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made him only to mock him!

All this I can

understand but a belief in annihilation, entertained with indifference, is to me indeed a wonder incomprehensible !

But in all this argument I have said nothing of Scripture; of what God has told us there regarding the future; of what the whole Christian Church believes, and upon which the best and wisest of the human race have perilled their souls for ever! We know that you must live for ever. No unbelief can alter the fact that you shall continue to live, any more than it can reverse the fact that you have begun to live. You must, moreover, live for ever in fellowship with God-knowing Him, loving Him, obeying Him; and, in this right state, finding eternal joy with all like-minded: or you must live separated from Him in mind and spirit— living to self, and therefore to sin; and in this wrong state finding misery with all like-minded ! This God has declared because it is true and right, and this you cannot alter, no more than you can alter the movements of the starry heavens. But God has also revealed in Christ a life and joy for you and every man, which you may now possess in the knowledge and the love of Himself.

Our Father has made us for joy! It is we who have marred His work and chosen sin, which has brought to us guilt and misery. But our Father has not left us, nor cast aside the work of His hands. He has appointed Jesus Christ to be our Saviour. Jesus came to earth, and was born of the Virgin Mary. He lived amongst us. Because He was one with God in His divinity, He showed us how God loved us, and pitied us, and wished to save us; and because He was also one with us in His humanity, He showed us how lovingly, righte ously, purely, holily, God wished every man to live. Jesus, moreover, died for us, and ascended to Heaven, where He lives for us. And now if we trust that love manifested in the gift of Christ; and will receive the blessed gift of His Holy Spirit to live in us, He will daily make us more like God, and more meet for enjoying the heavenly life. My brother! "believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved!" Believe, and instead of indifference, thou shalt have peace, hope, yea, "joy unspeakable and full of glory!" All your past indifference and sin God will forgive when you return to Him. But if you live without faith in Christ and love to God, "thou shalt never

see life," for "the wrath of God abideth on thee!" If you "prefer darkness to light," then darkness shall be your portion-and this is darkness to be ignorant of God. It must be so! "How can we escape, if we neglect so great salvation ?" But so long as you remain undecided, and refuse to believe God's Word, or to receive and enjoy the blessing now of eternal life, then my most earnest wish for your welfare is, that you may have no peace, but be wretched and agonised-anything which may tend to drive you to God-anything rather than the coldness, the ice, the death, the hopelessness of indifference!

NOT SAVED.

"The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved."JEREMIAH viii. 20.

SALVATION means deliverance. The essence

of the salvation revealed to us in the Gospel is our deliverance from sin, by the bestowal of holiness. It is our deliverance from ignorance of God and enmity to God, by the possession of that true knowledge of God which is itself love and life eternal.

Jesus Christ himself has taught us what that lost and ruined state of ours is, which renders salvation necessary; what God has done through Him to obtain salvation for us, and to impart it to us, for it is the gift of God; and what must be done in us and by us through his Spirit in order to our working out our own salvation with fear and trembling.

Every view therefore of salvation is false or

inadequate which does not include in it the being "renewed in the spirit of our mind," and "made conformable to the image" of Jesus Christ. Salvation from the guilt of sin, by its free and full forgiveness through the blood of the cross, is inseparable in the scheme of redemption from salvation from the power of sin as a principle of evil, which is life in self, and alienation from "the life of God." God will not forgive us freely by His grace unless we repent and have faith in Jesus; but repentance implies a change of mind. towards God from believing in His mercy to lost sinners as revealed in Christ, and a consequent giving up of sin, with a full purpose and endeavour after new obedience; and true faith implies trust in God himself, in the excellence of His character, the righteousness of His will, and the truth of His word. Hence true repentance and faith are the germs of a new life, which, because it is the only true life, is a life everlasting. Though we are at once reconciled to God by simple faith in His love to us in Jesus, this very reconciliation is itself salvation, for it is peace, friendship, and love. Though we are saved by the righteousness of Christ, yet that righteousness is imparted to us that

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