THE GIRDLE OF TRUTH. ' Stand, therefore, having your loina girt about with, truth."—Eph. vi. VOL. V[. LONDON: G. MOEEISH, 24, WARWICK LANE, PATKUNOSIEK BOW. 1862. PB1NTBD BY C. MORBISH, 24, WARWICK I-ANE, PATERNOSTER ROW. CONTENTS. PAGE. A SERIES No. 1. The Condition of Man by Nature 289 2. Regeneration and its Character¬ istics 339 3. Adoption or Sonship ... 353 Aphorisms ... ... ... ... ... 349 Charity (1 Corinthians xiii.) 33 Communion... ... ... ... ... 129 Divine Intercourse ... ... ... 161 Divine Remedy for Earthly Hindrances and Discouragements ... ... ... 1 Extract 160 Fragments 29, 125, 158, 192, 318 God's Instruments for bringing His People through the Wilderness 47 Heaven ... ... ... ... ... 76 How the Believer is made Superior to Everything ... ... ... ... 19 How the Understanding is Enlightened ... 172 Intimacy with the Lord ... ... 182 IV CONTENTS. Notes on Psalm i ... 286,376 Notes on Revelation iv. ... ... 314 Peter 321 Philippians ii,, iii., J. N. D 300 POETBY The Golden Word 32 The Watchers 127 Our Hope 191 1 Corinthians xiii. 12 223 Farewell to Life .. 224 Desire ... 288 One thing I do 319 Retribution, Chastening, and Purging... 65 Sanctificatiou 202 The Assembly at Corinth and the Apostle Paul—a Contrast 362 The Law 97 The Path of Life 193 The Pre-eminence of Christ 273 The Resurrection 236 The Resurrection (continued) ... ... 257 The Success of Faith 225 The Walk of a Believer 140 The Walk of Faith 113 THE GIRDLE OF TRUTH. DIVINE REMEDY FOR EARTHLY HINDRANCES AND DISCOURAGE¬ MENTS. " Consider the Apostle and High Prisst of onr profession, Christ Jesus." (Read Hebrews i.—iii. 1—4.) THERE is only one divine way of raising the hearts of the children of God above the depressions that arise from the cir¬ cumstances of trial and sorrow, which are the necessary accompaniments of their journey through this world. It is to have their thoughts filled with Christ; or, as the apostle expresses it in Ephe- sians, (iii. 17,) " to have Christ dwelling in their hearts by faith." This changes the aspect of everything. The Hebrews were discouraged in their course through its varied trials VOL. VI. A Z THE GIRDLE OP TRUTH. and difficulties, and needed to be stimu¬ lated to a " patient continuance in well doing," that they might become " fol¬ lowers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises." This is the practical bearing of the whole epistle; and is the occasion of its being designated, in its entireness, by the apostle, " the word of exhortation." (Chap. xiii. 22.) • Wonderful are its disclosures of the glory of Christ—of His person, His offices, His work—bvit wonderful and far-reaching as they are, they are, in their practical bearing, but the revela¬ tions of a God of grace to tried and beleaguered hearts, as a resource against the trials and exercises of their course. They are the basis of the exhorta¬ tions, and warnings, and encouragements, with which the epistle abounds, and which are designed in their effect to sustain the Hebrews in the position to which they had been introduced by grace and by a reception of the testi¬ mony of Christ. They had become, through Christ, " partakers of the EARTHLY HINDRANCES, ETC. 6 heavenly calling," and they needed sns- tainment against all that was contrary to it in their earthly path. They needed more, it is true. They needed to be raised, in faith and in soul, to the true apprehension of their calling in Christ Jesus; but then this, in its reflex, of necessity acted on their practical position, in detaching them from every claim of Judaism, and in raising them above the trials and temptations of the world by the moral leverage of an object of trust and confidence, and by resources of grace and help, without a limit and without a question, out of the world. They might have been exhorted on many grounds to patience under trials, and difficulties, and discouragements; but, in having the thoughts thus filled with Christ, they at once find the power of the displacement of them all. For what is it, I may ask, that occu¬ pies the two chapters of this epistle, of which this exhortation, " Consider the Apostle and High Priest of our pro¬ fession, Christ Jesus," forms the brief summing up? It is the glory of the 4 THE GIUDLE OF TRUTH. person of Christ. Bat how is this glory, in which we have so deep a stake and interest, and which is the only divine formative power of our hearts and hopes, our lives and characters, pre¬ sented? I know not how to speak of it. But as my eye rests on these heavenly pages—where I pray my reader to let his for a moment rest—I see this glory unfold and expand until the whole sphere of heaven and earth is imbathed with the brightness of its heavenly light. In the hands of God's Spirit it glows, and brightens, and extends, until time past, time present, and time future, with all eternity to boot, stand out gilded and irradiated with its wondrous beams! But there is no power in the thoughts of man, in his witless imagin¬ ings, to rise to the height of the glory of Christ! It is only by the rising of the sun itself that we can discover its glorious light! If I listen to the exhortation, " Con¬ sider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus," it is to no excogitation of tlie mind that I am EARTHLY HINDRANCES, ETC. 5 called; but with a reverent heart to con¬ template, as they are disclosed by the lightof a divine revelation, the lineaments of Him who, as " the word made flesh," is the central sun of the Christian system. Here I behold a divine Person, so truly man that the affections of the human heart can lay hold upon Him; and so truly God, that the mind through faith, can at all times and in all places be brought into direct contact with Him. Christ, the divine Man, is the great at¬ tractive centre — the sole gravitating point of a system which owes to Him all its coherence, and which would be but a chaos were He away. In " the Apostle and High Priest of our profession," it is true our thoughts are directed to the offices which the Lord sustains. But it must be remembered that his official glory hangs on the glory of His person as divine. His offices owe their proper dignity to Him by whom they are borne, and the value of His work results from the value of the person by whom it was accomplished. What he is imparts its character to what he does. 6 THE G1KDLB OF TBUTH. The bearing and importance of His offices are fully unfolded in the subse¬ quent parts of the epistle, but in these chapters (chap, i., ii.) His full personal glory is brought out. This, however, is taken up from the opposite point to that in the Gospel or the Epistle of John. It is not a state¬ ment of what He was from eternity, before He was manifested in time—what He was " In the beginning with God," before He was " the word made flesh and dwelt among us." He is here pre¬ sented simply as the continuator of God's communications to Israel, as of old time He had spoken to " the fathers by the prophets." He now in these last days has spoken to us by his Son, or, " in the Son." Having thus introduced Messiah as " the Son," he of necessity supersedes every other, inasmuch as His dignity and claims are paramount. As " the Son" He is at once presented to us as " heir of all things"—Lord and Possessor of that boundless universe which displays the wisdom and the eter¬ nal power of God. But this presents EARTHLY HINDRANCES, ETC. 7 Him only in the position of imparted glory. He is " appointed heir of all things." To this heirship and dominion He accedes through worthiness and humiliation and death; however His claims to it are based on the deep foundation that creation, in its widest extent, with all its suns and systems, its order and harmony, reaching out to the vast abysses of worlds and systems yet unexplored, owes its existence to that Messiah—" the Son"—by whom God was now speaking to the Hebrews! It is what He was that gives the only adequate foundation for what he was constituted. The mystery of His person must be known in order to understand the pos¬ sibility of His being the holder of these dignities. This is taken up in verse 3 and is expressed in a few brief words, which seem to dazzle by their brightness and overwhelm by their illimitable force. " By whom also he made the worlds ; who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, and upholding1 all things by the word of 8 THE GIEDLE OF TRUTH. his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high." This is the condensed statement of what is un¬ folded in the remaining parts of the chapter. Beyond it no statement can go; but confirmation of its various parts is now to be drawn from those testi¬ monies which of old had been recognized by the Jews as the oracles of God. " God had spoken"—the Hebrews ad¬ mitted it—" to the fathers by the pro¬ phets," and now these declarations are given in attestation of the claims of Messiah and of His proper glory.