off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." And so, keeping my true distance, curbing and checking my mere natural curiosity (that will disguise itself with marvellous names), standing back where God would have me, I see better, I hear better; coming out of the Church, and out of nature, out of man's body, fearfully and wonderfully formed, out of the Bible, and out from the God-Man, that One Voice that assures me of the "Good-will" of Him that dwelt in the bush ! That is what I want to know. May God bless us all. Amen.

Henderson & Spalding, General Printers, Marylebone Lane, London, W.

WORKING OUT SALVATION.

A Sermon

DELIVERED IN REGENT SQUARE CHURCH,

BY THE

REV. JOHN MCNEILL.

"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure."Phil. ii. 12.

Paul had been

You notice the setting of this familiar text. preaching in Philippi; the Lord had blessed his word; sinners had been converted; a Church had been called together. Paul is writing to his converts, as he always did, and you find that all through this Epistle there breathes a great affection for them, which he is sure is reciprocated in their breasts. He had fallen very warmly in love with these people, and they had with him; both for the Gospel's sake and for his own.

But Paul's is not a fond and foolish love, that will simply over-indulge itself in warm, gushing, affectionate expressions. His is a love which carries wisdom along with it, in all its warmth and impetuosity; it is always taking counsel with wisdom, so as to be wise as well as warm. And it is here I think that the wise warmth, the sober-tempered affection of this spiritual father for his spiritual children, comes out. "Wherefore," he says, "my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." It is as if the great Apostle had heard that

although these Philippians were getting on very well; still there was a danger coming to them through their affection. for him, who, under God, had brought the Gospel to them; and gently, yet firmly, he disengages and disentangles himself from them, and them from him. He seems to overhear what they are saying, "Ah, well, we certainly had great times when Paul was with us; but we are suffering now that he is no longer with us; if we had only Paul back again, and could keep Paul among us, and have Paul always with us, then we would be about perfect; our heaven below would be about as full as any one can expect on this side of the abundant entrance into the actual heavenly state." And Paul here says to them, Now, Philippians, let us be fond, but don't let us be foolish. After all," he says, "I have nothing to do with you, and you have nothing to do with me; do not defeat all my fond expectations, and all my labours among you and concerning you; but as you obeyed in my presence, now in my absence, instead of sighing and feeling yourselves at a disadvantage, be all that you were when I was with you, only more abundantly. Much more in my absence prove to yourselves, prove to all who care to look at you, that you do not depend on me, that you do not hang upon man or angel; but that you hang on God, who brought the Gospel to you, although He brought it on my lips. It was He who brought it, and He has not gone; He worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure. Oh, ye Philippians," he says, "you are at no loss, you are at no disadvantage; true I am not with you, though I fain would be; but God is with you, and He is now working in you."

I sometimes think that this verse receives its fullest emphasis by taking it from Paul's mouth and putting it into Christ's. We hear it as coming not from Paul the servant, but from Christ the great Master within the veil as He looks down on us. Oh, how it fits us! We are so apt to say -if He were here, then how our sanctification and our Christian work would get on. Sabbath-school teachers are saying this morning and thinking, "Ah, if Christ were our

Superintendent at Aldenham Street; if only Christ stepped in to superintend at Regent Square, or Compton Place, our hearts would be on fire, our teaching would be better done. If Christ only gave me my commission to climb that stair, and to read to that old bed-ridden woman, how it would be done!" If He were here with us! And Christ says to us, to us His Philippians here in London, speaking down from the eternal glory, "Wherefore, My beloved, as ye have always obeyed not as in My presence only, but now much more in My absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for I am working in you both to will and to do of My good pleasure." Are we not sometimes liable to the same snare as that which was going to entangle these Philippians in their onward path? Sometimes our eyes see the teacher too much, and cannot get past the teacher. Now, teachers come and go, but the great Teacher abides; and so for ever may our eyes be open to Him, and our ears receive this message as from His own lips-"Not as in My presence only; do not ask Me back; do not show to the world that you are weak and languishing because your Leader is not actually at your head, but prove to the world that faith finds its freest scope and its loftiest exercise because it is faith." Christians, we are walking not by sight, but by a spiritual vision of Him who has gone before us, and is drawing us surely and certainly into His own presence. "Not as in My presence only, but now much more in My absence, let there be intensity, let there be individualism; let every man feel that this is his own affair; and while you receive all ministries and all gifts of that kind helpfully and thankfully, rise superior to them all; reach out and forth to Me Myself, your Saviour, your Sanctifier, your All in all."

Work out your own salvation-your own salvation. I sometimes like to dwell on this in what I venture to call the original English-for we need original English as well as original Greek-in the simple actual English that is here. Suppose we just take it as it stands. I know it is scarcely the idiomatic Greek, but we will take it in this idiomatic

English sense. And this all the more because, as Alford virtually says, our translation seems to countenance the very dangerous idea that salvation, after all, is not of faith and grace, but of merit and reward. Let us take this expression, "Your own salvation," in the light of Scripture teaching elsewhere, so that our somewhat unfortunate English may not mislead us. Your own salvation; what does that mean? That is a rare word in the Bible; the Bible is not fond of calling anything our own. It rather comes to us in all our pride of possession, strips us bare and says to us, "You have nothing that is your own; your friends, your health, your strength, are not your own. There is nothing your own but sin; that is yours in actual possession, and in all the entail of guilt and misery here and hereafter that belong to such an inheritance. Ye shall be filled with your own ways, ye shall eat of the fruit of your own doings." Alas, sin is the only thing that is mine! My sin, my guilt, my misery, my curse, my condemnation. "My sin is ever before me," said a man when he began to realize that that was his only actual absolute possession-sin, and the clinging curse through sin; "my sin is my own, it is ever before me, I can no more get rid of it than I can of my shadow." Now that is the Bible, and yet the same Bible makes out salvation to be our own.

Dwell on that a little-how does that come about? For until we get that fastened in our hearts, I do not think we shall feel able to obey the Apostolic injunction, “Work out your own salvation." I must realize that I have in my heart the salvation I am to work out. Let me enhance this thought in your mind, the thought that salvation is made over to us as our own, in a Book which from beginning to end strips us of all real ownership. "This is mine," says a man here, or a man not here, "this is my pile, I scraped it together; I rose early, I sat up late and as he says it he jerks his money-bags or turns over his bank-book to the balance. "Mine arm," he declares, "and the greatness of mine industry have gotten me this wealth, to have and to hold and enjoy. It is not