"the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit." Thus all which our Lord has done, and is doing for us, including His life on earth, atoning death, burial, resurrection, and life in heaven, are in order that He might "save His people from their sins," and that they might, on earth, share His own life, and crucify the flesh, and bury the old man, and rise with Him to newness of life, and even now be "partakers of the glory which is to be revealed." From first to last Jesus is our only Saviour; and to be saved we must, from first to last, live by faith in Him. "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us, that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." (Titus ii. 11-14.)

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* In the light of this teaching, I would wish you to read in private such passages of Scripture as Christ's Sermon on the Mount, the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and the First Epistle of St. John.

Salvation therefore is not a blessing which we get for the first time when we die, as a reward for our being good here. We possess it now or never. It implies not only our being delivered from punishment in another world, but our being delivered from that evil which brings misery and punishment in this world as well as in the other. It is not happiness, but the only condition of happiness.

You will now understand that we are in this present world either saved or not saved. We are at this moment either reconciled to God and loving Him, or at enmity to Him. There is no middle ground between the two kingdoms of light and darkness, life and death, the right and the wrong state of being towards God. It is quite true, that not until the last judgment is the whole man, body and soul, for ever lost or for ever saved; but still, it is here we must be reconciled to God, or remain condemned. It is here we must be born again and become holy, or remain under the power of an evil heart.

Now to every man, who knows that he has a soul to be saved, that he must live for ever, and be for ever with God or without Him-what question can be more important than this:-Am I saved

or not? If death came this evening to me, should I be found a man saved, or a man not saved? But it is possible, that no sooner is this question suggested for serious consideration, than some one says in his heart, "It is without doubt important, and may be easily put, but how can it be satisfactorily answered? Who but God, the Omniscient, knows those who are saved? For however plausible our reasonings or conjectures on the subject may be, still they are but the reasonings of fallible men, and can be of no value in determining a question, which is after all better left alone."

Now I wish you to consider, that though we may not be able to say with certainty of any one man in the world that he is saved, we may nevertheless be able to say with absolute certainty of many, that they are as yet not saved. When looking, for instance, at a multitude of human beings, we might not be able to affirm with certainty of any one of them, that he was in health, yet we might be able to say with certainty of many that they were not in health. That man who looks so robust and strong, appears to be well, and may in fact be so; though it is quite possible that a deadly disease may be lurking in his system, which

may speedily lay him in the grave. All we can say with certainty of such a person is, that he appears to be in health, and that, for aught we know, he is so. In his case we may be mistaken. But we cannot be mistaken in the case of this man with the palsied step and feeble body, or with the pale cheek and hectic flush. He is certainly not in health. Appearances of good health may deceive us; but in such evidences of bad health we cannot be deceived.

So it is with the state of the soul. We may, in many cases, be deceived by apparent evidences of piety, but we cannot by undoubted evidences of impiety. Here, for example, is a man whom we have long known; and the more we have become acquainted with him, the more we have had fellowship with him in public and private-so much the more has the conviction grown upon us, that he is a God-fearing, sincere Christian-or, in other words, that he is saved from the power of evil and is living to God. Yet it is possible that in his case we may have been deceived. But here is another man who does not even profess to believe in God or in Christ. He openly blasphemes Christ's holy name, ridicules his words, and knowingly rejects Him as the Saviour of Sinners. That man is certainly not saved.

Here too is one who professes to believe: he goes to church, outwardly joins in its worship; perhaps partakes of the Sacrament, and makes a great profession as a Christian. a Christian. But then, with all this profession, he is known in the marketplace to be a dishonest man, or he is given to habitual lying, or drinking, or cruelty, or bad passion, or uncleanness. He is a bad husband, or a bad father, or a bad master; he is, in short, a "worker of iniquity;" and he is certainly not saved. In all such cases there is either the presence of some positive habitual vice which is the sure mark of want of true Christian principle, or the absence of some good which is never wanting in Christians; and this warrants us in saying of such that they are not saved. Far be it from us to insinuate, that such cannot be saved; all we say of them is, that they are not saved yet.

But instead of applying this principle of examination to others, we may apply it much more easily to ourselves. We have seen how truly we may discover the danger of many around us, whose defects are apparent, and whose disease is visible to every eye. These defects, however, must be apparent before we are warranted in concluding that

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