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tion, and for personal effort in the Church of Christ to promote His cause. It is God who worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. Then let me say at once, we can be holy, we shall be holy, for it is God who worketh in us. I will not stay even for a moment to discuss the question of sinless perfection. That is not your danger. Poor drunkard, thou canst give up drink; lustful man, thou canst be clean; for it is God, it is God that worketh in you. Do not be a football of the world, of the flesh, and the devil, for it is God that worketh in you. What tremendous emphasis we should bring to bear on that text. After all this calling on you to energy and to activity, I know that perhaps I depress you, for you said to yourself, "Ah! it is true, it is all true; but what can I do?" Now we come back to the Power: "It is God;" and what can He not do if you will only let Him? God is the Source See how He puts it. It is God that worketh in you. How? Listen: "both to will and to do." The first thing is to get the will right, and then the deed, don't you see, will follow. Is it not your complaint and mine, that the will is wrong, the will is twisted, the will has been led captive by the devil? There are times when we can all enter into poor Augustine's complaint, "Lord, I began to love Thee too late: the devil was too long in me, the will got too much twisted, for although my heart goes after Thee, my will -that is the mainspring, that is the rudder that turns the boat ofttimes as I do not want it to go." God has gone down and down and down, deeper than the devil; God has bottomed thy will, and got down to the very spring of being; down at the spring and fount of thought and wish and imagination and effort, there is God. God is in thee to will and to do. Therefore again I say, we can be holy, we shall be holy, we must be holy, for it is God that worketh in us. We will not go back like a dog to his vomit, like the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire. Never! In the day when God converted us-and with this I close -whether we knew it or not, in the day when God changed us. whether it was done calmly or with a great volcanic out

burst and eruption, He did a greater work than ever we have given Him credit for. It was not a mere surface-touching of you, when God came to you and quickened you: God came in, in, IN to you. Wherever sin was, there He is.

There is an engine, a railway-engine-one of the finest sights on God's earth, and I can never understand John Ruskin finding fault with engines and trains, whether in town or country; they beautify and set off any scenery, do they not? Well, there is an engine that splendid creation of the engineering faculty of the 19th century! But did you ever see an engine which was allowed to drive itself? There is a splendid horse, but did you ever see a blood horse that was allowed to drive itself? Your engine needs a driver, and your horse needs a rider; and your converted man has a God in him, managing him in every direction. There is the engineer; he steps on the foot-plate: with one hand he holds the reversing-rod, that sends the engine backwards or forwards; with the other hand, he holds the throttle-valve, the opening of which lets the steam into the cylinders. So with God: He holds the will and the doing. Thou art managed, splendidly managed. God will drive thee. God will see to thy supplies, and will keep up the Divine pressure. Thou shalt be filled unto all the fulness of God. Oh men and women, do we believe in the magnificent resources for holiness of heart and life, and the resources of power that are ours, since it is God who worketh in us? And do not ask metaphysical questions as to how God can work on my will, and yet leave me free. The fact of the matter is I feel I am free, and yet I believe that my will lies in God's hand, and He gives it its permanent set and bias towards holiness and goodness for ever and ever. "In this," says Dr. Candlish. "the will of man finds its highest exercise, its fullest freedom, when it becomes the engine for working out the will of God." "And this is the will of God, even your sanctification." May God bless His Word! Amen.

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

HOW GOD'S ELECTION WORKS.

A Sermon

DELIVERED IN EXETER HALL,

ON SUNDAY EVENING, JAN. 5TH, 1890.

BY THE

REV. JOHN MCNEILL.

Text.-1 SAM. xvi. 6-13.

OUR subject is the choosing of a king from among the sons of Jesse the Bethlehemite. The royal seat, just like my chair, was vacant, or was soon going to be. The Lord had rejected Saul from being king over Israel, and He sent His servant Samuel to choose Him a king to fill the vacancy out of the family named. This narrative shows how the choosing was done. In the same way, I like to think that I am here to-night, and great things-although it does not look like it-are in my gift. I magnify my office, I have a situation to offer. There is no doubt about the offer or about the gift; the only doubt lies with yourself, as of old the difficulty lay among the sons of Jesse. For what is the office of the preacher, but always to be on the errand on which Samuel went to that glen in Bethlehem of Judæa?

We are ambassadors for Christ; we are here to offer to men a crown, a Kingdom that never fades away. We offer you this, that you shall be believers in God's dear Son, which means co-workers with Him down here, and coheirs with Him in the eternal splendour of the great hereafter. That is the Gospel as I understand it. A mighty programme, is it not? and a programme the reality of which it is absolutely impossible to exaggerate-impossible. I am not drawing the long bow; I am not exaggerating nor straining things when I say that, from the temporal and human side, what Samuel brought to David that afternoon was a small and temporary thing compared with that which the preacher brings to every young fellow, who has eyes to see and ears to hear of the great largess that is brought to him in the Gospel offer.

Let us bring the whole scene before us. I think I see Samuel going to the house of Jesse, and he tells his errand. He called the sons of Jesse before him; in they came, and then wonderful things happened, rather upsetting individual calculations. And all through the story gets increasingly thrilling with intense dramatic interest, right on to the very end; and let me say that that same thrill, that same throb, that same interest, that same sensation should be wherever the Gospel is preached-the same kind of breathlessness. If you could see a gathering like this with angels' eyes, you would have the same breathlessness to see how near the kingdom comes to one man and, God help him! he goes past it, while it lights on another sitting beside him-one young fellow here to-night saved, as the eternal day shall show, saved with an everlasting salvation; redeemed, crowned, sealed, baptized into Christ; all done by the Word of God and the Spirit of God,

and his consenting faith, on the spot; and the young fellow sitting next him as blind as a bat to it all.

Ah, wake up and listen! "The King has come in the cadger's gate," if you understand that phrase; the King has come very near to people who could have had no expectation that He would come so near, when the preacher stands before an audience in London or anywhere else.

He was

In came the sons of Jesse, and first Eliab. the biggest, the "brawest," as they would say over the Tweed; a big, broad, buirdly chiel was Eliab, and he came in all his inches, feeling "the situation is for me. I have only to show myself, and whatever Samuel has to give, I will get it." In he came; and Samuel came near to be misled, I believe; for even prophets, if left to their own spirit, will go wrong like other men. Samuel was going to yield to the dictates of his own spirit. You see the need of inspiration, don't you?—a real inspiration, a miraculous interposition and assistance of the human mind by the Divine mind. He was about to yield to his own inspiration and to the look of things, when he was pulled by the sleeve, and the Lord said to him, "Samuel, look not upon his height, look not upon his countenance, seeing I have refused him." Samuel, the Lord sees not as man sees; man can only see face deep and skin deep and looks deep, but the Lord looks in upon the heart. Exit Eliabthe Lord hath not chosen him. I think I hear Samuel say to himself, "Ah yes, what a foolish old greybeard I had nearly made of myself. Is not this precisely the mistake that the whole nation made, when they chose Saul who has turned out so badly." What was the outstanding thing? It was his dimensions; a great, big, strapping fellow, seven by four, is Eliab. Now, this is very taking,

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