exultation and great joy to his believing people. It will put an end to all their sorrows and trials. It will wipe away the last mark of the evil and degradation of sin, and destroy their last enemy by raising their sleeping dust from the grave. It will raise them above all the ills caused by sin, and gain for them a final and everlasting triumph. It will gather them together into one glorious company to be separated no more; and they shall rejoice for ever with their glorified Redeemer. To this coming of Jesus the ordinance of the supper points forward. It is a pledge to his believing people that he still remembers them, and that he has their final well-being in view. On every occasion when they meet to remember him at his table, they ought to rejoice that he remembers them. They ought to have their minds not only directed backward to what he did on Calvary, but also directed forward to what he will do when he comes again. The supper is a pledge that he will come and will not tarry, and that all will be glorious when he does come. D. D.-B. JESUS THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA. THE believer who has made advances "in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ," is able to discriminate, in his experience, several points of view that have been successively reached. At first, perhaps, he -Saw one hanging on a tree He was sub His soul was prostrated at the foot of the cross. dued and won. Captivated by one thought, "he loved me and gave himself for me,"-beyond that he sought not to go. It was his intellectual and emotional life. He lived in it. It lived in him. Blessed first love! All powerful and glorious germ of life with God! But it is only the bud, and must needs be expanded. Other thoughts of Jesus come. He appears not only as the Lamb of God bleeding and dying, as the propitiator, but also as the great and mighty one who was "before all things, and by whom all things exist" and "consist." Pondering devoutly such profoundly philosophical words as those in the beginning of John's gospel-" All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made: in hini was life, and the life was the light of men,"-the problem of creation seems, in a measure, solved for the child of God,-solved in Jesus. What additional interest now gathers around his Saviour! Christ Jesus stands before him as the Uncreated, the Eternal, the Life, the Light, the Source of all created being, the Spring of all created good. He is at once Alpha and Omega. Many subjective revelations come to the believer as he proceeds on his way, walking with Christ. Generations before, these revelations may have existed objectively on the sacred page. But to be in "the volume of the book" is one thing, and to be in one's soul is a thing quite different. The light "must go up" within. It must first of all get in. It breaks in from many parts of scripture. And as it enters, the believer sees that Jesus was publicly set forth in God's behalf as well as in men's,-for demonstration of his righteousness. He sees, too, that angels are concerned in Jesus, and that they desire to look into the strange facts of his incarnation, his life, and his death among men. "When God again bringeth in the first-begotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him." At the winding-up of the affairs of the world, angels join with the four living creatures and the redeemed in the sublime ascription of praise, "saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing." Thus, the believer in Jesus is lifted up above himself and his fellowmen,-up even to the angelic worlds. Nor does he stop there. Tremblingly, strong only in reverence and love, he enters into the presence of the all-glorious Father, and tries to discover the bearing that the incarnate Saviour has on His infinite glory. Is it Indeed, whithersoever he turns his wondering eye, he meets the Admired of his soul. If he retrospectively place himself in the time "when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy," Christ was there, there not as a subordinate, or mere on-looker, but as the prime mover of the whole. If he project himself into the illimitable future, there too is Jesus shining down from the heights of a peerless glory, the admired and adored of all holy creatures. wonderful that looking thus, in his own little way, from everlasting to everlasting, he should fall before his Saviour, and, blind with tears such as mortals too rarely shed,-tears issuing from a fountain of never-to-be-uttered and never-to-be-forgotten emotions, should exclaim "None but Christ, none but Christ"? Is it wonderful, besides, that he should be grieved to the heart on learning that even ministers of the gospel are sometimes offended when the divine Saviour is directly addressed in the language of adoration? - Such questions as the following by and by rise up in the believer's spirit :-Why was there creation at all? And why is it of such interest to God? To the former, it seems natural to answer there has been creation because God chose it for his own glory. To the latter,-creation is dear to God because it is the means of his glorious outgoing, the means of revealing himself;—of revealing himself in his personality, and in the perfection of his attributes his immensity, his eternity, his infinite power, his infinite wisdom, his infinite love, his infinite holiness; of revealing himself to himself, and to other beings capable of apprehending him appreciatingly and of rendering back that intelligent, heart-felt adoration which is at once their own bliss and the Father's delight. There is, we would maintain, in the ever-blessed Godhead, apart from all created beings, room for fellowship in the highest and divinest form. But as we would seek to remove creation as far as possible from necessity on the one hand, and from arbitrariness on the other, we would nevertheless find a reason for it worthy of the infinitely wise and good Creator. We think that we discover such a reason in his desire to come out of himself, so to speak, and to give himself to creatures formed in his own likeness. He wished supremely to unfold his being and attributes in the presence of intelligences endowed with love and choice. He wished this, that, in his boundless benevolence, he might bestow upon them life such as he himself enjoys, and that he himself, in turn, might receive reverence, love, gratitude, worship, worthy of so richly-constituted beings, and of his own infinitely glorious self. There is thus a sense in which all things are for our sakes, for the sake of created intelligences. All the worlds, sown in the boundless spaces, are to us and for us as manifestations of the invisible divinity. For this end they are. this end they were created. "For our sakes." Yes. But not for our sakes only; nor primarily. We are not the end of the ends. Creatures of yesterday cannot be the ultimate end of creation. No, that ultimate end must be the adorable God and Father, on whom terminates pre-eminently all the glory of the universe. For We do not hold with those who think that creation, apart from the incarnation of God, would be unworthy of the divine perfections. Farther still are we from the unevangelical notion that, though man had never sinned, a divine being would not have been wanting in human form, to complete humanity and draw it up from its lowly condition. But we believe that all mere possibilities, and all possibilities that have or will become actualities, were from eternity before the mind of the all-perfect thinker. He saw the beginning, and the end from the beginning, and all that lies between. Sin and its consequences were not hidden from his eyes. Jesus, too, was present to his view. And may we not entertain the idea that but for the determination on the part of the Godhead that "the Word," who "was with God" and who "was God," should attach himself sacrificingly to the creature, coupled with the realization in thought of the peerless consequences of his "obedience until death,"-creation, in at least some of its highest forms, had not been? Let this idea stand or fall as it may, it remains nevertheless true that God's dearest interests are connected with the manifestation of himself according to all that he is, in the presence of his intelligent creatures.-And this manifestation of himself attains its climax-its Omega-in Christ the holy and the crucified. He is the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person? It is true that "the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead." But all lights pale in the presence of the "sun of righteousness." A little child expresses God better than suns and planets and systems. An angel better still. But Christ best of all. God in Jesus comes out distinctively in his personality, and comes as near as possible to us and to higher intelligences. He approaches close to us in nature, closer in our fellows, closer still in the depths of our own consciousness. And there is doubtless a point still farther down where the basis of our being meets the spirit of the allpresent God, who is in every point of infinite space as in every moment of infinite duration. That point is a point only in ontology. At it God is near indeed; and yet at it he is far away. How vastly different when Jesus comes in between! Then the pure resplendent light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, lighteth us by dispelling the thick darkness in which the invisible Father was concealed. God is near, not only in his personality, but also in the awful majesty of his righteousness, and in tender love and mercy. He is seen to be a father full of glory never to be fathomed, a glory that overflows into the filial soul, and fills it with unutterable peace and joy and love. This surely is something that lies close to the heart of God. It comes close to our hearts too. It also lies close to the hearts of angels. We can think of nothing that will more concern those high and holy beings than to find out God, as far as possible, unto perfection. To this end they may have struggled for millennia of ages. Holding fast the truth about God as it has been vouchsafed to them, revering and adoring up to the highest point of their light, they have been and are holy, as God is holy. But all this may have existed alongside of an ineffable yearning for a nearer approach to their Father's face in light. And to-day we doubt not that, with ourselves, they bless God because they have entered into a higher life through Jesus Christ our Lord. "But why," it may be asked, "should the angels be nearer God with Jesus between ?" "Do they not dwell in heaven, and see God?" Yes, as he is to be seen there. But it is precisely at this point that we are apt to be deceived. What do we mean when we say that angels see God? It is not, of course, that they see him in his essential being, in his substance, which underlies all his attributes and manifestations. God in this sense, is not to be seen by angels any more than by ourselves. We may readily believe, indeed, that, apart from the Godman, they have grander and fuller manifestations of the Creator and Father than we; but till God came forth in creature-form, and dwelt among us, and ultimately among them, the supreme glory, that had subjugated them and had been their joy, had not appeared in the most transcendent form. And thus, as we may conceive, it is the presence of Jesus in heaven, that fills each angelic as well as every human heart with joy, and that "tunes every mouth to sing." Are we wrong in adding that it may be ever so? No doubt, there may be no end to the goings-forth of God in creation. Infinite possibilities lie wrapt up in the power, and wisdom, and love of God, and how many of these possibilities may become actualities is not for man to say. For aught that we may know, what has been done may be only an earnest of what waits the command, "Come forth!" Space is boundless, eternity is limitless. God is equal to all possibilities. He may be adding to creation every day. The universe that is now, may be no more in relation to the universe that shall be, than this planetary home of ours in relation to his vast domains. But are we wrong in thinking that no future manifestation of the Godhead will ever approach in glory to him who is now the Immanuel of all holy beings? We may surely suppose that to him will the Deity direct all moral intelligences of all present and future worlds, for a faithful and adequate expression of his infinite, inexhaustible self. He is truly not Alpha only, but Omega also. R. P.-E. SOME ASPECTS OF THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT. Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.-John iii. 5. WE shall take for granted that "the kingdom of God" is "the kingdom of heaven." We shall also take for granted that |
