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the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained, that we should walk in them (Ephes. ii. 8-10). Thus it is clear that the two Apostles viewed Abraham from two distinct stand-points, yet were they both in perfect harmony. Abraham's faith was counted to him for righteousness the moment he rose at God's bidding to quit Ur of the Chaldees; and again, when at the same bidding he rose up early in the morning and saddled his ass for Mount Moriah, but in the act of offering up Isaac, his faith became perfected. Had Abraham offered up Isaac without command, and upon that ground had pleaded acceptance with God, his work would have been of quite another order, and as earnestly deprecated by James as by Paul. In truth, these two are as distinct as the fruit of the old stock which is wild by nature, and the fruit of the graft which the care and culture of the husbandman has engrafted; the one fit only to please children, the other fit for the table of a king. Whether or not, good fruit can come from the old stock which is wild by nature, and if so, what account God will make of it, are questions upon which Arminians and Calvinists will disagree until they meet at this judgment seat.

It was this order of works which James advocates, that the Son of Man with eyes as a flame of fire came down to inspect, when walking in the midst of the golden candlesticks we hear him saying in each of the churches, "I know thy works," commending some and condemning others. For we must insist that it was individual work here inspected and not the church or churches in the aggregate. And hence we read, "Thou hast tried them which say they are apostles,-be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life,-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 with me,"—and in each of the churches we find it said, "He that hath an ear let him hear, He that overcometh, or, to him that overcometh." The scrutiny hereby declared calls for great personal searching of heart.

We have the same order of works noted in Rev. xiv. 13. " Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth. Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, and their works do follow them." And that bad works follow us as well as good, is manifest in that we meet both at the judgment-seat, where they must be tried of what sort they are, and for them receive reward, or suffer loss; whatever "receiving the things done in the body according to that he hath done" may mean. For now "there shall be nothing covered that shall not be revealed, nor hid that shall not be known and come abroad; that which hath been spoken in the ear in closets, shall be proclaimed on the house-tops," for now," he shall bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the heart "--the motives from which

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actions have sprung. What secrets in relation to Church appointments must then come abroad! from the princes of the Roman Church in solemn conclave assembled at the Vatican, down to the Wesleyan Conference held with closed doors! How much of God, how much of man, and how much of God's and man's enemy there has been in them all, must then appear.

Personally accepted in Christ are all here found, and as members of the household of faith long since passed from death to life, they shall not personally come into condemnation. "Being now justified by his blood they are saved from wrath through him." Concerning their old sins before conversion, and their failures and shortcomings that have since been repented of and confessed he has said, "I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgression, and as a cloud thy sins;" but the question here and now is one of works, and bad works and bad workmen must here and now be judged, and the wood and stubble building, of which it may be the builders have been unaware themselves, must then to their surprise and consternation be consumed. All who have been building without God, daubing with untempered mortar, must here and now discover the true nature of their work, which before they would not believe, although the more discerning of their brethren have seen it, and it may be earned their censure for reproving it; but as bad workmen, their bad works must here and now be judged, and condemned, and consumed.

Right Reverend Fathers in God who have not shrunk from the flattering title of "My lord Bishop," seeing that it gave them rank among the peers of the realm, must then face their Master, who all along has said to them through the book adopted by them as their text book, "Seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not,―mind not high things, but condescend to be contented with mean things" (see margin). How far this has been the spirit of some, whose gifts and parts and persons have been held in admiration because of advantage, while seeking to foist upon their admirers the figment of apostolic succession, the Lord will be judge himself.

Ministers too, who have come to their fellow men with excellency of speech and of wisdom, their speech and their preaching having been with enticing words of man's wisdom as eloquent preachers, earnest debaters, clever lecturers, feeding their flocks with husks instead of grain; stones instead of bread; polished pebbles it may be, but not clean provender which hath been winnowed with the shovel and the fan; mistaking the food of the intellect for the food of the spiritual life. Sound doctrinal ministry ("sixteen ounces to the pound," we deprecate the levity of the term although we quote it as expressive of a certain class of teaching), wherein the five points are clearly defined, and hair splitting in orthodoxy is cleverly performed, may yet have no Christ in it, and therefore no food for spiritual life. Christ in his history, his miracles, his parables, his words and his ways adopted as themes for discoursing upon, but

Christ preached about is not Christ preached. Christian experience is a fort with some ministers. The believer's experience, not his experience of Christ indwelling, but his experience of himself, and the exceptional experience of Job and Jeremiah, wherein they cursed the day of their birth, and the exceptional experience of David, out of which he cried, "Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy holy Spirit from me," is quoted as consolation to the believer, who by loose walk and conversation in the world has cause to cry, "My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me!" Special doctrines of revealed truth are special forts with other ministers, so that whatever subject is handled, the minister reveals his bias rather to ventilate his special doctrine than to quicken or to cultivate spiritual life in souls. All such daubing with untempered mortar, all such building with wood, hay, and stubble, including the raising of stately churches and temples, with towers and spires, all the preaching and publishing of clever lectures upon sensational subjects, all bazaars and fancy fairs got up "for the good of the cause" as professed work for God, must go through the fire, and so become manifested of what sort it is, how much durable, and how much combustible, how much of the creature, and how much of Christ. And when thus it shall be that a minister's work is all or well nigh all consumed, and he has nothing or next to nothing left to show for a twenty, thirty, or forty years' ministry, it is with difficulty we attempt to conjecture the state of that minister's mind, whatever his church dignity may have been.

Elders and deacons too, whose work has seemed to be to rule God's heritage, both minister and people, in such sort as to create revolt and secession, must meet their Master at length, and hear from him his estimate of their work. With seniority of years, or office, or force of character, or somewhat more of this world's good than their fellows, they have dared to crush their minister's spirit, to criticise his ministry, and to cow their fellow deacons after the manner of Diotrephes of old, and justifying only too well the saying of modern times, "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you; but resist a deacon, and he will fly at you." All this must be duly weighed and measured, and the merited reproof given and received.

That shame in some sort, and after some manner, will be the experience of some we gather from Luke xxi. 36; 1 John ii. 28, and iv. 17. That full reward, partial reward, reward gained prospectively but lost eventually, are among the possibilities of that day we learn from 2 John viii. What it will be for another man to take our crown (see Rev. iii. 11), we wonder with great amazement; but there it is in the book, and its warning should not go unheeded. For now it must be shown how brother has wronged brother, presuming upon well-known acquaintance with the admonition, "do good and lend, hoping for nothing again," to make a prey of the brother; how it has been that in commercial life Christian men have found

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