HIGHWAY and can realize no further blessing. They lose much by being contented to wait, as it were, in the lowest form of their class. There is more to learn. The Christian obtains not only pardon, but free access to God through Jesus his great High Priest. No blessings he needs can fail him, no help or grace in time of need be withheld. He who died and rose for us is now, every moment, ministering before God for us, ever living to make intercession (Heb. vii. 25). How many griefs we bear for ourselves, which, if we realized this fact, we might lay safely on our High Priest! How many graces we are content to want, which He would be ever ready to supply! What a close and precious intercourse with Him we might have every hour of our lives, if we realized the blessings of his High Priesthood! But there is more yet—a higher privilege which belongs to the believer. He is one with Christ (Eph. v. 30; John xvii.)-not simply a follower, a servant, but actually a member of his body. Christ is not only the Lamb who takes away sin; the royal Priest who makes intercession for his people, but the Head of the body (Eph. i. 20; Col. i. 22); the true Stem of the Vine (John xv. 1); the chief Corner-stone of the Temple (1 Pet. ii. 18); the Bridegroom whose Bride is bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. "His people," to use the language of the old reformer, can "stand as Christ before God; because He lives, they live. Their life is hid with Him in God. And this is not, as so many seem to think, the rare privilege of some few advanced saints, but of every true Christian— even the humblest, the weakest, the most trembling and fearful. "Ah, if I had faith to realize these truths!" exclaims some doubting Christian. But it is not any special realization of them that is asked for: it is simply to believe God's word. Remember, when you come before Him in prayer, that these privileges (not, might be, or HIGHWAY t. 1, 1862 ought to be, but) are yours; and there is no need to wait for feelings. Believe and your soul shall live! And connected with this fact of union with Christ, is the clothing of the believer with his righteousness (1 Cor. i. 30; 2 Cor. v. 21). And if so viewed, the difficulties sometimes complained of in this doctrine disappear: for it is not said that He gives us his righteousness, but that He is "the Lord our righteousness" (Jer. xxiii. 6). We are made "the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. v. 21). And it is by virtue of this union that the Christian has fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The communion may be weaker or stronger, fuller or slighter, according as the believer realizes his privileges; but the right is for all. Lastly, he is an heir of the kingdom; a "joint-heir with Christ" (Rom. viii.), even now, by virtue of his union, sitting with Him in the heavenly places (Eph. ii. 4, 6; Col. iii. 1), and with the sure and certain hope that the life now begun in his soul will extend at last to his body also, and that he will share the glory of his Lord, and reign with Him in eternal blessedness. It would be strange indeed, if the unsleeping enemy of our souls would permit the Christian to enjoy the consciousness of such wondrous privileges in peace. He who said to our first parents, "Ye shall not surely die," is now equally ready to say to the timid believer, "Ye shall not surely live." The devices are many by which he leads them to ignore or disbelieve their privileges. The most frequent, perhaps, is the error which forms the groundwork of most of the systems of corrupt Christianity—that which reduces the believer's privileges to a mere name, by making the title to them depend, not on a living faith, but on outward rites, and the membership of a visible church. When once this is granted; when baptised men and women are considered as united by virtue THE KING'S HIGHWAY,' of the outward sign, however received, to Christ, as his member, the promises to the believer become no longer those of privileges in actual possession, but pictures of what he ought to have or might have, if he reached some extraordinary degree of sanctity. The free gift becomes the reward of merit, and the blessing ends with being an empty name. But those who are too enlightened to be led away by this delusion, are still often led by the same evil tempter to dwell on some fancied deservings, or frames and feelings of their own. As has been well remarked, he would fain keep the Christian struggling outside the sanctuary, instead of entering into the holiest with boldness, as all the humblest followers of Jesus may safely do. Let us come fearlessly, in the strength of his sacrifice and intercession. The enemy dares not attack us under the shadow of that Rock! With such privileges held out to him, can the believer fear? (To be continued.) "AS THE TRUTH IS IN JESUS." "But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard Him, and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness."-Eph. iv. 20-24. EW texts of Scripture are more commonly misquoted than this one. The above clause in it being generally rendered "the truth as it is in Jesus is in this form taken to denote the body of vital truth connected with the person and work of the Lord Jesus as contrasted with any of the numerous errors commonly set forth as gospel. But it needs little examination of the passage and its context to show that no such meaning was originally intended to be derived from a clause which, holding but a subordinate place in the sentence of almost a parenthetic character, simply asserts that the lesson which they had been taught (if indeed they had been so), and which the following verse explains to be the putting off the old man and putting on the new-that this lesson sets forth no mere sentimental theory, without a substantial basis of fact, but is truth in Jesus, and therefore should show results in those who are united to Him. In other words, the putting off the old man and the putting on the new is truth in Jesus-has taken place in His person, in His death and resurrection. "Our old man was crucified with Him" (Rom. vi. 6). "Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him. For in that He died, He died unto sin once but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. vi. 9-11). Two of our principal critical commentators thus explain the passage: Ellicott says, 666 As the truth is in Jesus' implies not (as Olshausen) as truth is in Jesus,' which departs from the order, and involves a modification of the simple meaning of 'truth,' nor (as it might have been expressed) 'as is truth' abstractedly, but as is truth-in Jesus' embodied, as it were, in a personal Saviour, and in the preaching of his cross." Alford says, "So that the meaning will amount to this: if ye were taught in Him, according to that which is truth in Jesus; if you received into yourselves, when you listened to the teaching of the gospel, that which is true (respecting you and Him) in your union with, and life in, Jesus, the Son of God manifested in the flesh." H.E. B. THE KING'S HIGHWAY," NOTES IN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL BY JOHN.-X. BY THE REV. JOHN EDMOND, D.D. "Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven." -John iii. 7-13. HE first of these verses may be connected with the preceding, or with the following context. If with the foregoing, the meaning will be thus: seeing that the flesh and spirit are so opposed, and that men by birth into the earthly life have only flesh, let it be no matter of surprise, that to spiritual vitality, a new birth is indispensable. If, as perhaps is the preferable connexion, we join the saying "Marvel not" with what succeeds, the force of the expression may be thus brought out. Let not the doctrine of the new birth be rejected for its wonder; start not at the truth announced, because all about it cannot be made patent to human apprehension; nature has its agencies that are baffling to knowledge, as well as grace. The wind, with its hidden history and operations, may teach a man to believe, though he may be unable to comprehend, the duly-attested wonders of God's work on the souls of men. Taking this as the probable connexion of the seventh verse, let the emphasis given to the great doctrine of the passage by the renewed repetition of it be observed. A third time our Lord declares this immovable "must." "I said to thee," and again say it. Even to Nicodemus it needs to be spoken-"to thee." But not for him alone |