yourself; "for how very intent God must be about my eternal well-being if He took such an interest in the salvation from sin of myself and of my fellow men!"

Again, if we preach that God's own Son shed His Blood, having first assumed a nature which had blood to be shed, and you take heed how you hear, take heed with the heed which such a truth demands, must it not make you ask in your heart, "With such a Death died for me, am I reconciled to God? With such Blood shed for me, am I washed clean? With such a Mediator betwixt God and myself, am I coming to God through Him?"

Again, if we preach Jesus, God and Man, dying for us and rising again, and now in heaven itself, at the Right Hand of God, that is, in the highest place in the universe, and you take heed how you hear so astonishingly gracious a truth, must it not breed faith in you?—if, that is, faith be trust. For if you take due heed how you hear, that Christ is so great and yet stooped so low-your God and yet your Elder Brother-must you not trust? trusting that the Merits of such an One are allsufficient, that the Blood of such an One is allatoning, that though your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow? "Wash me," you will say, with humble confidence, knowing what That is Which has been shed to wash you, "wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."

Can you help

You will fear to doubt about the forgiveness, of sins if you have faithfully and with full purpose of heart brought all your sins before God, that they may be forgiven through the Merits and Death of One equal with God.

Again, if I preach, as I and every one of my brother ministers do, that the Blood of the Son of God made man was shed to buy you, and you at all take heed to what you hear, you will constantly and habitually feel that you are not your own, that you are bought to be the servants of God and of Christ, and so that, as a good servant, you should do your best to please your Master, even God, and so that you should not live as you will, or as your neighbours or the world wills, but as God wills?

Take heed how ye hear.

Take heed how ye hear our repeated invitations to you, to come and receive the Blessed Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ. If you take any heed to these you must believe and remember that God came amongst us to shed His Blood for us, and that in order to make us partakers of that Blood of the New Covenant shed for us for the remission of sins, He ordained this Sacrament. Put these things together, and for your soul's sake "take heed how ye hear." If ye take heed to it ye must say in yourselves, Here is an ordinance which must indeed be needful if it was ordained by such a One and at such a time. Here is that

which tests my grateful remembrance of Christ. Here is that by which I am to show forth His Death before God and before my brethren. Here is a thing which, if words have any meaning, must confer exceedingly great blessingsa serious thing to partake of, and a very serious thing, indeed, to neglect.

"Take heed how ye hear;" for the Saviour goes on to say, For whosoever hath, to him shall be given. If your hearing in this world has worked faith in you, that faith shall be exchanged for sight. You shall see the glories which you now receive on trust. If that hearing has bred in you hope, that hope shall be exchanged for fruition. You shall no longer hope for the peace, the joy, the rest, the sinlessness, the fervour of the New Jerusalem. shall enjoy all these. If it has wrought in you love, that love shall be deepened, strengthened, purified, and in its exercise you shall rejoice with the joy of Christ Himself, when He says to you, "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

You

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XX.

ABIDING IN CHRIST.
AN EXPOSITION.

1 JOHN iii. 5-8.

"Ye know that He was manifested to take away our sins; and in Him is no sin. Whosoever abideth in Him, sinneth not whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him. Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning."

THIS is a difficult place of Scripture. It looks at first sight to be an easy one, for it is made up of plain simple words; and yet it has exercised the expositors of Scripture more than most others; so that you have need to offer up a silent prayer for me, that I may explain it and enforce it, and that you may receive it, and understand it, aright.

"Ye know," the Apostle says, "that he was manifested to take away our sins." How was the Son of God manifested? He was first manifested at His Birth into the world, by His coming amongst us on the night when the Angels sang "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men."

But He has to be manifested separately to

ways.

each soul. We read in Scripture that He was thus manifested to different persons in divers He was manifested to the wise men by the Star; to St. John the Baptist by the Holy Ghost descending upon Him in a bodily shape like a dove. He was manifested to three of the Apostles at His Transfiguration; to the people of the Jews, though in a lesser degree, by His wonderful works. He was manifested above all to be the Eternal Son of God by His Resurrection from the dead, and by the descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost.

He has been manifested, that is, made known to you and to me, my brethren, by the preaching of the Gospel, by the teaching of Christian parents and Christian instructors. To some of us, perhaps, He has been manifested, as He was of old, "in the breaking of bread." He is manifested, above all, to the soul in an unspeakable way by the power of the Holy Ghost: so that the soul is conscious that His eye is upon her in love, in pity, in forbearance; so that continually, in the midst of other things, in the midst of lawful worldly business, or in the converse of friends, as well as in the sanctuary, your heart is lifted up, and in thought you picture to yourself One in unspeakable glory, and yet with His hands and His feet and His side pierced, looking down upon you.

Well, the Eternal Son of God was and is yet thus manifested-manifested to our faith as