were an unmixed revelation of the Divine Nature, we should walk by sight, and not by faith.

IF great men are heralds of coming ages; are not the ways of God much more in advance of Heaven itself? But Heaven certainly will follow God whithersoever He goeth. God, in very deed, has dwelt with men on the earth :-Heaven, therefore, must be expected. As surely as we believe in the Incarnation, must we rely that the reign of God will come "on the earth, as it is in Heaven."

WHATEVER has the deepest place in our life, has also the chief dominion over us, and whatever has the chief dominion over us, is our lord. Memory, conviction, sentimentality, conscience, habit, &c., &c., may call Jesus, "Lord and Master;" while the actual spring and scope of our free life, may be quite in another direction. Let us not deceive ourselves. What we are when we are most free, that we really are.

SIN is war against God. It aims directly at the life of God. So far as it is possible, sin has once slain God, and that once, "from the foundation of the world." Sin is always the same in its character. "God, manifest in the flesh," wounded from head to feet, crucified, and dead, by His creatures, alone shews what sin is, in its essential nature and tendency.

But the view of Christ's death which is even more set forth in the New Testament, is, that it is God's method of curing sin. True, the sins of the whole world are convergent in the Cross of Christ; but the way in which God delights to speak of the death of His Son, is, that mercies and forgivenesses are gone forth through Him "for the sins of the whole world." "Through this Man," (Whom you "by wicked hands have crucified and slain,”) “is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins."

"THE BREAD OF LIFE."

THE New Testament knows nothing about, so called, abstract Truth. It abhors abstractions, as non-entities. It treats of things: its terms therefore are always concrete. From beginning to end, the Religion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is strictly Substantive. The end of which is the organic development of the One Absolutely Living Substance, in the New Nature of believers.

I. As is the man, such must be his bread. "The first man is of the earth, earthy;" and must have earthy bread. The bread which cometh forth out of the earth, is full of earth, and for the earth first, for the living earthy body, and finally for the dead earth once more, when the body relapses to its origin, "earth to earth." It is "the

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bread that perisheth;" and all who live thereby It is the bread of death, in distinction from "True Bread," Which is Living Bread.

perish.

II.- "The Bread of God" is as full of God, as

"The Bread

As it is written, Man

the bread of the earth is full of earth. of God" is God our Bread. liveth by that which proceedeth out of the mouth of God. The world, and all things that are therein, subsist by the mediation of the sun. Grass, and herbs, and trees, and all creatures, live not by the earth alone, but chiefly by solar heat and light. The sun is essential bread to all nature; and is ever and ever coming down to give life unto the world.

III.-But immortal spirits want a very different Bread. Spirits want spirit-bread. If the fallen spirits of men are ever to become divine-natured spirits, they must not only eat spirit-bread, but Divine Spirit-Bread. "Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. But "the Bread of God," "cometh down from Heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die."

IV.-The Bread of God is the one only living

and true Substance. It is that Which is, and Which was, and Which always will be. Remember: "The Bread of God is He Which cometh down from Heaven," namely, "The Same Which was in the beginning with God, and was God." We are distinctly taught then, that the Lord, when insisting on the necessity of our eating His flesh, alludes not to His natural flesh. His natural flesh did not come down from Heaven, but was taken from the Virgin's womb. The flesh, therefore, which our souls must eat or perish, is His Divine flesh,-that very "Bread of God," which came from Heaven. This Divine Bread, the Lord's flesh, is the Only Substance that has Life in Itself; and therefore, the Only, Eternal Substance. It is "He," Jehovah's Christ, "the Only Begotten of the Father, full of Grace and Truth."

V. The sun's nature really becomes organized in the things which grow out of the earth, and in all creatures which live on the earth. Witness all vegetable substances, all flesh and bones, which are chiefly composed of flame, or solar properties. So . the Divine Spirit, given forth from Jesus, glorified, becomes organized in all souls who receive Him as "the Bread of God." They are made partakers of the Divine Nature, and consequently inherit