energizing of it with the influence of the unseen world, that carries it through this world, shooting an awakening impulse upon the souls of men in every direction.

Thus the admission to these scenes of transfiguration is an arrangement at once of mercy to Christ's disciples, to their own souls, for their own strength, comfort, and sanctification, and, not only so, but of mercy and salvation to others through them, and of the increase of their usefulness. As the Spirit of God takes of the things which are Christ's and imparts them to the soul, so the disciples of Christ take the things thus imparted, the truth in the reality, the experience, the power, and glory of it, and communicate it to the world, pour it upon the minds of men, act upon them with it, to awaken them and bring them to repentance. Hence the unspeakable importance of a clear view and vivid sense of divine things in the hearts of Christians. For the sake of others, for the sake of a dying world, they need to keep the flame of piety brightly burning. They should labor after a deep experience in the things of God, in order that they may have power over others. For the truth coming from a soul that speaks from experience, is entirely a different thing from even the same truth borrowed from the experience of others, and uttered only at second-hand. It has a thrilling, awakening, decisive power, when poured fresh from one soul upon another, from a soul where the Spirit of God abides, upon a soul dead in trespasses and sins. It has the life-giving power of God's own Word, when it comes from a soul whose life is hid with Christ in God.

Now all the privileges of Christ's people, all the sacred visions of the divine glory in him, to which they are admitted, all the precious ordinances of his gospel, all the mounts of grace and spiritual revelation up which they are carried with it in prayer, are intended to give power to his Word in and through them, to deepen their experi ence of its reality and omnipotence, to baptize them in its fire, and to prepare them to apply the same fire to the

souls of their fellow men. This was one great object of our Blessed Lord in causing Peter, James, and John to behold his glory in the Mount. This was one great reason why Paul was caught up into the third heaven. This is one heavenly purpose of the Lord's Supper. It is an ordinance of comfort, of enjoyment, of sanctification to his saints, but not for their personal benefit merely. It is that they may be strengthened for their duties to others; that they may here go up into the Mount, and behold such a view of Christ's glory, that when they go down into the world, they may go fired with the sight, lifted up above the world by it, and by communion with Christ, and with the blessed society of Moses and Elias in such communion, and prepared to walk faithfully in its remembrance many days of their pilgrimage. For this heavenly result they must be awake; they must watch beforehand, and watch and pray while on the Mount, and supplicate the precious Redeemer, who has brought them hither, to hold their eyes waking, to pour upon them his Spirit, to quicken their faith, and to instruct them anew in the mysteries and powers of Redemption. And while the talk here upon the Mount is concerning the sufferings and death of Christ, concerning his decease which he must accomplish at Jerusalem, the prayer of the soul must be that the same love that bore on our Saviour to those sufferings, may baptize and fill our souls, that we may be ready, with something of the same Spirit, to engage in labor, and bear, if need be, suffering and trial for Christ.

CHAPTER XXX.

Faith's Vision continued.-Faith passing into Love.-Self put out by letting Christ in.-Object of the appeals to Self in the Gospel.

SUFFERING for Christ, self-denial for Christ, duty done for Christ, all these things suppose Christ in the soul the hope of glory, and can come from nothing else. The spiritual sight and the spiritual life of faith, the eye single, and the daily simple following of Christ, are the result only of Christ reigning in the soul; self, and all things connected with it, being given up to Him. A mighty work, a mighty victory, a mighty principle is this, yea, a work of Omnipotent Grace, Omniscient Wisdom, and Infinite Love.

Here we must look again to our foundations, putting up the prayer of David, Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me, and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Here there is imminent danger of self-deception; here many souls make shipwreck, having self in the soul instead of Christ, the hope of glory.

For it is manifest that a man may, without confiding in Christ, and yielding up all to him, be very anxious about his eternal interests, and very much intent upon securing heaven. He may be merely a self-seeker for the world to come as well as this world; he may have self entirely, and nothing but self, in view, for that world as well as this. Believing in all the doctrines of the gospel, all the truths of religion, and perhaps especially affected by those which

relate to a future judgment and endless retribution, he may encompass all these truths and anxieties with self alone, the idea of self, the atmosphere of self, regard to self. Believing in the dread attributes, the majesty, the holiness, the glory of God, his only regard to God may be a supremely selfish regard to his own eternal happiness. This is a wide sweep for self to take; and the great majority of mankind undoubtedly limit their selfishness to the things of this life, because they care nothing about anything else, are insensible to all eternal realities, and have neither the desire, nor ever make the attempt, to secure the favor of God.

Now there is no doubt that a certain regard to self is proper, being a constitutional and inevitable part of our existence as created beings. If, for example, to love our neighbor as ourselves be duty, then to love ourselves as our neighbor is equally duty. But a supreme regard to self is an infinite perversion and depravity. It is indeed the very fountain and essence of depravity. If a man's regard to self is entirely subservient to God, and to God's will, he is holy. But if it be supreme, then he sets up self in place of God, superior to God, and would have God exist and govern only as a servant to self, only as a means of happiness. On this foundation there is in the world a self-seeking religion, as well as a self-forgetting and selfrenouncing one. And though the very idea of religion contained in the word itself, is that of being bound to God, yet there are religions which only bind God to self.

But God cannot be bound to self in our religious interests, any more than in our worldly interests. The declaration of Christ in regard to the selfishness of our nature, that he that seeketh his life shall lose it, applies more profoundly and absolutely in religion than anywhere else. He who will keep his life in his own hands, and not trust it to Christ, he who will make his own happiness his supreme end, and will not trust that happiness to Christ, nor make Christ's will his happiness, and duty to God his

aim, he, seeking only to save his life, shall lose it. He who has no aim in religion higher than self, shall lose self.

But you will say, Are not the hope of heaven and the fear of hell appealed to continually in the Word of God, and does not the Apostle say, that knowing the terrors of the Lord we persuade men, and is it not incontrovertible that God himself commands us to flee from the wrath to come, and to lay hold on the hope set before us, and to give all diligence to make our calling and election sure? And does he not tell us with encouragement, to abound in all the Christian graces and virtues, for that so doing an entrance shall be ministered unto us abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of the Lord? No doubt he does. All this is perfectly plain, and it is every man's unquestionable duty to desire and seek his salvation above all things. But he is to seek it in Christ, and when there is no love of God in the soul, it is manifest that the hope of heaven and the fear of hell are merely selfish. They may be the beginning of good, the first impulse towards holiness, but they are not, and cannot be, holiness in themselves. If the hope of heaven and the fear of hell constituted holiness, then all mankind would be holy, even in their sins. But the hope of heaven and the fear of hell are the motives in man's ruined nature, which God in mercy lays hold upon by his Holy Spirit to raise the soul to holiness and life in Christ. A man awakened by the Spirit of God, and made sensible of eternal realities and of his own guilt, fears hell and desires heaven, and this impulse makes him flee to Christ to be saved from hell and prepared for heaven. This is the true representation, in which the great master of the human heart, as sanctified by grace, has presented his Christian, awakened at first in the City of Destruction, and flying from the wrath to come. But he is no Christian, till he is in Christ.

Now this desire of heaven and fear of hell, stopping short of Christ, or setting the soul in any other direction than that towards Christ, may produce a merely selfish