you the money last month, and yet I read it all in your ledger against me. He would say to me, Don't you see that red line drawn from corner to corner? The red line does not point to every place; but that red line means, and a judge in Chancery or in a court of justice would so recognise it, the cancelling of what you owe me. That explains all. So it is now; your memory does not give up the recollection of your sins; but the red line of a Saviour's blood is across all; and that is to you the testimony from heaven: "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions." There is no other saviour, there is no other suffering requisite, there is no other sacrifice possible. How then are we to avail ourselves of it? Just read the words that immediately follow the last text that I have quoted, the 25th verse of the 43rd chapter of Isaiah: “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins." Now, as if God anticipated that his people would say, But what is this to us? how are we to get an interest in it? he adds, "Put me in remembrance." Now that is all. What are you to do? Tell him the sacrifice is finished, the atonement is complete; pardon is promised, blotting out is pledged. Blessed Lord, remember thy promises, which have been of old for ever; remember thy covenant, remember thy word, upon which thou hast caused thy servant to hope. So putting him in remembrance of a sacrifice finished, of a promise made, not trying to make a sacrifice, he will blot out all our sins, and remember our iniquities no more.

May God give us this simple, heartfelt apprehension of his mind, for Christ's sake! Amen.

GRACE AND ITS CREATIONS.

ISAIAH XLIV.

THE chapter we have read begins first of all by tracing all the blessings enjoyed by the ancient or the modern people of God to one distinguishing fountain and inexhaustible source; namely, his sovereign love: "O Jacob, my servant; and Israel, whom I have chosen; fear not, O Jacob, my servant; and thou, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen." The choice of God is but another expression for his sovereign love. All the blessings that are tasted in the experience of the Christian church are simply rills and rivulets flowing more or less deep, and broad, and full, from that fountain of love out of which a Saviour came, and from which with him will also come to us freely all things; hence we read in a parallel passage in the New Testament Scriptures, According as he hath chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy." I know the difficulty that Christians feel when they hear that God has selected an individual to be a believer, and through faith an inheritor of eternal life, before the foundation of the world itself; and the very illogical, but seemingly very rational reasoning that such pursue when they say, if there be a select number of the human family chosen to ever

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lasting life, then if we are chosen we shall be saved; if we are not, we shall be lost. My answer is, the Scripture recognises no such reasoning. We need grace not only to reveal the truth, but we need grace to enable us to reason logically on that truth as the premises from which we reason. We find in Scripture, explain it as you like, that the choice of God is in every instance associated with the character of the individual chosen. You are not chosen to eternal life in spite of faith, in spite of regeneration, in spite of sanctification; but we are told you are chosen to everlasting life through sanctification and belief of the truth. And whilst it is perfectly true that this sovereign grace lies at the spring of all that we are, of all that we have, of all that we hope for; it is no less true that no decree, nor election, nor choice, nor sovereignty, in the least or the remotest degree, prevents the greatest or the most hardened sinner from instantly believing and instantly being saved. It is true that when you come to argue it, human reason reasons wrongly; but if you will look at the very nature of the gospel you will see that election, as it is called, or sovereignty, is of the very essence of Christianity. For instance, if you will admit this to me, that no man believes till God first helps him, that no sinner comes to Christ till God first draws him, that no man's heart is regenerated by an effort from within, but always by an impulse from above, what is that but election? What is the difference whether God selected me a hundred thousand years ago for eternal life, or touched me this morning, and made me by that touch this day a Christian? It is equal sovereignty in the

one case and in the other. What, therefore, mark you -what it is right in God to do this day, it was right in God to resolve to do a hundred thousand years ago; and if, therefore, you grant that grace draws us before we respond, that God transforms us before we can be transformed, you grant not the chronological period, "chosen before the foundation of the world," but you grant the substance, and the pith, and the essence of it; for you admit that we never can believe till God inspire us ; we never can be regenerated till he regenerate us; we never can choose him till he has first chosen us. That seems to me the simplest, and yet the all-pervading doctrine of grace, without which grace is no more grace.

Then after he has thus spoken to those he has chosen, he tells them what he will do to them: "I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground; I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring." This is imagery meant to express the beneficent effects of the pouring out of God's Holy Spirit. When you have seen the ground dry, and cracked, and parched, because of the absence of the sweet spring showers, you have in that parched and cracked ground the outward symbol of a heart withered by this world's passions, dried up in all its springs by this world's lusts; thirsting for God, the living God. On such a heart, that he selects for that purpose, he will pour out his Holy Spirit; and the effects will be the same as the sweet spring shower upon the parched ground, making the desert places of that heart to rejoice, and its wildernesses to blossom like the rose; and the result will be, "they shall spring

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up as among the grass," like beautiful flowers that adorn it; and they will grow green, putting forth the first tufts in spring, as willows by the watercourses," refreshed by the waters that continually flow at their roots. And the result of this choice, of this gift of the Spirit of God, will be that "One shall say, I am the Lord's ;" that is, I am a Christian; and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob; and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel." The substance of it is that wherever there is Christianity in a human heart, it will show itself in the consistency of a human life; outward acts will be the exponents of inward impulses. No man, you may depend upon it, is a Christian who keeps in all his Christianity as an interior secret, as something that he would not for the world that the world should know. It is one of the marks and proofs of a heart touched and transformed by the Spirit of God that it overflows in sympathy, in sacrifice, in service, according to the sphere we fill, the means we have, the opportunities presented; according to these grace in the heart will manifest and show itself. You may therefore fairly test what you are, and it is a very commonplace remark, by what you do, what you sacrifice, what you are prepared, if needs be, to suffer, to make this world better, its people wiser, and to fill the mansions of heaven with the spoils of this present evil and crooked world. If you are light, you must be luminous; you cannot conceive a light burning, and giving no light. If you be saints, you must be servants; the one necessitates and involves the other.