body and spirit? But I am warned by this, that many men who have gone into that question in order to find out about it have put out their eyes. They come back from the examination of the human frame, from wonder upon wonder, they come back and say, 'We have found no spirit, no breath of God; all that has no warrant from our researches." Out you go with your researches ! And they go to this Bible and say, “It is a very wonderful Book, and we have examined it in the spirit of frank, candid, and fearless inquiry. We have not scoffed at the Book, nor scorned it; we have examined it in the spirit of frank and fearless inquiry, and we find the glory is gone." It is just so.

There is only one method-the reverent; and one result and that is to know God better and bow down flatter before Him.

You cannot take away the hyphen that holds the "burning" and the "bush" together. When even Moses would have gone forward to see why, he was kept back, and his thoughts turned in more profitable directions. So you are forbidden to go nearer; you are near enough to see and to know and to bow down and to give an intelligent, whole-hearted adoration and worship of obedience. And any spirit that enters into you and me, and makes me go beyond the point where Moses had to pull up, is a dangerous spirit, alike in method and result. May God breathe upon all of us the spirit that He gave to Moses ! "Draw not nigh: put off thy shoes from

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