racter he witnesses of God, as one person witnesses for another; while, as the Amen, he declares God's mind as being one with God; no saint is the Amen of God, although a member of the Amen. But every saint is a witness for God: Jesus also, as the King of saints, is a witness for God; the witness for God, that witness of whose testimony every other has but a part; that witness who witnesses of God alone, and always truly; "He witnessed what he saw and heard" (John iii. 32). While his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, were a narration or giving account of the invisible Godhead so manifested in flesh (John i. 1-18), He no less truly prophesied concerning his Father as a separate person; so that the Spirit of prophecy is called "the testimony of Jesus" (Rev. xix. 10). And he, being sent of the Father into the world, was and "is the Father's faithful Witness" (Rev. i. 5); just as Antipas being sent of Jesus into the world was the faithful witness of Jesus (Rev. ii. 13). But he is also the true Witness of God: by the addition of which epithet I understand this to be meant, that he is at once faithful in the office of a witness and true as a witness. A witness may be true, yet not faithful; but he cannot be faithful, and yet not true, when he has received all truth to declare. So the Son, the Word, that person of the Godhead whose office it is to give, in his own person, the λoyos, account, or argument of God, did, in covenanting to become flesh, covenant to be in flesh the true declarer of the true God, by the unction of the Spirit, who alone knoweth the things of God. To that covenant, through faith in his Father, he was ever faithful and by being faithful in the trust of that stupendous testimony, he was true in the work of that testimony. It was a true declaration delivered in faith. And as the revelation of God in flesh was not complete until the flesh was glorified with God's glory, so the testimony for God by Jesus Christ, as a witness, was, for the same reason, not complete until Jesus was raised from the dead.-But he is, in the last place, here represented as the Beginning of the creation of God, η αρχή της κτίσεως TOV Oɛov: he stands the chief or head of God's creation. This plainly does not refer to the work of creation in six days; because although he is the first begotten of every creature, and "all things were created by the Christ of God, and for him, whether they be things in heaven or things in earth, visible or invisible; and although he is before all things, and all things by him consist" (Col. i. 15); yet the expression apxn Tηs KTLOEWS evidently points to his creature condition as God manifest in flesh, and his pre-eminence over all other creatures, as a creature. This is the truth set forth in the context immediately following: "He himself is the head of the body the church, who is the beginning (or chief), the first-begotten from out the dead, in order that he

himself might become the primary in all things, because it seemed good that in him all the fulness should dwell" (Col. i. 18, 19): wherein we have Christ as the Beginning (os ssv apyn) identified with Christ as the Head of the body, and Christ as the Firstbegotten from the dead. Christ risen from the dead was a new creature; the first-fruits of that glorious dispensation in which God shall have made all things new. And they that are in Christ are new creatures, just because they are risen with him; partakers with the second Adam, the quickening Spirit; possessors of the Holy Ghost as the earnest of their inheritance. This headship over God's new creation, being the fruit of resurrection, is a distinct thing from that headship over all things which has from the beginning pertained to the Eternal Word. In the latter character, he has been the first-begotten, or rather the creation-fountain, of every creature. In the former, he is the first-begotten from the dead; the first-born of many brethren. But as it is the constant counsel of the Father to glorify the Christ with the glory which, as the Word, he had with the Father before the world was; so his primary attainment by resurrection to be the first-born of many brethren, is at once the means and the reason of his attaining for his brethren's sake to the headship of all things; as it is written, that God, when he raised up Jesus, "put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body" (Eph. i. 22). Christ then, seated in our flesh on the Father's throne, as the Father's Priest and King, is the Amen, the faithful Witness, and the Head of the creation of the invisible God. And as the church of Laodicea is the future subject of peculiar rebuke, we are to find in these three titles both the contradiction of its peculiar provocations, and our warning against them. In short, the great sin of Laodicea will be her denial of Christ in these three characters. This she will virtually do, when with the form of godliness she shall admit, but with the denial of its power she shall deny, that he is God's King in all the earth. But she shall also deny them more particularly. She shall deny the Amen by saying that other purposes, other promises, other prophecies than God's shall stand; by saying that God has other promises than those in Christ; that Christ is not the only way, the only truth, the only life; that God's promises in Christ shall not assuredly stand; that God is not revealed in Christ alone; and that the promises of God himself shall not assuredly stand. She shall deny the faithful Witness, and the true Witness, by refusing to learn God in Christ; by denying that Jesus hath learned, or now speaks, of the Father; by denying that he has done it in our flesh, so as to teach us by his faith and holiness, as a like-tempted man, God's true will for our sanctifica→ tion, God's condemnation of sin in the flesh: and, lastly, by

making Christ in his members a deceiver, and warning the world of all who profess to walk in his simplicity and power before his Father, in the vision and on the strength of things unseen, in the denial of themselves. She shall deny the chief of the creation of God, by denying, in the very midst of the shaking of all things that are, that God is about to make all things new; by believing that Satan, and not Christ, is to make all things new; by total ignorance of that condition wherein the saints, being risen with Christ, keep the word of his patience, as the conquerors of this world's god; by disbelieving that because he liveth we shall live also: finally, by denying the Holy Ghost as a person, as the Spirit of life, of holiness, of power. Let us therefore beware, for in the Philadelphian time are sown the seeds, and in our church is already apparent the growth, of that monstrous phenomenon which Laodicea as a church shall present. God grant that our whole souls may be filled with Christ; and that, looking in his face continually, we may walk in the image of the living God, and be kept from the mighty power, and else resistless subtlety, of Satan, directed into the love of God, and the patient waiting for Jesus Christ.

"I know thy works; that thou art neither cold nor hot. Thou must needs be cold or hot" (Rev. iii. 15).—The two original words here employed, uxpos and ¿esos, are unusual. The former occurs in only one other passage of the New Testament; namely, to express a cup of cold water (Matt. x. 42). The latter occurs no where; and were it not for the employment of words related to them, we should perhaps not so directly learn the moral sense of the words themselves. But, in Matt. xxiv. 12, it is written, that, through the multiplying of the lawlessness (the principles of the lawless one, Antichrist), the love of the many (vynoera) shall wax cold. And, in the only two passages where Lew occurs-namely, Acts xviii. 25, and Rom. xii. 11-it is made to express the condition of a man weary with forbearing to testify for Jesus. Whence it is plain that cold and hot here express two complete extremes; of which the latter fulfils the desire of God, the former that of Satan. The priority of the epithet "cold" is not without its meaning; for it informs us that our Lord would have expected to have found Laodicea cold; and so points out the tremendous prevalence of iniquity about to be revealed. The marvel will be, that when the hearts of the whole world shall be fixed in the frost of Antichrist against the quickening influence of the living God and the risen Christ, there shall be found any not cold; and the still greater marvel, the more unaccountable paradox, will be, that those who are not deadened by the universal coldness are not fervent in spirit towards God. Then shall appear the great controversy between light and darkness; between Christ the King, and Satan the

usurper; when the powers of the world that is shall be gathered by the wonders of the liar, the powers of the world to come by the dividing word and naked arm of the Lord; and the Lamb shall overcome; and we shall overcome by his blood. If, then, it be the marvel of the man of God that in any circumstances men should halt between two opinions and fulfil the wishes of the devil against God by professedly following neither; what an unprecedented, unparalleled, and, but for the word of God, incredible condition will be that of Laodicea; still halting, still walking in her own peace, when all things are shaken; still naming the name of the Lamb, yet without a spark of jealousy for that name; in the very day of his wrath, in the very vengeance of his jealousy (Rev. vi. 17; Prov. vi. 34; Song, viii. 6). O let us be jealous, yea, very jealous, for the Lord of hosts, lest we become Laodicean quietists. Every testimony for God which we forego winds tighter round us the snare of the fowler, and smothers the burnings of the Lord in our souls. Satan takes men quickest with the baits which they least suspect; and it is only in the mind of God that we can be lifted up to survey from a vantage ground all things as they truly are. Blessed be our God, that the understanding of the wise shall be as complete as the judicial blindness of the wicked. By that understanding we now perceive, in the relics of the church of Sardis which hopes to conquer the world by wisdom for God, the rudiments of Laodicea which hopes to gain the world by wisdom for God. For what is the relation subsisting between the professing servants of the living God and the scientific sorcerers of the devil, but this; that the church, under the plea of redeeming every thing to God, is serving him with the contrivances of the devil; and under the plea of glorifying God by knowing the reasons of things, is consenting that every thing shall be referred to another God than the God and Father of Jesus Christ; or shall be so accounted for as to put God out of the reckoning altogether: the extension of which last device will just lead to this; that the coming of Jesus in the clouds of heaven, and the destruction of the wicked-one by the brightness of his coming, will be gravely explained on some philosophical principle, as some splendid atmospheric illusion wherein to admire the works of a poetic deity. But let us also seek understanding, whereby to detect the seeds of this lukewarmness already sown in the church of Philadelphia. These lie under Satan's perversion of the glorious truth concerning Christ's immoveable kingdom, and our immoveable confidence. And if we be not watchful against the liar, we shall see multitudes feasting on the hope of Christ's appearing, and the things spoken of old concerning it, and all the phenomena which shall usher it in as rich topics of discussion, and fit occasions for exhibiting polemical adroitness;

multitudes talking of their escape from the snare of the fowler; the manifestations of the Spirit of God; the denial of the truth; the raging of the nations; the judgments of the Lord; the deliverance out of these by faith; the apprehended apostasy of the church; the blessedness of persecution; the felicity of communion; and the thousand matters of present interest among the faithful, who tremble not at the word of the Lord, who deny not themselves,-who walk not so lowly in their own places, tenderly to those within, or wisely to those without,-who die not daily to sin,-who forbear not, except when they are on some romantic enterprize of forbearance,-who make no account, because they have not the fellowship of Christ's patience,-and, above all, who with all their indignations in the flesh, are as little jealous in the spirit for the holy name of Jesus as those whom they count babes : they run the peril of falling into a sort of stoical quiescence under the semblance of having overcome by faith, and of being found neither cold nor hot; having neither holy awe nor holy joy at the dawn of the day; taken by surprize with nothing; able to say of every thing that shall occur, this is just what we expected God to do; but unable to say under almost any thing, "Blessed be He that cometh in the name of the Lord." Thus, then, does our Lord find Laodicea; but thus she shall not long abide. All neutral ground He will abolish, in the day when he shall separate the sheep from the goats, and discern between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not (Mal. iii. 18): she must needs become either cold or hot. This appears to be evidently the true translation of the passage. The word opeλov, although often employed to express a wish in one person, equally well, nay properly, expresses obligation on another person. And although the abhorrence with which our Lord regards the lukewarmness of Laodicea may be looked upon as conveyed with peculiar emphasis in the statement that he would rather see her go to either extreme than abide where she was, I do not see (though such may exist) any scriptural example of a form of speech which, in its literal acceptation, implies a desire in our blessed Saviour that his church should apostatize. The meaning seems just to be, that if she have been lukewarm through blindness, that blindness shall speedily be either sealed or removed, by manifestations not to be put away; and that, if she have been seeking to escape at once from the necessity, either of entering into the holy mind of Christ, or of experiencing the defeat of the devil, by steering a middle course between the contending parties, she shall find that middle course no longer.

So, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold not hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth" (Rev. iii. 16).-The holy disgust here expressed will help us to understand, and by