VI. Let us consider next "the law of the Nazarite when the days of his separation are fulfilled." He is to enter the presence of God, and stand before him, still relying on the holy burnt offering, and still and only seeking to be accepted in the perfectness of Jesus. He shall still confess that all rests on the basis of the unblemished sin offering. He shall there own that, once at enmity with God, he found restoration and reconciliation only through the spotless peace sacrifice. He shall still acknowledge that God can feed on nothing but that which Christ is on behalf of his people. These various offerings, representing the different aspects of the one great and all-powerful sacrifice, being presented by the priest for him, "the Nazarite shall shave the head of his separation, and shall take the hair of the head of his separation and put it in the fire, which is under the sacrifice of his peace offerings." On finally entering the presence of God's glory, with all the service which he may have rendered, and with all the strength and comeliness with which grace may have adorned him, he shall confess that all has been given him through the reconciling blood and death of Jesus, accepted for him by the fire of divine holiness, and that only through that reconciling blood could his holiest services be acceptable to God. And holding in his hand before the Lord the shoulder of the ram of the peace offering, he shall thus own that all his strength and subjection were derived from Christ alone the strength of Christ made perfect in his weakness; while the one unleavened cake, and one unleavened wafer, presented with the wave shoulder, shall indicate that all the beauty of his Nazarite

character was derived from the grace of him who was the perfect meat offering-grace ministered by the Holy Spirit. Thus shall the Nazarite, at the end of his course, stand before God, in the full consciousness that himself and his service are accepted in all the preciousness of God's precious Son, and in all the perfectness of his living and dying obedience for his people.

VII. "After that he may drink wine." This is the final law of divine Nazariteship. When the earth shall have received her King; when the risen and glorified saints shall be enthroned with her Lord; when the Spirit shall have been finally poured out upon restored Israel to win the nations to God, and the things of earth shall be used as from and for God by his millennial saints, then shall the Nazarite drink the fruit of the vine-the joy coming from earth-with Jesus in the kingdom of his Father. Till then, to find pleasure in this Christ-rejecting world, is to deny our separation from it by the cross of Christ, is to forget our standing in the heights of glory in our risen head, and to falsify the confession of our strangership here through our hope in the coming One.

Brethren, where are the true Nazarites, who earnestly seek to walk according to these divine canons, and practically to maintain this holy standing? Alas, alas! might not the Lord bring against his Church now the solemn charge pressed upon Israel by the prophet: "I raised up your young men for Nazarites. Is it not thus, O ye children of Israel? saith the Lord. But ye gave my Nazarites wine to drink"?

FAITHFUL WORDS.

BY

JOHN OFFORD,

OF PALACE GARDENS CHAPEL, KENSINGTON.

THE CONFESSION OF SIN BY BELIEVERS.

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."-1 JOHN i. 9.

"HE that believeth is justified from all things." "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." "Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." These inspired words set forth the position of the believer in Jesus. They assert that every vestige of transgression is removed. from him; that no charge involving guilt or doom can lie against him; and that no sin will henceforth be seen on his person by the eye of God as the righteous Judge. These truths attest that the believer has absolutely and altogether passed out of the state of a condemned sinner, and that no question of the resumption of his position under guilt and condemnation can ever again arise. Divine justice has no more claim against Jesus in reference to guilt. "In that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God." Even so is it with the believer, who was represented by Christ in his death under sin, and who is now presented in Christ before God in life and light above. From the

hour of his being born again, the believer stands in another relation to God, even the relation of a child to a Father; and thenceforth he can be dealt with on no other ground. His service is the service of a child; his obedience, the obedience of a child; his sin, the sin of a child. Hence the obedience in service cannot be regarded as a matter of title to life, though it will be regarded as a subject of reward; nor can his failure or disobedience involve the question of condemnation, though it will result in loss of reward in the day of Christ. The relation of the criminal to the judge is gone, but the relation of the child to the Father is established in its stead. The question of doom can no more recur, but the subject of correction and of chastisement takes its place. In opening our text we remark:

I. Sin is still in the child of God. "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." The truth penetrating the inward recesses of our being, while it brings with it life and light, ever reveals the dark evil of our fallen flesh. He, then, in whom divine truth is most deeply implanted, and through whose spirit the Holy Ghost has most richly diffused its holy light, will most clearly discern, and most solemnly judge, the sin of his own nature. Like the apostle Paul, who so well knew the searching power of divine holiness and truth, he will be constrained to say, "I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, good dwelleth not." He will learn that still his moral flesh is fraught with that deadly evil, whose essential property is enmity against God, and hateful of the light, and which ever lusts against the spirit which is in the renewed man. Yet

he will also know that this dark evil, this dread sin, has already been judicially doomed and executedyea, that he himself, as a sinner, has been so doomed and executed-in the death of his sin-bearing Surety; and that, therefore, its presence admits not of the question of a further or second condemnation.

II. The child of God can at no time say that he has not sinned; for, "If we say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar, and his word is not in us." The word of God, which is quick (living) and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart-that word discovers to the Christian that the sin in him is no mere sluggish or inert principle, but an active law in his members ceaselessly warring against the law of his renewed mind. The living and all-discerning word will teach him, that no holy motion can arise in the new spirit unresisted by a counter motion of the sinful flesh; that no holy affection can spring up in the heart unopposed by the unholy affections of his fallen nature. God's word being in him, he will learn that no desire to know or to do good can find place in the soul, without a counteracting evil being stirred up to contest the efforts springing from that desire; and that no Spirit-wrought motives can urge his mind and conscience to seek entire subjection to God's will, undisputed by contrary motives arising from the will of the flesh.

The Christian in whom the words of Christ abide, shedding their holy light upon his inmost thoughts and feelings, will not judge himself by mere overt