tantamount to saying that we will not have Him to reign over us. Hence if sin were ever to become triumphant, God would be dethroned, for at the core of every transgression, no matter how small it may seem to human view, there is a disposition to deny God's right of authority over us. This, I say, is at the heart of every sin, for there is nothing more absurd than for men to talk of any sin as small, since the disposition which shows itself in what seems a little thing, would in other circumstances manifest itself in larger affairs, for every sin springs from a rebellious heart that disowns God's authority and defies His law. Now, in these circumstances, is it wonderful that He hates it? If the sinner had his will there would be no God.

2. God hates sin because it runs contrary to the current of His whole nature. His heart revolts from it as from something in every respect opposed to His disposition as well as His law. It might happen in the case of an earthly monarch or chief magistrate that the law of the land was in some respects opposed to the likings of his own heart; and that, though he felt himself bound to administer it, he might still wish it were altered or repealed. But it is not so with God. His law takes its form from His nature, and corresponds to it in every respect. It is, as the old divines used to express it," the transcript of His nature." It is, therefore, no arbitrary thing depending on a capricious will, and which may be changed without detriment. For God being as He is, His law cannot be otherwise. It was not first the law, and then God willed in unison with that. But it was first God, the centre of all moral excellence, and then the law in harmony with Him. In a word, God is the impersonation of the law, and therefore dis

obedience to it is not a mere legal offence against an abstract statute, but it is personal animosity and antipathy to Himself. And when we think who He is and what He has done for us, how hideous in this light does our iniquity appear even to ourselves! Here is a Being of pure and perfect holiness who has done more for us than we can tell, and given us everything which we possess, and yet we will not simply defy His authority over us, but also do what we know to be in utter opposition to His nature.

3. God hates sin because of the consequences which follow in its train. It has come in to mar the happiness and derange the order of the moral universe; and to a Being whose name and whose nature is love, that which has been the cause of such misery to the human race must be the object of intensest loathing. I know, indeed, that in the end, even out of its evil, He will bring good; but still the dreadful effects which it has produced cannot but intensify the hatred which He has toward it. Think you, that, as He contrasts the world as it is now with that ideal which was before Him when it came first from His hand; or the man as he now is with that archetypal image of ultimate human perfection which filled His mind when Adam was created, He can do other than hate the sin which has caused the difference? II. AN APPEAL.

and from the verdure of Spring, the sunshine of Summer, and the mellow fruitfulness of Autumn; from the bread we eat and the raiment we put on; yea, from the myriad blessings which we daily enjoy, there comes a voice, if we had but ears to hear it, saying, "How can you sin against Him who has given you all these things?"

2. The same plea in another form is repeated by the voice of conscience in us, Every warning which it utters, every sting of remorse which it inflicts, is but God's secret way of saying to us, "O, do not this abominable thing that I hate." And that inward call, alas! too often drowned by the Babel of contending passions within, or stifled by the power of some cunning bosom sin, is re-ehoed and repeated,

3. By God's servants as they come with His message to our souls. For still as in ancient days He sends them,

rising up early and sending them," and though now they speak not with the unerring words of inspiration, yet they do speak in God's name and stead when they beseech you to "sin no more."

4. He has made a yet more powerful, because a more direct, appeal than any of these. Come to Calvary, that you may hear it plainly. Jesus the holy, the just, the good, the true, the Son of Man, and yet the Son of God, is suffering not for Himself but for us. He did not sin, but all the griefs He felt were for our iniquities. Behold how powerfully the law pleads here. It says, "If these things be done in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?" If all this be exacted of the substitute, what, O, sinner, will be required of thee, if thou art left at length to bear thine own iniquity? Therefore, if thou wouldst not sink into the depths of perdition, O, do not this iniquity which God hates.

5. Hear, again, how creation, inani

mate though it generally be, repeats at Calvary the same earnest cry. The sun is robed in blackness. The earth is heaving as with the swell of ocean. The rocks are rent with the terrible convulsion. The dead, as if awaked by some awful surprise, look out of their graves, all to cry out, "Why will men do that abominable thing which God hates?" Nay! come nearer still, O sinner, as you lookest on,

6. What does thy conscience say? Bring the whole scene before thee, and as through the darkness thou seest the sorrowful face of Christ "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of death," and hearest the piercing cry, "My God! My God! why hast thou forsaken me?" does not the answer leap to thy lips, "Because Thou bearest my sins." And is there no appeal like this sounding in thine ears: "If God so hated sin that He could not look upon it even when the sinless Jesus bore it to His cross, why shouldst thou commit it ?"

7. But God makes this appeal by the revelation of the future, as well as through the Cross of His Son. And I dare not conclude without referring to that. Sin is ever the punishment of sin, and the old heathen myth of the furies, or the horrible story of the vulture eating at the heart of the deathless man who was bound to the rock, are but the methods which natural consciences have taken to express the truth which the revelation of future punishment in this Book has made distinct.

Go, then, and sin no more; and wherever you are and whatever you may be tempted to do, let this appeal keep sounding in your ears. Teach your conscience to repeat it. Write it on the palms of your hands. it on the tablets of your heart. Hear it when you lie down and when you rise up. Teach it to your children in

Engrave

the house, and let it sound in your ears as you walk by the way. In the marts of business, in the crowded streets, in the noisy workshop, and on the bustling wharf, alike amid the whirr of machinery, and in the silence of your retirement, let this solemn appeal be heard by you, "O, do not this abominable thing that I hate." W. M. TAYLOR, D.D.

64

The Justified Look.

PSALM Xxxiv. 5.

They looked unto Him and were lightened and their faces were not ashamed."

THE Psalmist not only speaks here for himself, but for those with whom he was associated. They looked unto God, and without exception they were cheered and enlightened, and their faces were not ashamed. It is not a little remarkable that the testimony of all trusting souls is alike, and unanimous with regard to the blessing derived from placing the heart's true confidence in God. Men and women of differing temperaments and tastes, of differing culture and attainments, all unite in testifying to the faithfulness of God. At this very hour a vast majority of souls are looking to God for the guidance and grace they need, and all can testify to the answer of faith and the response of God. They can say of and to God

"Behold the Lamb of God."

"There is life for a look."

There is a look of expectation as of a drowning man looking to the rope. The sinking crew looks to the lifeboat. That is faith, simply looking with a purpose and a hope.

2. The object of Faith.-It is a Divine Person. "They looked unto Him." The faith that secures help is the faith that looks simply and directly to God-God in Christ as we have Him in the Gospel. The Gospel makes it very clear that the object of faith is a living Divine Person-one Who loves us-Who has given us every proof of His love for us, and Who is yearning also for our poor love. It is a Person we have to look to, not a creed-not a community-not ourselves, but one who is mighty to save. Faith has an outward look. We must look to Him in His humiliation becoming a child, a man, for our sakes, to identify Himself with our life. We must look to Him in His death on the Cross, as the sacrifice for our sins. We must look to Him in His resurrection as the pledge of our victory over death and the grave. We must look to Him in His life as the pattern of what ours is to be.

but one that is full of blessing. Life, light, love, and liberty come from looking to God. There is always a radiance in the life that looks to Jesus and keeps looking. There is the light of knowledge, the light of praise, the light of love, and the light of immortality. Nothing can be turned towards the sun without partaking of its radiance, reflecting its brightness and beauty. Even common things and things unworthy derive a beauty and attractiveness by being in the sun's rays. So with men and women and children who are looking to Jesus. 4. The testimony of faith. faces were not ashamed." trusts God has no need to be ashamed of his confidence. Time and eternity will justify his reliance. Men have trusted in lower things, in pleasure, in wealth, in man, in self, and have been ashamed. But Christ never disappoints our trust. "He that be

"Their He who

with which Jesus Christ holds the whole world in His grasp.

Instead of "washed" we read "loosed." Though that change does not materially affect the substance of the meaning, it substitutes another metaphor. Men are "redeemed" and loosed from sin by the blood of the Lamb. The one expression regards sin as a stain from which we have to be cleansed; the other as a bondage or chain from which we have to be set free.

I. THE EVER-PRESENT,TIMELESS LOVE OF JESUS CHrist.

John is writing these words of our text nearly half a century after Jesus Christ was buried. He is speaking to Asiatic Christians, most of whom were not born when Jesus Christ died, none of whom had ever seen Him in this world. To these people he proclaims, not a past love, not a Christ that loved long ago, but a Christ that loves now.

Another thing must be remembered. He who speaks is "the disciple whom Jesus loved." He thus takes all his brethren up to the same level as himself, and delights to sink all that was special and personal into that which was common to all.

1. Of course this has really no meaning unless we believe Christ to be Divine. Did he who wrote these words 66 'unto Him that loveth us think of his Master as dead and in His grave half-a-century ago? Could he have thought of Him as only human, and attributed to Him an actual love of men whom He had never seen in his earthly life? What exaggerated unreality it would be to look back over the centuries to the names of the purest and noblest souls who gave themselves for their fellows, and to say that they, dead and gone, had any knowledge of or any love for men who had not been born till

long after they had died! Why, the benevolence with which the warmest lover of his kind looks on the multitudes in far-off lands who are his own contemporaries, is far too tepid a sentiment to be called love, or to evoke answering thanks.

In a Divine heart only is there room for the millions to stand, all distinguishable and all enriched and blessed by that love.

That Divine nature of the Lord Jesus Christ is woven through the whole of the Book of Revelation, like a golden thread, and manifestly is needed to explain the fact of this solemn ascription of praise to Him. For John to lift up his voice in this grand doxology to Jesus Christ was blasphemy, if it was not adoration of Him as Divine.

2. This is the revelation to us of Christ's love, as unaffected by time. Our thoughts are carried by it up into the region where dwells the Divine nature, above the various phases of the fleeting moments which we call past, present and future. It proclaims the changeless, timeless, majestic present of that love which burns, and is not consumed, but glows with as warm a flame for the latest generations as for those men who stood within the reach of its rays while He was on earth.

That love is not disturbed or absorbed by multitudes. He loveth us, says John to these Asiatic Christians; and he speaks to all ages and people. The units of each generation and of every land have a right to feel themselves included in that word, and every human being is entitled to turn the into " me." For no crowds

❝ us

block the access to His heart, nor empty the cup of His love before it reaches the thirsty lips on the furthest outskirts of the multitude.

4. This present timeless love of Christ

is unexhausted by exercise, pouring itself ever out, and ever full notwithstanding.

They tell us that the sun is fed by impact, from objects from without, and that the day will come when its furnace-flames shall be quenched into grey ashes. But this love is fed by no contributions from without, and will outlast the burnt out sun and gladden the ages of ages for ever. All generations, all thirsty lips and ravenous desires may slake their thirst and satisfy themselves at that great fountain, and it shall not sink one inch in its marble basin.

But

5. It is a love unchilled by the sovereignty and glory of His exaltation. There is a wonderful difference between the Christ of the Gospels and the Christ of the Revelation. there is one thing that is not different. The Nature behind the circumstances is the same. The Christ of the Gospels is the Christ in His lowliness, bearing the weight of man's sins; the Christ of the Apocalypse is the Christ in His loftiness, ruling over the world and time. But it is the same Christ. The hand that holds the seven stars is as loving as the hand that was laid in blessing upon the little children; the face that is as the sun shining in its strength beams with as much love as when it drew publicans and harlots to His feet. The breast that is girt with the golden girdle is the same breast upon which John leaned his happy head. The Christ is the same, and the love is unaltered.

II. THE GREAT ACT IN TIME WHICH IS THE OUTCOME AND THE PROOF OF THIS ENDLESS LOVE.

"He loosed us from our sins by His own blood." The metaphor is that of bondage.