ever abiding in and with us, as then, although in some respects acting differently. And I suppose every heart too can say, "I know something of that restoring love, the Lord passing through my circumstances, passed me through my sin to Himself."

Nothing but personal affection for the Lord can ever give the heart boldness before Him, the soul must find that it has been laid hold of by the Lord in His love, and that such a light shines down upon it from His face, that in spite of failure and everything coming against it, there is love in the heart of the Lord towards it.

Do not be afraid of the wilderness; God will always find a bit of its sorrows for you, but while wilderness inconsistency comes out in you, remember that Christ alone is changeless, and do not be afraid to let His boundless love come out in its own way into your circumstances. Remember that there is no path for us smoother or broader than the path of the Son of man while in the world.

We do not like to suffer — but the world was a wilderness to Him and must be so to us. If you make for yourself some little path where you feel you can serve with comfort, and know where to put your foot so as to avoid every little stone or roughness, He will not let you stay in it, He will change your lot. You may try to get out into another path, but you will find He makes it to be the wilderness. He still means it to be the wilderness all the way.

What Polar star have you to guide you down here? Nothing but the coming of the Lord. The bride has nothing as a future but the coming of Christ. Christians have too much forgotten the widow's place, watching through the night for their absent Lord. He cheers them by saying, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." Why is it night? Because He is away.

Has the secret been revealed to you that He is the bright and Morning Star, and are you practically waiting for Him? Before the sun rises, before the light of day, He will come and take us up to Himself. There I get my rest in everything because I know He is coming.