resistance of the Holy Ghost by man, to the niggard bestowal of God. They deny the doctrine of the Anointed One, the doctrine of Christ come in the flesh-that is, of our flesh in the Son-anointed to the praise and inheritance of God, which denial is Antichrist (2 John 7, 9; Rev. xii. 10). They deny the teaching of the Holy Ghost as an indwelling Person. They mock at increase of wisdom beyond the routine of solemn and sounding traditions. They almost gnash their teeth at any one who will confess that he hath verily got an understanding to know Him that is true; that he hath a certainty of the Spirit, which is an anchor to him and a condemnation to men; and not a mere opinion, which every man may entertain with impunity for himself. Alas! they who say that men now know by the devil's teaching so much of God as not to need the helps of weaker ages, do now begin to blaspheme the mighty works by which our gracious God shews himself, as of old, a living God, and not that congeries of theological abstractions which our churchmen have made him; and a present God, notwithstanding all that men have done to remove him to such a distance as will permit those who love him not to praise him, those who hate him not to fear him, and those who trust him not to pray to him without the fear of being startled by really getting what they ask, or being intruded on by him where they had not appointed or desired to meet him. The intellect of man, the love of the world, have made of none effect the faith of God. The prophets prophesy falsely, and the people love to have it so. They get no vision from the Lord to guide the people within the darkness; and when the burdens of the Lord arrive, they will tell of false burdens, to the people's ruin (Jer. v. 31; Lam.

ii. 9, 14).

"Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and preserve, and repent. If therefore thou watch not, I will come as a thief upon thee, and thou shalt not know what hour I shall come upon thee."-This command to remember being two-fold, is neither more nor less than a command to remember Christ in the two characters which his title reveals,-that of the quickening Spirit, and that of the Speaker from heaven. For as it is by the Holy Ghost that we receive, so it is by the preacher that we hear. And as the command to establish the dying things, is a command to be taught in the things of the kingdom; so this command to remember, is a command to acknowledge the Spirit of Christ who is the earnest of the kingdom, and the embassy from God which is the glad tidings of the kingdom. Now, was there ever a time in the Gentile dispensation when the church was at once apparently receiving so much, and forgetting so entirely how only she can receive from God; or apparently hearing so much, and so unmindful whom alone she is called to

hear? Were she receiving of the Holy Ghost, she would be receiving the Father and the Son; were she receiving of the Spirit of the Christ, she would be glorifying the Father through him, in the power of his Christhood, or anointing. But she receives from man, from books, from education, from circumstances, from money, from influence, from reputation, from the ties of the natural, not of the spiritual being; these be her gods, these her fountains of life. These may teach forms, and doctrines, and systems, and points of theology, but they can never teach us God. Except we learn Christ, we learn nothing, for he alone is the image of the true God: God is never witnessed of but in him. Except we learn him by the Holy Ghost, whether in the sun and rain, or in the preached or in the written word, or in the testimony of the saints, we learn him not in the least. The word is the sword of the Spirit, but the Spirit is the teacher. There is neither truth nor breath of life in any intervening idol, be it as refined, as religious, as it may. It is life to know God; it is death to know merely about him. It is in beholding God, and not propositions, that we acquire his image. Were the church hearing Christ, would she hear as she does? Does she take heed how she hears, and know how every hearing heaps up a reckoning. Would she criticise Christ, would she spurn Christ, would she worship the messenger; would she be persuaded by the accents, overborne by the arguments, won by the natural amiableness, moved by the appliances, of the instrument, and not constrained by the commended truth and love in demonstration of the Holy Ghost? In short, would she receive any thing as truth though all men commended it, or reject any thing as untruth though all men blasphemed it; would she ever dream that men could make truth, or that Christ the only truth could ever be received or rejected, without receiving or rejecting Christ the only life? Oh that God would tear from before the eyes of men this fast-thickening veil of delusion; that he would crucify, and raise to resurrection life and power, all their faculties and all their acquirements; and teach them that doctrine means nothing but the knowledge of God, and that every part of the most complete and orthodox theology is an absolute lie of Satan, unless we can say of it that it likens us to the Father's well-beloved Son and Servant and King. So receiving and hearing, we should preserve what we received and heard; the seed of God would abide in us; we should lay up these things in our hearts, for they would sink into our ears; we should observe the law which we loved, and not fail in the testimony of our blessed Jesus; and by the Holy Ghost, who slayeth and maketh alive at every instant the temples of the living God, and so denies at once the repeal and the hopelessness of the law, we should be ever turned, not from

Satan to Satan, but from Satan to God; ever repenting, or evincing God's aversion from sin, in a sort not to be again turned from or repented of. But if Sardis will not watch she must just be overtaken by the Son of Man, who will come to judge all men, be they confident or confounded at his appearing; she will be unable to gather herself up for the Bridegroom; having refused to know when he is near; having scoffed at understanding; having smiled at God's call to take heed to the word of prophecy, the sure light, and taken heed to every lie of men or devils, false lights of hell, concerning the future; having said, I know not the hour, therefore I will neither watch nor be ready. O blind church! wilt thou then be suddenly come upon by thine own offended, long-enduring, blood-redeeming Lord, the Lamb who bought thee? I put it to every man, woman, and child, Wouldst thou be ready, thou foolish virgin, did the Lord come this night, to break up this world's peace of death, and all the self-complacent arrangements of a reposing church, amid the judgments of the jealous God? Whether wouldst thou be the woman left, or the woman taken? whether wouldst thou sing, or wail? Thou unready bride, thou joyous widow, thou gorgeous poor one, thou contented mourner, thou snugly established pilgrim, thou unreproached witness for the reproached One, thou saver of thy life, beware! thou knowest not the hour. Thou must be well furnished indeed for the judgment of the quick and dead, to care so little for it. How canst thou hope for what thou never desirest or deignest to think of? how canst thou wait for what thou hopest not? how canst thou be faithful, and not wait for the Son from heaven?

"Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk about with me in white (garments), because they are meet. He that overcometh, the same shall be invested in white garments; and I will not expunge his name out of the book of life, and I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels."-We have here presented to us, by the Spirit of God, the character and circumstances of the righteous in the church of Sardis; and two remarkable promises-the one addressed to these persons in particular, the other addressed generally, as in the other epistles, "to him that overcometh." The expressions, "even in Sardis, and "( not defiled," convey a very solemn lesson to us not to judge according to the appearance; inasmuch as it informs us, not merely that God sees death in what men are now esteeming a reputation of life; but that (as it must always be in such circumstances) he sees all defilement in the current reputation of the church purity. Even we do see that defilement now and then laid bare, in spite of the dark folds of hypocrisy which shroud it, not merely from the world, but, I honestly believe, in

many cases from the men themselves, for they are deceived. But if we saw as God sees, what should we not behold, as the fruit of a praise-coveting church, and of pledges to Christian deportment which come not from the abundance of the heart, and therefore are never without hypocrisy redeemed! And in that day when hidden things shall come to light, oh what a drawing nigh with the lip, what a diplomacy without the seal of the King, what building without a foundation, what foliage and blossom without root or fruit, what a fearful eradication of life unto God by life before men, what an awful immolation of sacred honesty of heart and tender conscience before an honest God, at the altar of that idol called Christian Consistency, shall actually, aye, and very speedily too, be exposed, without a shred to cover them, under the sentence of Him who now regards without a fiction, and will ere long judge things and men exactly as he shall find them! Oh what a conscience-searing thing is it for a man to profess for God any doctrine which likens him not to Christ, which makes him not alive; or at any time to speak or act but as he heareth or as he regardeth the living God! Bad, very bad it is, that at any time we should not have it to say, in the spirit of adoption and with the confidence of truth's children, We are first-born, and heirs of God, washed in the blood of the Lamb: but worse, far worse, to say it in the flesh, merely because it is expected that we should, because we have pledged ourselves to say it again by saying it in time past. Out of the heart's abundance alone ought the mouth to speak.—Now this morbid condition of the church of Sardis seems to me to be the reason why the persons of the faithful, who remain even in her, are called names. The name is that by which the person is known, marked out, or signalized. For instance, the name of Sardis that she is alive, means her life being that by which she is characterized or known. A similar explanation may be given of the names of men, Rev. xi. 13; of the name of the beast, xiii. 17; of the names of blasphemy, xvii. 3; of the new name, ii. 17; and, lastly, of the resurrection name of Christ, more excellent by inheritance than those of angels (Heb. i. 4), and surpassing every name that is named, in this age or the age to come (Phil. ii. 9; Eph. i. 21). In like manner, the church of Sardis, professing to receive from men ; and to hear from man; bartering away Christ at every turn for a little religious notoriety; unskilful to discern the wickedness of sin in the light of God's love; untaught to take fellowship of travail, mourning, and reproach with the Man of Sorrows; unsympathising with God in his kindness to the unthankful, in his patient bearing towards all; loving nothing better than to find common ground on which to labour with the wicked in dubious enterprises; marrying the sons of God to the

daughters of men; and so leagued with the things that are as to abhor the idea of looking for the things that are not, lest the world, whose friend she is, should suspect her for a foe;-this church, I say, has received her name through praise of men : and therefore the few witnesses left in her for God, being by this especially signalized, that their praise is not of men but of God, have praise of God just by watching, just by being separate, just by leaning on God, just by sitting above with Christ: and they have their names to live, not in the book of the world, which is death to God, but in the book of life, which is death to the world; owning no fountain of life but God, no manner of it but Christ's. They believe, because they seek not the honour of men, but that which cometh of God only. Well, therefore, are they here called names. And the defilement of the garments, which they are without, has an evident relation to the garments spotted with the flesh (Jude 23), and to that filthiness of flesh and spirit from which we are called to cleanse ourselves. As it is by contemplation of the promises of God that we are so to cleanse ourselves; and as it is in keeping our garments that we shew forth our watchfulness and godliness (Rev. xvi. 15; xiv.4); so it is by doing that which the angel of Sardis would not do-by watching through knowledge of the word and the times-that these persons keep their garments clean, meet as the apparel of the kingdom of heaven, into which shall enter nothing that defileth, and nothing not clothed with Christ put on.

Of the two promises which follow, the one (addressed to the undefiled ones) regards the age that is now; the other (addressed to him who has finished the contest), the age that is to come. The former I conceive to regard that walking about with Christ, which, in this world, corresponds to the walking of Enoch with God in the world before the Flood; following the Lamb as virgins, daily washing in his blood, whithersoever he goeth; being one with him in mind, as men have never been before since the Apostles; being one with him in work, shewing forth at once his praise, his love, his power, and his travail, in a manner seldom witnessed; having the signs of Christ, the sign spoken against, wrought in us with all patience; the testimony of Jesus coming from us in the pureness of the Holy Ghost; the coming Lord and his myriads being our constant theme of joy, and our strong argument of endurance ;-peradventure (for I here speak not decidedly) the execution of judgment with Christ being in the course of this walking, as it certainly shall be at length, our portion. Here, then, is a promise of grace added unto grace; of the reward which stands in the keeping of God's commandments; of the gift to him that hath. And it is illustrated yet more by the reason, "for they are meet;" which just imports, that they who have most kept themselves unto God are the vessels in whom