the door, but the door was fastened. However, it did open; and you know the uncertain, cautious way in which you push open the door of an empty house and peer into the darkness. But I went in. So the Lord Jesus Christ to-day is coming to your heart, and He knows all the springs and locks in it, and He is opening it, and He is looking in. God help us! What a place! It is hanging with cobwebs; shivering draughts flying through it; unclean things wriggling and squirming about the floor; everything dark and desolate and dirty, for it has been God-forsaken ever since you were born. Oh, human soul! it is not a small text; it is a great text. The Lord opened the heart of Lydia, and, decent woman outwardly and all as she was, that is what He saw inside. That is but a faint description of what He saw, and yet He opened it, and yet He came in. So it is with Him to-day.

May He use His great power; may He come in all the more that this sermon was not to have been your sermon to-day; all the more that it is coming upon you and upon myself with pretty much of a surprise. May He come inthat blessed Lord who opens the heart, that Lord at whose girdle hang the keys of all hearts here. May He pass through these pews. Listen! listen to the jingling of the keys at His girdle as He is looking for the one key that will open your heart; and look up, and help Him, and say to Him, "Lord Jesus Christ, put in the key and open my heart, and take possession of me."

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'And when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us, saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house, and abide there. And she constrained us." First the heart, and then the home. She kept them; she lodged them; she fed them; she bore all charges for them at the very beginning. We need this very day to have all this revived in our hearts. We need to get back to our first faith and back to our first love. Listen. We are wanting between this and the end of the year over a thousand pounds, and Lydia can do it, but only

Lydia. If the Lord gets into your heart to-day the money will come tumbling out to-morrow. You have been keeping it by far too long. Remember Lydia at once became a contributor to the Sustenation Fund! She took in Paul, and took in his companion, and in a true sense she sustained them for days. That is just a type and picture of what we all should do, and what we all should be: first of all our hearts opened by the Lord Himself, then our house opened, our children given over to Him, our business given over, and all that we are and have devoted to His service. Oh, to be minister to a congregation of Lydias who open their hearts to the Lord, and open their houses to the Lord, and lay their whole substance at His disposal for the carrying on of His cause at home and abroad.

May the Gospel-the old Gospel-spread among us here and everywhere in the old way. May we get the women truly converted to Christ; for when we get them, we get the children and the servants and the money; and as for the men-well, they aren't so all-important as we have been making them out to be, and so place aux dames! May the Lord surprise us with His salvation, through this "surprise"

sermon.

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

A SHORT WALK OVER "REDEMPTION GROUND."

A Sermon

DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, Nov. 24, 1889, BY THE

REV. JOHN MCNEILL.

Text: EXODUS XIV.

We cannot, of course, go into all the minute detail given here; the chapter is thirty-one verses long. But you will notice that our translators have put paragraph marks through this chapter, as they have done all through Scripture; and although sometimes these are not very well planted, in this chapter, at any rate, they really mark paragraphs, and are real and helpful divisions, and we might get most profitably through the whole of this narrative by simply taking a striking word or expression out of each. paragraph.

The first paragraph contains the first four verses, and the striking expression there is, if you will allow me to come at once to this subject, "And Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in." Of course this was written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages are resting. These people were redeemed from the bitter bondage of Egypt. We are redeemed from a still more bitter bondage and severe task-master. As with them, so with us: with a high hand and an outstretched arm the Lord has broken our bonds, and is leading and guiding us to a place of which

He has spoken to us in the Word of the promise of His Gospel. He is bringing us to a goodly land and a large. He is bringing us, though it be through fire and water, to a wealthy place; and all this history of Israel, from their redemption from Egypt to their possession of the promised land, is but a picture of our progress from justification to final sanctification and eternal glory. Now here, where in this chapter the curtain rises upon Israel's national history, and where the spiritual curtain rises upon our spiritual history, the analogical teaching is very strong.

And I want you to centre your attention on that expression, "They were entangled in the land." Just precisely as it was with them as living, breathing men and women, and as a nation with such and such a history in the past, and with such and such a prospect in the future, and the present immediate surroundings; so it is with us. A great deal of our distress, a great deal of our present panic and uneasiness, and misery and gloom, comes from the voice that whispers in our ears, "To leave Egypt was a mistake." True, you were not exactly well off there; still, what better have you made of yourself by the change? You have escaped one kind of trouble only to land yourself in another. You have avoided Scylla and fallen upon Charybdis. True, you are delivered from the lash of the task-master; you are not so sunburnt and baked, body and soul, as you used to be; but what more have you made of it? 'You are entangled in the land." You are all in a muddle and mess; you don't know where you are, a kind of neither lost nor won state, neither redeemed nor altogether let alone. Now, in our hearts, this morning, many of us are very much like this. We are entangled in the land; the wilderness hath shut us in.

When I was trudging through the mud of London to Regent Square, and thinking of my subject, I thought the very grim, wretched London brick walls said it to me, and the miserable atmosphere repeated to me, "You redeemed? You a believer bound for glory? You a pilgrim going home? No; you are entangled in the land; hemmed in,

shut in." At one time you may have had some idea of guidance and direction, but it is over already. Before the blessedness almost began it has vanished. Like many of us, yea, like all of us, when we consult with flesh and blood, and take counsel of our fears, we all give up hope and sink into despondency, and say, "I shall never see the goodly land. This Gospel, when it came to me, spoke in my ear great words; but it has broken its promises. The word that was spoken to my ear has been broken to my hope. The Gospel said 'Redemption,' the Gospel said Salvation,' the Gospel said Freedom,' the Gospel said 'Victory.'

Where am

I now? Am I redeemed? am I free? am I victorious? am I saved? I am simply entangled in the land."

The next paragraph shows us the very opposite state of feeling, the very opposite state of mind on the part of Israel's enemies. The Israelites seemed to be without compass, without guide, without direction, without strength. Their enemies were full of purpose, full of energy, full of guidance, knowing precisely what they would be at, and that was to recover Israel. Look at the paragraph. We need all to get both sides of this great question of salvation fully before our minds.

"And the heart of Pharaoh and of his servants was turned against the people, and they said, Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us? And he made ready his chariot, and took his people with him; and he took six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them. And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, and he pursued after the children of Israel: for the children of Israel went out with an high hand. But the Egyptians pursued after them, all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh, and his horsemen, and his army, and overtook them encamping by the sea, beside Pi-hahiroth, before Baalzephon."

Israel is presented to us in the opening paragraph like a little purposeless company of sheep or lambs, and their enemies are presented to us in this second paragraph as strong in purpose, with the chariots and the horsemen, and with might and majesty and power. And, my brother and