unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel. Eph. vi. 10-19.

Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses. I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession; that thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukeable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ: which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.

1 Tim. vi. 12-16.

For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.

TANDING fast in the Lord! What words for us

STAN

to use for us failing, restless, capricious creatures. And yet there is a truth in these words. There is,

blessed be God, even such a gift as this in heaven's treasury for every one who will indeed seek heartily to make it his own,-this gift of the grace which wins the crown, and which wafts the rescued soul into the everlasting haven.

Do we ask then what is the cause of the steadfastness of God's faithful servant? Surely there is but one cause -God's eternal love. Yes, in the unfathomable counsels of the Eternal Three, in the love of the Triune Jehovah, is the cause or the steadfastness of any of the elect. Surely the Apostle traces it to this source when he says: 'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.' Yes, in the counsels of the Almighty's mind, where there lies stretched out before the eye of the All-seeing all that shall ever be, as though already it had been-there was seen distinctly the mysterious meeting-place of each reasonable being He had created, with the Spirit that should strive with him in his day of grace; there was seen the issue of that mysterious struggle; there was known to God who would yield and who would resist His grace, and the love of the Almighty rested in the purposes of redemption upon the souls which He foreknew as the crown of His Son's glory in the salvation of the lost. Never must we lose sight of this. Nothing is so cramping to the mind, as, because we are

afraid of having some wretched system which we spin out for ourselves, interfered with by such mighty truths of holy writ as the absolute sovereignty of God, to throw them aside as something which we do not dare to gaze upon. Nothing is so cramping to the soul. No, let us every one trace all that is good, all that is blessed, all that is perfect, all that is holy, in every man, to God's sovereign will-to God's eternal love.

This, then, first, is the cause of the steadfastness of the saints; and notice next the means by which God works this end within them. St. Paul tells us most distinctly what the means were in his own case. He says, 'When it pleased God to reveal His Son

in me.' He dwells upon this, you remember, in the narrative dictated, doubtless by himself, to St. Luke,— he repeats it to the scoffing king; he cannot refrain from continually referring to it: 'I have seen the Lord.' Yes, the sight of that love was the means which wrought in the Apostle's mind the change which grew into steadfastness.

And now mark the course by which this was effected. The love which he saw in the face of Christ kindled his love in return. It was a marvel to him that he, the persecutor, the reviler, the blasphemer, could be loved; yet God showed him that he was loved, and the union of these two sights wrought this change within him—he saw himself utterly defiled, and yet he saw himself, though thus defiled, beloved of Christ.

He was beginning to understand the mighty mystery that He, the fountain of love, so overflowed with love

that He could even look upon him in his sin; for 'while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us;' that He could look upon him in his alien state; that He could show him that love in order to win him out of the sin which now for the first time he understood to be polluting his whole being. This kindled within him in return the dawning of love to Christ who had first loved him. For 'we love Him,' says his brother Apostle, 'because He first loved us.' And this sight bred within him also the deepest humiliation. He saw himself to be the chief of sinners. And this estimate of himself lasted all his life through. This was the first effect of that sight of love. And then, next, it led him to a perpetual watchfulness over his lower nature, lest the actings of that lower nature should rise as a cloud between himself and that vision. It was not in the early beginning only of his following after Christ that he thus watched. Twenty-three years after his conversion he says, 'I keep under my body and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means when I have preached to others I myself should be a castaway.' Here doubtless was the secret of a life-long watchfulness. And then, closely connected with this, is another step in the same path of life. This sense of humiliation, and this ceaseless watchfulness, springing from the sight of the love of Christ, constrained him to have his own being drawn more completely up into the being of his Lord.

If you would see how this character was stamped upon his soul, remember that those words, "That I

may know Him, and the power of His resurrection,' were written twenty-nine years after he had seen the face of the Lord on his way to Damascus. And what years had they been! How in them had he been driven to the name of the Lord, time after time, as to his only fastness against the multitude of his enemies; how in the dungeon, how in the shipwreck, how amongst the barbarians, how amongst the Jews, how when fightings were without, how when there were fears within, how in that depression which at times even he must have felt in such a life of suffering, and labour, and excitement; how in the collapse of that mighty heart of his, when all things darkened around him, when nature was weak; how, time after time, he had been driven to fly again and again to that Lord who had revealed His countenance to him in the way, and to find in Him the fresh help and renewed strength he needed! Surely, you would say, this man, through these twenty-nine years, had grown to know his Lord thoroughly. And yet at the end of them, what does he say? 'That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection,' as if He had never known Him; because that knowledge, instead of satisfying, had only increased the desires of his love; because the deeper he had let his line down, the more it had revealed to him the unfathomable depths which lay yet unreached below it; because the more he had comprehended of the faithfulness, the tenderness, and the pity of the Lord, the more he found that it was beyond his comprehension;