small thing to be judged of man's judgment. We fear, however, that much of the tenderness we find abroad on this point arises from inability to bear the test.

Finally, we ask our readers to examine their own position and practice as to toleration, and to ascertain whether their own hearts are persuaded and satisfied with God's revelation (we do not say with man's interpretation of it, but with the revelation itself)—Christ, the Son of the living God-He who has the words of eternal life, God manifest in flesh, crucified in weakness, declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection of the dead, and now by the right hand of God exalted? Is He so the ground of their peace and confidence? Has the Word which reveals Him so laid hold

of their souls that they can say, "Let God be true, though (if need be) every man a liar ?" Do they believe God rather than man, and know and recognise the immeasurable claim which He has, not only on our love, but on our obedience and life? Lukewarmness is a hateful thing in the sight of One who has spared nothing for the benefit and blessing of those He loves. Where love in one is "stronger than death," how hateful to find Its objects careless and indifferent. To such Christ says, "Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." But even this is not His last word to them; for He adds, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten; be zealous, therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he will with me. ... He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches." H. B.

may

No. XVIII.

GALATIANS.

Ir interest your readers to have brought before them the great principles which constitute the bases of the doctrine of the Epistle to the Galatians. It is upon the face of it elementary, the Churches of Galatia being in imminent danger of adding Judaism to Christianity in such a way as to destroy the nature of Christianity itself. Nor was theirs the only age in which liability to do so had existed, and has had to be watched against. The law is a testing of human nature, to see whether it can produce righteousness for God, and a perfect rule of righteousness for that nature in all it owes to God and to a man's neighbour. So that it claims subjection, and that man should fulfil its requirements, under penalty, moreover, of judgment. The authority of God, the subjection of man to His commandments, and a perfect rule of conduct for man in his present state as a child of Adam are all involved in this system. But man, conscious he ought to fulfil it, his own conscience telling him it is right, and not suspecting his own weakness and the depth of his ruin, and seeing that keeping it would be righteousness for him before God, readily takes it up as the way of having that righteousness, and enjoying divine favour, of being right when judgment comes. When unawakened, observance of its outward claims satisfies the natural conscience; if understood spiritually, it leads to the discovery of that law in our members which hinders all success in the attempt. But God having established the law, it was a very difficult and delicate thing to show that, as a system, it was passed away, not because it was not right in its place, and useful too for its own real purpose, but to make way for a system of grace purposed and promised long before the law was established; and that by the discovery that it was death

and condemnation to be under it, that the mind of the flesh (the nature the law dealt with) was not subject to it, and could not be, and that we escape its curse, as under it not by the destruction of its authority, but by dying as so under it, and that by the body of Christ, in whom we then found ourselves in a new life beyond its condemnation. The cross making all things clear. But the credit of the flesh, that is of himself, is dear to the natural man, and till he had discovered that in him, that is in his flesh, there was no good thing, he was loathe to give up a rule he knew to be right, in the humbling confession that he was such a sinner that it could be only his condemnation, the law of sin so strong in his members, himself so disposed to evil, that the law, weak through the flesh, could only condemn him. Judaising teachers, proud in their own conceits, zealous of the law as the credit of their nation, could not bear to have it set aside as necessary for the way of righteousness and life with God; and the ministry which judged the flesh in Jew and Gentile, and freed the latter from all subjection to the Jewish system was intolerable to them. Man always clings to the law, speciously alleging God's claims and holiness, till he experimentally finds in the discovery of the true character of the flesh his true state, that as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse.

Hence Paul, both as to his own ministry and the place the law held, was in perpetual conflict with these Ju-. daising teachers. The more intimate we are with his writings, the more we shall find how he was harassed by it, and how his writings continually bear on the point that you cannot mix the two systems, law and grace. This lay at the root of all his doctrine, and in all its highest developments, as well as in its first elements. The counsels of God, in the second man, were formed before the world was, or man was responsible at all, and revealed only after that last man was come, and had accomplished the work on which the bringing all these counsels into effect was founded. The Apostle's doctrine fully unfolded brought out the ground and scope of these counsels in their full development in Christ, and, as to us, in

a new and heavenly position of man in and with Him; while the true state of the first man, responsible for his walk, of which the law was the perfect rule, gave occasion for insisting on the first elements of the truth, and the necessity of setting aside the first man, and thus for the application of the law, which could reach him only as long as he lived, in order to substitute grace and divine righteousness, not because the law was wrong, but because, being right, it was death and condemnation to man under it. Christ met this responsibility for us on the cross, magnifying the law by bearing its curse, but bringing us, dead to sin and alive in Him, into connection withal with another-Himself raised from the dead. In His death God had condemned sin in the flesh, and brought in what was divine in righteousness and life in place of man, when Christ was for sin a sacrifice for sin on the cross. These elements the Epistle to the Galatians fully instructs us in, without going into the counsels whose accomplishment is based on the cross. These are found elsewhere, most fully in the Ephesians.

The first part of the Epistle to the Galatians is occupied with the independence of Paul's ministry. It was neither of nor by man. From the Apostles he received nothing. The revelations he received, and his Apostolic authority were immediately from the Lord. But on this part it is not my object now to dwell. At the end of the second chapter the Apostle gives, in earnest and burning words, the whole bearing of the law on the Gospel, and how they were related one to another; but of this at the close. I will now show how he sets the law and Gospel over against one another.

Up to the flood, save the testimony of godly men and prophets, God did not interfere after the history of man's perverseness was complete in Adam and Cain. That issued in the judgment of the flood. After that God began anew to deal with man, to unfold His ways to him in the state in which he was And they were carried on till the full proof of man's irreclaimable state was given in the rejection of Christ. The first of these dealings after scattering men into nations, and tongues, and languages, was His taking Abraham out of them.

all for Himself, and making him the stock and root of a new family on the earth, God's family fleshly or spiritual. The former Israel; the latter the one seed, Christ. Leaving aside for the moment Israel, the seed, according to the flesh, to whom the promises will surely be accomplished in grace, we find the promise made to Abram in chap. xii., and confirmed to the seed in chap. xxii. This referred to all nations who were to be blessed in the seed, the one seed typified by Isaac offered up and raised in figure. On this the Apostle insists. The blessing came by promise. This, confirmed as it was to Isaac, could not be disannulled, and (what is more directly to the point) could not be added to. The law could not be annexed to it as a condition. To that there were two parties, but God was only one. The accomplishment of this conditional promise depended on the fidelity of both, and hence had no stability. God's promise depended on Himself alone. His faithfulness was its security, and it could not fail. But the law, coming 430 years after, could not invalidate or be added to the confirmed promise. The law is not against the promises of God, but merely came in by-the-bye till the seed should come to whom the promise was made, bringing in transgression but not righteousness. The law was not of faith; its blessing was by those who were under it themselves doing it. Promise, and faith in the promise and promised one went together. The law brought a curse; Christ the promised seed was made a curse for those under it, and when Christianity or faith came they were no longer under it at all. The law was an intermediate added thing, whose place ceased when the promised seed came. The law and grace are contrasted, as the law and promise, faith and the seed are first for justification. A man under the law was a debtor himself to do the whole of it, and a Christian taking this ground was fallen from grace, Christ had become of none effect to him. A man who looked to the law frustrated the grace of God. If righteousness came by it, Christ was dead in vain. But the contrast is applied to godly walk. The Spirit is opposed to the flesh. They are contrary one to the other in their nature. We are to walk after the