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VIII. Deliverance ever follows confession. is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Forgiveness is the fruit of divine love, the expression of divine mercy, and the outpouring of the riches of divine grace. Yet these are not the less manifested, because God has made it an act of justice and of faithfulness to forgive. Pardon, whether of the guilty sinner standing under condemnation, or of the failing child, to whom there is no condemnation, rests on the precious blood of the spotless Lamb, and is as much an act of justice as it is of mercy. Our gracious covenant God has pledged himself not to reject the coming sinner and the returning saint, and his word of promise cannot fail. In the exercise of his great love and wisdom, he has made the forgiveness of his contrite children to rest on his own unchanging justice and faithfulness. He seems to tell us that we charge him with unfaithfulness to his Word, and with injustice to the blood of his own Son, if we deny his readiness to receive, to forgive, and to restore the soul that returns to him. Not only is it his sovereign right and pleasure to pass by our sins, not only is it his delight in love and grace to forget our iniquities, but it is essential to the maintenance of the truth of his word, and to the exaltation of his righteousness. A rejected penitent sinner, or an unforgiven contrite child, would be as great a marvel as that God's Word should fail, and that his actions should be chargeable with wrong. Of all this his crucified and risen Son Christ Jesus is the abiding pledge. Of all this the Holy Ghost, sent from the Father and the Son, is the abiding witness to us.

God not only forgives our sins, but he removes from us their hurtful effects. He cleanses us from all unrighteousness. We have already suggested, that sins of heart and life act hurtfully on the whole man. They destroy our strength, they wither our joys, disturb our peace, chill our love, and dim the brightness of our hope. They darken within us the light of truth, unfit the heart for communion with God, and disqualify it for service to man. Effectually to put away sin is not only to purge away every stain with which it defiles the soul or troubles the conscience, but also to undo the various baleful consequences which flow from it, and to restore the spiritual health and tone of the inner man. Simply to pass by our failure, and not again to look upon the leprous spot of our sin, would not suffice to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The injuries done to our moral nature by each shock of sin must be repaired. The blinding effect of sin upon our spiritual understanding, whereby we discern between the precious and the vile, the good and the evil, inust be removed. The hardening influence of the deceitfulness of sin upon the heart and conscience must be subdued. The deadening power of the opiate of sin upon our spiritual affections, by which we cling to God, and his truth, and all heavenly things, must be counteracted. The withering influence of sin upon every grace of the Spirit of God within us must be overcome. And all this our covenant God and Father has promised to do. All this he is faithful and just to accomplish. For this he has laid up the precious blood of the one ever efficacious sacrifice, the virtue of which he repeat

edly applies to the mind, heart, and conscience of his penitent children, by the finger of his indwelling Spirit. There is virtue in that precious blood, afresh applied to the soul through faith, to repel each shock occasioned by sin to our renewed spiritual being; virtue to give the purged conscience the tenderest sense of the very beginnings of evil; virtue to quicken the benumbed affections of the heart into holy fervour and activity; virtue to call into renewed power and energy every precious grace of our new nature.

One sorrowful effect of actual trespass is the grieving of the Holy Spirit of God, by whose gracious aid all holy desires, purposes, and fruits are wrought in us, and brought forth by us. There must be darkness, and deadness, and failure where the Spirit of light, and life, and grace is grieved and hindered in his holy work in his saints. Hence a complete forgiveness of our sins, and a complete purging from our unrighteousness, involves the abiding presence of the Holy Ghost, and the continuance of his gracious operations in us. The same precious blood that hides the confessed sin from the eye of our heavenly Father, removes the defilement of it from the presence of the indwelling Spirit of adoption, so that he can still go on to subdue in us the motions and lusts of our flesh, and still work in us to will and to do according to the Father's good pleasure.

FAITHFUL WORDS.

BY

JOHN OFFORD,

OF PALACE GARDENS CHAPEL, KENSINGTON.

THE CONFLICT OF THE INNER LIFE.

"The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would."-GAl. v. 17.

Good and evil have been in conflict in this world for nearly six thousand years. The struggle began when the poison of sin first entered the human heart, and God breathed the first life-giving word of promise into the soul already dead in sin. Since then it has continued through all ages; nor will it cease till he that sitteth upon the throne shall make all things new, and that creation be formed in which shall dwell righteousness. And it may be truly affirmed, that that part of the struggle which has made the nature of man its battle-field, and which is ever being waged in the human soul, is not the least fraught with mysterious and solemn interest; for who shall tell, save God, to whom all hearts are known, what intense agonizings, what fearful strivings, what mighty throes, have wrung and shaken and convulsed the spirits engaged in this great warfare? what eye, save his who searches the hidden

recesses of man's inner being, has marked the workings of thought, the upheavings of feeling, the rendings of conscience occasioned by this soul-conflict? The battle of social life, the struggles for existence and for freedom, the efforts after wealth and station, desperate as they are, furnish no complete illustration of the mysterious nature or of the vast results of this spiritual warfare. The Spirit of God, who has in the book of truth written the history of many souls engaged in the fight of faith in bygone ages, can alone lead our minds into this great subject of experimental truth. May he condescend to teach us, and give to us the meekness of wisdom wherewith to learn, the things which are of such vast moment to us as the servants of the true God. We notice

I. The combatants. The flesh and the Spirit. The flesh-not the mortal body, of which it can be said, "Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service;' for the body may be cleansed from sin, sanctified by the blood of Christ, and used for God, but "the flesh," never. "The flesh," that is, "the old man with his affections and lusts: the body of the sins of the flesh the body of sin: the body of this death the law or power of sin and death in our members." In one word, SIN in its essence, nature, and properties. Sin, with man born; in man inherent; corrupting the fountains of his thought and feeling; impregnating his whole being, and defiling all his ways before God. Flesh, the desperate moral evil of fallen humanity.

The spirit-not the Holy Ghost, nor the mind of man in contrast to his body, but the new man, the