the everlasting King. And as he advances his hope will brighten, and the splendour of the future will throw down some of its glowing light upon his soul and on his path through the wilderness. There is no gratitude, but much ingratitude, in the man who through unbelief and worldliness allows his prospect to become so dim and uncertain that he cannot read his title to his inheritance. It is the Christian's privilege to show that he is an heir of God, and a joint-heir with Christ; to show that his heart is in heaven, because his treasure is there. Our hope should become stronger as we advance; for how can we be thankful except as we rejoice in hope, walking in the light of the coming glory? "It is good to sing praises unto our God: for it is pleasant and praise is comely."

VI.

The Great Spiritual Change.

"Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son: in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins."COLOSSIANS i. 13, 14.

THESE

HESE verses form a connecting link between the Apostle's prayer for the Colossians and the doctrine which he was about to unfold for the confirmation of their faith touching the person, glory, and redeeming work of Christ. He passes as it were insensibly from the language of prayer to that of direct theological statement. He had just spoken. of meetness for a share in the future inheritance of the saints in light as an attained blessing which calls for the heartiest thanksgiving to God who imparts it. Now he amplifies that statement, and treats of the great fact in every Christian's history in which that meetness for glory pre-eminently consists the translation of the soul from the kingdom and power of darkness into the glorious kingdom of the Son of God. "Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son." He does not in these words "describe the entire process of preparation" for the inheritance, but rather "gives us a vivid glance of the two termini-the one of departure and

the other of arrival," with the grand means by which the Christian is privileged and enabled to pass from the one to the other in the redemption accomplished by Christ Jesus, and realized in living union with Him.

I. The momentous change of condition referred to, and which we have here first to consider, is represented as a deliverance and a translation, a rescue from one kingdom and power, and a translation into another kingdom, to be under another power. The deliverance is "from the power of darkness"-words which seem to personify darkness as a monarch or master with authority, and not a mere force. Under this power of darkness the Colossians were living before they had heard and received the gospel of salvation. Neither the feeble light of their Gentile philosophy nor the fitful force of their culture could raise them out of that condition, or rescue them from that dominion. In truth, the very light that was in them was darkness; and under it the whole Gentile world was lying. Darkness covered the earth, and "gross darkness the people." But though in a deep and double sense those who have not the revelation of God are under the power of darkness, yet spiritual darkness is the condition of all men naturally. Darkness is ignorance. Men are ignorant of God and of themselves. "The natural man

. . neither

receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Cor. ii. 14). There is a whole region of truth of the highest and most important character with which the unregenerate have no practical acquaintance. They may learn lessons of the power and wisdom of God in creation; they may admire the literature and poetry of Divine Revelation; they may believe in a future state, and in the wondrous capability and destiny of the soul; but they have no true knowledge of their

* Eadie's Com. on the Gk. Text of Ep. to Coloss. in loc.

own ruined moral condition, no acquaintance with God as their reconciled Father, no fellowship with Christ as their Saviour and highest Friend, no perception of the beauty and blessedness of holiness. In relation to Divine and eternal realities they are in ignorance and darkness, and darkness leads to error. In the absence of light men wander and go astray, the traveller misses his path, and mistakes his way. So unregenerate men run into error. They may feel the throbbings and pulsations within them of a religious nature, but in their native darkness they make the saddest and most serious mistakes. Many think they are in the right way to heaven as they wander up and down the bypaths of a mere religious formality, or tread the road paved with their own good resolutions, or turn aside to the practice of some vain superstition. All forms of religious error by which men please, and at the same time deceive, themselves, are only evidences of the power of darkness. Under its influence they lie in spiritual inactivity and indolence. They see not their high calling, and seek not to fulfil the mission or discharge the duty devolving upon them as God's responsible creatures. As in the plague of darkness which descended on Egypt-a thick gloom rested on the land for three days, during which men "saw not one another, neither rose any from his place "--so men, under the power of spiritual darkness, make no effort to live for God, to work out their own salvation, or rise to the recognition of their duty and destiny. Such a condition must be one of danger and misery. The belated traveller is in danger in the dreary and dark night. He cannot distinguish friend from foe, land from water; earth and sky appear alike a solid mass of impenetrable gloom around him. Unconscious of peril, and perhaps thinking of home-a home which he shall never more see-he draws near a precipice, his foot is on its abrupt edge, another step, a shriek, and he lies a

bruised, broken, and bleeding mass beneath the cliff. And are not those who are in spiritual darkness also in danger, and not less in misery than in danger? Darkness promotes discomfort and fear. There is a gloomy uncertainty and a dread of the future, a bondage of soul through fear of death, a fearful foreboding and looking-for of judgment. If men will not think, they may not be unhappy; but reflection to the soul in darkness must bring a burden of anxiety and crushing fear. He cannot be happy who knows not God as his friend, and who has no meetness for the future to which he is hastening. For the slaves of this power of darkness there is no help in human effort, but there is all-sufficient help in God.

The process of deliverance demands our thought. The idea is that of rescue from danger,* and the deliverance may involve not a little that is painful to those who are so rescued. To a man soundly asleep in the silent watches of the night, the sudden cry of "fire," which awakes him and demands his instant escape, is not for the first moment welcome. Why should he be disturbed, and made to rush out into the darkness and the cold? He does not like it, yet it is for his safety and his life. So the deliverance which the gospel brings, summoning a man to flee from the wrath to come, may, nay certainly does, involve an inward struggle in the surrender which it requires of him. Much that has been fondly cherished-the pleasures of sin, the habits of careless indifference, the haunts of folly and false gratification-must at once be abandoned, when the soul is brought forth in triumph from the power of darkness by the mighty hand of God Himself. This rescue may well involve a conflict of thought and feeling, sometimes lengthened, always sharp and keen.