REMARKS ON THE LIVING GOD, AND
HIS CHURCH.

"House of God, which is the church of the Living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."-" If the Foundations be destroyed, what can the Righteous do?"

BRETHREN BELOVED,-We were "turned from idols, to serve the living and true God; and to wait for His Son from heaven." Mark it, serve; surely subjection to, and accordance of conduct with, the mind of the party served is involved in that word "serve." And, while (blessed be His name!) He has given us in the Scripture the alone perfect standard of His will-still it is the Living God we serve. The Book guides us, or would guide us, if read and understood, not to the fulfilment merely of certain duties and things, as in our own circumstances down here; but it would lift up our heads as serving Him, the living and true God, and waiting for His Son from

heaven.

The Bible is not its own power; neither does its power consist in its suitability merely to convict the thoughts and affections of man-for in the long night of Romanism there was the Bible; and in Protestant schools the Bible is learnt by rote; and what the benefit as to salvation or obedience? None; without the power of the Spirit, through faith in Christ Jesus. Romanist and Protestant may alike have had the oracles of God committed to them-and the one may have buried it in a napkin; and the other have exposed it to sale in the emporium of the world's merchandize. Both were the channel through which Scripture came down to the present day: they differed not as to being preservers of it, though they differed in the use made of it. The one used it as too sacred a thing for man's eye-in fact, saying God had no right to be heard in the streets of this world's city; or at best, that it was not His pleasure His word should be heard by all. This was Satan's act. For God's title and pleasure is to speak before all men now-that which will be the ground of all men's judgment at the great white

throne. And, moreover, this same word is the instrument of life to them that believe-the detector of the usurpation by Satan in God's world, and the keen test of flesh and worldliness. Still, there the word was; and whether in the Vatican, or on the shelves of the monastery, its unsoiled neglected pages, had no more tongue to speak the burden, joyous or awful, which they contained, than its soiled pages-frequented where fables of the virgin and the saints were traced upon, and illumined its once fair face-present to the eye of man what God had written.

The Reformation was not the gift by God to man of Scripture or its contents; that existed with all its suitability to man before. The Reformation was the Lord moving, in the great grace of God, by His Spirit, through the word on the conscience. The movement was from above-neither from below, as the Romanist thought, nor from on earth, as too many of us have unbelievingly admitted. The living God gave fresh power, in vindication of His own name and grace. And the Spirit— testifying still to Jesus, Lord of all-gave its tongue and voice to the word. God was with it, in the vessels he had afore prepared for the work; and whether in quickening, throwing light upon the path to glory, and upon those that travelled in it; or convicting, and discovering Satan, with his slaves on their downward march of rebellion towards hell-it was the Holy Ghost who was the power of understanding, and proclamation, and application of the word.

It is one thing to be blessed-another to define what the blessing is, and how it comes. I believe (let others judge what I say) that Protestantism, as such, had for its distinctive peculiarity, not the preservation of the scripture (others were before it in that, and it only took, with them, its place), but what was in it distinctive-was more the recognition of the object of the divine mind in giving scripture that he had not given a book to be wrapped up in a napkin, but given one to be read, marked, and learnt as inseparably connected with His own glory and with the destinies of Satan, earth, and man; of man whether looked at corporately as Jew, Gentile, or the church of God-or individually, as one's

own little self. Many Protestant axioms seem altogether wrong-thus, objectively, "The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible" (true, if used with regard to the question of a standard) is most false if it would make "the Bible its own interpreter," and shut out thereby the blessed Spirit: and again, subjectively, "the right of private judgment," which is the Protestant parent of the Nonconformist "liberty of conscience," is not true. Parent and child are both spotted with spots of self-will and human right. Now, I say, I know of no right I have, as a private individual, save to a place in hell-fire-no liberty, as such, save to go thither. I do not mean to condemn those who, in their inaccuracy, may use these phrases to express better things; but they are bad raiment good as the things meant to be clothed in them may be-"God is pleased and has a right to speak, and man is bound, at the peril of damnation or (if already saved, of) favour, to listen," is the more correct wording of the thought meant to be conveyed.

Scripture in hand-diligent in study-what is my safeguard as to understanding it? My own competency? Its suitability to what is in me and around, which is most divinely true? O no. For if it were so I should, instead of the sincere milk of the word, find in its best parts gall. As no one knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a man which is in him, so no man knoweth the things of God save the Spirit of God. Let man humbly take the place of subjection, and God will not deny himself-the Spirit never fails to honour the Lord Jesus; and it is written, If any man will do his will, He shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God. Blessed ground this for one's soul to rest upon in contrast with the neologian or infidel ground of human competency and human diligence. To the spirit of obedience and subjection all is sure.

One thing more I would advert to here, and that is, that obedience to the word is sometimes made (where the presence of the Spirit and the objective presence of God as the one served are not seen), something rather which separates us from God than unites us in living fellowship with him; and something, too, which limits obedience.

Many look merely at the letter of the word, and see a quantity of things to be done and to be abstained from; and they go to work truthfully: but they will find that the task rather leads them into their circumstances than to God, and that there are in their circumstances a thousand things daily to which they can apply, no " It is written" as their clue; besides the ten thousand things in which they equally need direction as to the when, how, where, how far, etc. the word applies. A common solution has been of this difficulty, when felt, to bring in either expediency or the habits of saints around us. The true solution is, "to serve in the spirit, not in the letter;" and instead of" doing many things," "to serve the living and true God." "I will instruct thee and teach thee in the

way thou shalt go; I will guide thee with mine eye," is not a promise which presents the mariner looking at his chart merely, conversant it may be with the exact position of his vessel and every thing else about her, but puts the soul saved by grace before God as walking under his immediate guidance. Now this is what I understand by serving the living and true God. I am a son of Him who is not only Abba, but God likewise, whose actions and whose claims are connected not only with redemption, but providence also; and I need a present guidance from Him who, above the pit where I may be, knows what He is about to do as well as what his word directs. Now if I limit my obedience to the letter of the word, and I walk not with him as a son that serves him as the living God, I find that good as this is, so far as it goes-in fixed circumstances of domestic or ecclesiastical nature, there are ten thousand things daily in which I am either perplexed or have to guess at his will or else to take my own; for expediency and the saints' will around me is too far steeped in worldliness to be accepted as a guide. And if so while in fixed circumstances as a private individual, how much more when all is afloat, and when, as a converted Jew or Roman Catholic, I have, for the Lord's sake, been cast out of all my domestic circumstances; or when amid the wreck of what the world calls the church, which has lost its landmarks, swept away in the rising deluge of infidelity: or if I as an evangelist have to go where the Lord is willing

to work, or as a pastor have to see the bearing of his mind upon the souls of others. Who is sufficient for these things? The living God will guide his servant. And moreover to serve in the letter is both the destruction of our affection as sons, and an entire disparagement to his grace who, as the Father has said," Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God. Beloved, now are we the sons of GOD." What grace to set us thus with him that has called us brethren! It is not sobriety, as a Christian, to overlook or to deny the present direct guidance, by the Lord, through his spirit, of his disciples, as being something over and above the written word: slow as we may be to understand it. To do so, is really to shut God out of the conscience.

But now-as to the point with which I set out-We were, beloved brethren, "turned from dumb idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven."

To serve Him as individuals most surely has each of us been called;-but still we are looked at as a group, WE. And every title of Him whom we serve, every blessing we enjoy at His hand, our redemption, privileges, hopes-all remind us of a fellowship with others equally called as ourselves to serve Him. The little flock looked at as the kingdom, or as "the Church which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all," may present fellowship in different aspects, and of various kinds,yet every title presents fellowship. And poor indeed must his thoughts of the Divine Word be, who, in serving the living and true God, has not, in measure at least, realised the wondrous truth of the unity of the Church as a whole. It is not my thought to enter upon that question, "What is the Church?" now: blessed as the subject is! Neither would I attempt here to examine how far that which is gathered on the earth as such, and boasts of being

See "Nature and Unity of the Church of Christ."Witness, vol. i.

Christian

Fellowship of saints one with the other, while in the wilderness, is surely looked at in the word, as a means to an end-not an end itself-refreshing as it was to God and the Father, to the Lord Jesus and the Church, while she stood normally in dispensational perfectness;