over an erring brother); this is a crucifying of the flesh which men are fain to get quit of by a hypocritical cry that it would be uncharitable and presumptuous. But with a smiling exterior, and an apparent approval of all that you are doing, they will canvass you behind your back; and at some unexpected turn you will find your good name disposed of by the court of the double-hearted, perhaps for mere talking or occupation's sake; for they set not the Lord before them in their words. Rather than want the food of their morbid appetites, they will take it how best they may. They dare not honestly deal face to face; and while they exclaim against exhortation as insolent, because it is honest; as extravagant, because it is unusual; as uncharitable, because it is true; they will judge every day according to the appearance, as their own evil lusts direct. Do not thus, ye who would walk with the Lamb; but come up honestly to men in love and faith: commune with them; learn what they are by proving them; use what you learn in love; and abhor the tender mercies of the wicked.

The statement made by the angel, that he is "rich, and has made his fortune," derives its chief offence from his inference that he has "need of nothing." They who are rich in truth have laid up in heaven, and are rich through participation of Christ's poverty. For if we measure riches by enjoyment, there are no riches like the unfathomable love, the unsearchable wisdom, the dazzling glory of the living God; and if we measure them by power, what can equal the power of God, and of the world to come, obtained by the faith of God's poor ones. But this angel is rich by sight, not by faith; by possession, not by hope. As the world goeth on in becoming perfectly sufficient unto itself, he goeth on echoing the lie, lending to the delusion the sanction of Christ's ministers, and learning to speak and think of Christ's pilgrims, as the world speak of those who have received their consolation. And as men approach the climax of scientific power over the things that are, he shall tell them that they are on the point of finding out God unto perfection. This is the true import of the term TελOUTηkα. I have got mammon to my heart's content; I have ransacked the world and expressed all its excellence; I have given myself to buy over the devil and all his children, and am just awaiting the completion of that barter, in which Christ is to be bartered for gold, and the blood of the Lamb for sorcerous wisdom to make the world one Christian democracy. Now here is the root of this awful lie. He that is rich toward God has, in this world at least, never made his fortune. "We know in part, and we prophesy in part," for the truest faith in our risen Lord will vanish before the sight of him. And in the world to come, the fulfilment of our desires after the living God will never satiate, but always enliven them the more.

If then a man have made his fortune here, he desireth not to see God eye to eye; but if he also infer that he hath need of nothing, because he hath made his fortune, his case is doubly deplorable. The very riches of a saint are inseparable from the conviction that he hath need. Having the Son, indeed, he hath life, and that peace which the world can neither give nor take. But if he feel himself the less needy that he hath the Son, he knoweth not what is in his flesh, and trusteth not in Christ, but in his possession of him: for Christ is no rest to them that are at ease; no food to the full. The most advanced saint on earth, who hath all his days been industriously laying up treasures in heaven, is at every moment what he is by grace, and so confesseth to the praise of God, if he speak the truth; and he that was filled with all the fulness of God would be just the emptiest vessel in the church, else he would not be walking in the footsteps of Christ, who always lived by the Father, full of grace and truth. Nay more, when we shall have attained to that which is perfect, we shall still confess, yea, glory in the confession, that we have need; for the Lord Jesus, when risen from the dead, said, "I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God" (John xx. 17). And when he afterwards speaketh from the Father's throne in heaven, promising the reward to them that shall not be offended in him, he still calleth God his God, as he did when he was willingly the Father's bond-servant and worshipper, in the days of his flesh (Rev. iii. 12; Luke iv. 8). Therefore, if it be our calling here to walk as he walked here, it is alike our promise, when we shall be like him, seeing him as he is, to walk then as he walketh in his glory. If the Word made flesh shall give the Father his true place as God for ever, we, the joint-heirs with Christ, shall do the same; making, with a glad and glorious confidence, the eternal confession that we have need of every thing. They who serve for ever shall for ever drink; and in both offices their companion shall be the Lamb (Matt. xxvi. 29; Rev. vii. 15, xxii. 3; Phil. ii. 11). But they who have need of nothing, because they have made their fortune, are not following the Lamb, but a two-fold lie; for they are believing not only that the world is sufficient for man, and man sufficient for himself; but also that there are in both the power to produce whatsoever is needed, whenever and however it is so. And when we reflect for a moment on the presence of the Lord in the air with his holy ten thousands, and the seven full vials of God's unmingled wrath in the hands of the risen saints; nothing but the teaching of God can persuade us that there can be in the heart of man such a mystery of deceivableness, such a depth of darkness, as this church of Laodicea shadows forth. I begin however to see, that we ought to regard it as chiefly representing that period during which Anti

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christ runs his career resplendent with the light of hell, and peaceful under the spells of Satan, rather than the succeeding period in which Antichrist is overwhelmed. This interval will, I believe, be so glorious, as for a time to convince the world that they are in the new heavens and earth. Its character as such appears from various Scriptures: e. g. from Job xli. which says that "his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning" (ver. 18), that " sorrow is turned into joy before him" (ver. 22), and that he maketh a path to shine after him (ver. 32); and from Ezek. xxxi. 6, where it is said that " under his shadow dwelt all great nations." But its most emphatic description is (if I interpret the passage aright, for I only throw out the hint for others,) to be found in Rev. viii. 1: “ And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour." The seventh trumpet, as I have already shewn, evidently contains the mystery of the seven vials. And if the seventh seal and seventh trumpet refer to one and the same period, then, as the whole period during which the ten kings shall receive power with the beast is one hour, the as it were half an hour" may express that period preceding the destruction of Antichrist during which there is a silence, or cessation of judgment from heaven, and a wonderful exhibition of such joy and splendour in the worship of the man of sin as may account for the extraordinary condition of Laodicea. But I really feel not wise enough to inquire into so vast a mystery. I shall thank my God if any thing I may say should help any one to believe more as a little child the revealed things regarding it, and seek with more stedfast face the promise of escape from such surpassing tribulation. Oh that we had the perfect heart of Caleb, the walk of Enoch! And why not? Just because we have yet a lingering conscience of sin; because we love sin and this world, the house of the wicked one; because we will not believe God when he saith, in the fulness of his Father's heart, in the simplicity of his essential truth," Behold my Lamb, which taketh away the sin of the world, that the world may serve me and be saved." Oh, it is this refusal to be sprinkled with the Blood, because our evil conscience testifieth unto it as a holy sprinkling, that leaveth us at the mercy of every evil lust: for we walk with a name to live; seldom or never in the light, by the Spirit of adoption; insomuch, that were Jesus Christ, in whom God hath given us the better covenant, to visit us, that he might see whether by that covenant we had known the Lord, he would find us, as he found the Jews when he came to them, saying every man to his brother no more than "know the Lord," whom as yet we know not, instead of praising the Lord whom we know; ignorant, wayward, uncertain, instead of being filled with that anointing which should cause no need of teaching (Heb. viii. 11;

1 Cor. ii. 15; 1 John ii. 20, 27); men baptized unto the knowledge of the true God, yet all giving and receiving in the congregation of the people the mere alphabet of the mystery of godliness; instead of having our pure minds stirred up of the angel by way of remembrance. Instead of having God's fulness and presence with us of a truth, so as to be the true prophets of God to the world, we are reproached by the world with the question, Where is your God? Our mouths cannot speak the praises of the Lord; or, if they speak, they speak lies in hypocrisy; for they are not opened by the Holy Ghost in faith, because there is no abundance in our hearts. We give not liberally, because we understand not how freely we have received. And this we understand not, because we know not the sprinkling of the Blood, and bear about with us an uncleansed consciencea flesh alive, and not mortified to sin; not remembering that Jesus hath put away sin, and borne all our sins in his own body on the tree. Now this I testify and declare, that no man, be he a child of God or not, can serve God in the least, while he has the least conscience of sin; while he feels that God on the throne has any fault with him; while he is ignorant that the Blood hath cleansed the fault to the uttermost. For God is reconciling the world unto himself. And as truly as we must have no quarrel with God, if we would serve him, so he hath, by the Blood, no quarrel with us, and therefore is asking us to serve him. He does not, and therefore he cannot, give his Spirit to one in whom he remembers sin, so holy is Jehovah ; and therefore the Gospel is this: Your sins and your iniquities I am remembering no more. Our sins are truly washed and blotted out. He hath truly brought us nigh in the blood, and so we receive the Spirit of adoption. Whenever we forget the Blood, whenever we stand not in it at peace before the Throne, though it be but for an hour, for that hour we cannot serve God; for he is never served but by dear children: and he cannot walk as a child who is trembling under a curse upon the conscience; who is not brought nigh to the pure light of that God whose message is,-I am light, and in me is no darkness at all; abide ye in the light: rejoice, as I rejoice over the Lamb, who was dead, and is alive: dwell in his love, as he dwelleth in mine. Now this very thing hath the Holy Ghost written concerning us, or rather, alas! concerning what we are yet to be-the hundred and forty and four thousand that walk with the Lamb whithersoever he goeth-saying, "In their mouth was found no guile; FOR they are without fault before the throne. Our mouths shall truly confess neither more nor less than what our hearts do at the time feel of the true God Jesus Christ. The opening of our mouth shall be of the Spirit: we shall believe, and therefore speak. We shall testify in the Spirit what we see

of the vision of God; and not in the flesh what we remember to have learned concerning God. So shall the word proceed from faith to faith, and we be delivered from that false tongue which speaketh for God, not caring whether in faith or no; filling the house of God with them that buy and sell; turning it into a house of merchandize, or a house of mimicry. Now this, our guilelessness, be it observed, is not the cause but the consequence of our being without fault. Our holiness does not sprinkle the Blood but we overcome the devil by the Blood; having our consciences purged from dead works to serve the living God!

But to return: I do not believe that the expression" and knowest not" signifies mere ignorance. For Laodicea is a church; and therefore it has a conscience. For an apostate alone has a conscience seared as with a hot iron; and until it be so seared, the conscience always speaks for God. Wherefore the Apostle, by manifestation of the truth (not by argument for logical positions, which darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge), commended himself to every man's conscience in the sight of God. The conscience then of the angel must, in a greater or less degree, tell him truth; which truth affects it, not by demonstration, but by manifestation. Therefore his ignorance must include in it a refusal to recognise the truth: and no wonder, when we compare his fleshly mind with the crucifying truth presented to it. That truth was, not merely that he was poor, &c., but that he was the poor one, &c., the poorest of the poor; as if to root out of him at once every comfort to be borrowed from comparisons. He stands at the head of comparers. All pride whatever, all self-complacency and quietism, springs from comparison between man and man. Who could be proud, did he compare himself with God? And what are we called to do but compare ourselves with God? It is our calling, to take Christ for our ensample; Christ who, being in one person, God and man—God and man agreed-is the eternal monument of man compared with God, and by the Holy Ghost enabled to stand the comparison at every point. Whatever he did and doth, he did and doth as man. His holiness both is, and equals, the holiness of God. God laid righteousness to the plummet with him, proved him, and found him right: right by faith. His power both is, and equals, the power of God: " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." "The Son of Man hath power to remit sins," hath power to deliver, hath power to judge: power received, power not his own; power which he had indeed from everlasting as God the Son, but power for which he covenanted when he became flesh; power which, as man, he had no more of himself than I have; power which he obtained by faith, and power which we may obtain by faith; as it is written, "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted: If ye have faith, ye could