But when I got lower in bodily strength, for I could not stand, all I could say was, "Precious affliction! Sweet affliction! for I have been with Jesus on the brink of eternity, and proved my religion is not afraid of facing death. I have a heaven to go to when my days are numbered."

The hæmorrhage has now ceased, and I hope I am improving fast. I get up now, and am to take a walk out when the days are fine. If all be well, I hope to preach on the fourth Lord's day in this month.

The Lord knows we love his Person. Your religion will do to die by; and so will your sister's; for yours is the same as mine. The Lord bless you both, and all friends. Remember me to them. I feel I cannot write more at present.

Yours in the Love of the Truth,

Red Hill, April 11th, 1877.

INQUIRIES AND ANSWERS.

J. HATTON.

giving

Dear Mr. Editor,-Could you find an opportunity for me some little explanation of Ezek. xviii. 30-32 ? want to have a reconciliation between the passages alluded to and Christ's teaching in Jno. vi. 37, 39, 65, and many similar portions. I do firmly believe that none can come unto God except those whom the Spirit of God brings; so giving glory where it is due. It was mainly through reading your articles in the "G. S." that I have been brought to see the doctrine which I have for so many years opposed with all my might,-viz., the election of grace. But O! how sweet is it now to me to think that one so unworthy should have been so highly favoured! It really seems too good; but, no, bless the dear Saviour, it is his fulness which is my joy. I have many who oppose me, indeed shun me, and count me unworthy their fellowship, and have excluded me from their church, a General Baptist one. But another has opened its door, where I find experimental truth and good spiritual food, which I through grace do love.

April 10th, 1879.

REPLY.

Yours faithfully,

J. R.

We regret that a variety of causes has hindered us in replying to your inquiry. We will now endeavour, with the Lord's help, to throw out a few hints which may enable you to overcome the difficulties suggested to your mind, not only by the passage you mention, but many others of a kindred nature. Such portions appear to your mind to be hardly consistent with other parts of the Word of God, and those views of free grace which you have been led to embrace and delight in.

In the first place, we would make a remark or two. We are far better pleased when we find in the Lord's people a tender conscientiousness in dealing with such passages than when we observe in them a daring readiness to do violence to the words

of God, and to wrest them into a sense agreeable to their preconceived opinions. The Word of God should always be handled reverentially and with prayer. There is a meekness of wisdom, an openness to receive what God really speaks in his Scriptures, which is exceedingly desirable, indeed, essential to a real understanding of God's Word. Thus James exhorts to "receive with meekness the engrafted word." And Mr. Hart wisely says,

"Better's a babe that would be wise,

Than those who mind high things."

A hard and haughty heart and unhumbled intellect are dangerous commentators upon the Bible. An irreverential and thoughtless mind will see no difficulties in passages, where one that is tender and thoughtful may see many. Such a tender mind, too, not being able to solve these passages satisfactorily, or to wrest God's words daringly, may for a time be kept in a state of some suspense. A Book inspired by the Spirit of God must have many depths and difficulties to such as we are. Our wisdom, then, is to wait upon the divine Teacher himself with prayer and in patience.

We write in this manner because we really approve of the state of mind which your letter indicates. Besides this, we would not have you or others suppose that we pretend to have wisdom, knowledge, or skill sufficient to properly explain all the words of God. Far from it. We daily feel our extreme ignorance and sad stupidity.

We may here say that a method Dr. Gill takes in his "Cause of God and Truth" is satisfactory, so far as stilling opponents of the truth goes, when they bring forward passages having an apparent freewill signification. He very judiciously points out again and again that such passages by no means necessarily bear any such signification; but shows that they are perfectly susceptible at any rate of different interpretations, and of such as are consistent with the views of free grace. This may perhaps prove a useful hint to some who, having to contend for the truth against gainsayers, may not feel equal to giving the real mind and meaning of God in certain passages. They may at any rate reply, "Though we are not sufficiently skilful to say what such a portion exactly means, we can readily see that it by no means necessarily means what you say it does; but is easily susceptible of quite a different interpretation."

But now to the particular portion which you want explained and reconciled. We must here, then, remind you of one great truth. When God commands and exhorts in the Word, it by no means necessarily implies ability in the persons commanded or exhorted to comply by any power of their own with the command and exhortation. The exhortation is designed for a very different end to that of leading a man to suppose he has some capability inherent in him of complying with it. It is designed to show what is the will of God, and what is just, right, and desirable. It is designed to reveal to a man and convince him of his deficiency

and misery. It is designed to lead him, under a sense of his sin and misery, and the excellency of the things exhorted, unto, earnestly to desire them. It is designed thus to humble a man, lay him low in the dust, and lead him to cry unto the Lord to give him those things which God commands and exhorts him to have or do. So it is in the passage which perplexes you, through its apparently implying some inherent capability in those addressed of doing the things spoken of. But the reverse of such implication is really, as we understand it, the case. The passage implies what a deplorable state of things existed in Israel, and is designed to awaken the minds of those addressed to a consciousness of that state, and to lead them to seek to the Lord for that repentance, and newness of heart, spirit, and way which were needed to avert from them impending calamities.

But, looking a little further at the passage, we see that it, as well as numerous others of a like nature, may be considered in two ways.

1. As addressed to the nation and people of Israel literally. 2. As applicable to the people of God in all ages.

Now, if we view the words as they are addressed to the literal Israel, we must remember the peculiar position that people held in those Old Testament times. Lose sight of this, and we are almost certain to err in interpreting the Old Testament Scriptures, and shall be liable to make numberless mistakes. The Israelites were a people separated from all others to be both a nation and a church unto God. In that people we see a real national church. God therefore gave to them by the hand of Moses both laws and institutions; laws for their government as a nation, institutions of divine worship as a church. Attached to these laws and institutions were promises and threatenings of a temporal nature. Such were the promises of life and blessings in the land of Canaan; and, on the other hand, the threatenings of terrible temporal adversities. In all these things, no doubt, the Lord had a respect to his plan of salvation in Christ; it being of the utmost importance in reference to that plan that the Israelites should be preserved as a separate and peculiar people, distinct from the nations round about them. God therefore from time to time sent the prophets to call them back again from national departures from him and idolatry. Bearing in mind, then, what we have already said about the design of exhortations generally, and the peculiar position of the children of Israel, we can easily understand the meaning of Ezekiel in the passage before us. It is in no way in opposition to the doctrine of man's utterly ruined state, his inability to do what is really good, and to the truths of free grace.

If, on the other hand, we view the prophet's words as appli cable to the Lord's people in all ages-and we by no means deny this to be the case-we see how in experience the life of comfort, and peace, and soul-prosperity in a child of God may be killed by an indulgence in those things which are displeasing to God,

grieve the Holy Spirit, and are opposed to that life. Thus, if we live after the flesh, we shall die; and he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. On the contrary, if we sow to the Spirit, we shall of the Spirit reap everlasting life; and if we through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, we shall live. Hence the Scripture abounds in exhortations and preceptive words, showing God's people how they should walk and please God. (1 Thess. iv. 1.)

Now, as we have already written, these words of exhortation do not for a moment imply creature ability. No! they reveal creature ruin, misery, wretchedness, inability; but, then, they show what is right, and, in the hand of the Holy Spirit, lead the true children of God to look unto the Lord to accomplish these things in them. Thus the wise in heart receive commandments, for it is God that worketh in them both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

Dear Sir,My chief object in writing to you is to ask you to kindly give your views on the following important subject in the "Gospel Standard" at as early a period as convenient.

A friend of mine, a God-fearing man, calls the blood of Christ the blood of God, really and truly so; and says that his human nature was made in all points equal to his divine nature; the first idea being grounded on Acts xx. 28; the second on Phil. ii. 6.

These errors have naturally led him into others of a very serious nature, too many and too long to trouble you with; for when man begins to build with error, he has to gather much more of the same material to prop the building up.

I have also found others of God's living family very much in a fog about this important subject, and should therefore be glad to see the matter dealt with in a scripural way.

main, Dear Sir,

Yours sincerely in the path of tribulation,

I re

J. W.

REPLY.

Your friend seems to be treading in very dangerous steps. Deity, abstractedly considered, can have no blood to shed; for God is a spirit; and nothing but God can really be equal with God. These are simple principles of truth, which we should have supposed God's people would for the most part have been acquainted with. But truly we are, in and of ourselves, poor ignorant erring creatures, and it becomes us to do what we can to convert an erring brother from the error of his way. It does not become us to judge harshly or deal untenderly, but to consider ourselves, lest we also be tempted.

Perhaps the best way of replying to yours, and meeting the case, will be simply to set forth the truth in a sober scriptural way. We suppose your friend holds firmly and properly the doc

trine of the Trinity,-viz., that there is One JEHOVAH, or One Divine Essence; and that there are Three Co-equal Co-eternal Persons in that one Divine Essence,-God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. This Name JEHOVAH distinguishes God from all creatures; and we are bidden to sanctify the Lord God in our hearts; which we do not unless we separate God in respect to his Divine Essence and perfections from everything which is created by him.

Now a due consideration of the Unity of the Divine Essence and of the incommunicable Name of JEHOVAH will at once show the incorrectness and dangerous nature of your friend's views as to the human nature of Christ being made in all respects equal to his Divine. Such views might easily lead on to a denial of the proper Essential Deity of the Son of God. As your friend well knows, the Second Person in the glorious Trinity, God the Son, took upon him, into union with his Divine Person as the Son of God, proper human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary; according to the word in the 40th Psalm: "A body hast thou prepared me." Now, this human nature of the Lord Jesus is a created nature, and consequently cannot possibly be in itself equal with that which is properly and essentially divine. It partook not of the Divine Essence and incommunicable perfections of JEHOVAH, though so infinitely glorified in its union to the Person of the Son of God.

But how can the blood of Christ, then, be called the blood of God? Why, the Son of God, having assumed human nature into union with his Divine Person, God and man became one Christ. We have to distinguish here most carefully the two natures, the Deity and humanity, and not to confound the two, or suppose that the Deity became flesh, or the humanity properly divine, or of the Divine Essence; but, at the same time, we have as carefully to remember the unity of the Person, and that we have not in Christ to do with two persons, a God and a man, as if separate persons; but a God-man, or God and Man in one Person, as one Christ. Thus, whilst escaping from the unwise and dangerous thoughts that the human nature of Christ was equal to the divine, or the blood of Christ the blood of Deity or the Godhead, we see how properly it is called the blood of God, and the blood of God's own Son. The blessed Lord Jesus did not become less a Person in the glorious Godhead, or less the Son of God, as to his Divine Person, by the assuming of his human nature into union with his Divine Person; therefore what could be properly affirmed of him, abstractedly considered as God and the Son of God, can also be properly affirmed of him as it respects his complex Person. In respect to his Divine Person, he was, is, and ever shall be, God; in respect of his complex Person, therefore, he is to be regarded as God. In respect to his Divine Person he was, and is, and ever shall be the Son of God; in respect to his complex Person, therefore, he is to be looked upon as the Son of God. Thus we can say that that blessed One who sojourned upon earth, and had not