be spoken of as, another, then must He evidently be an equally divine Person, entitled to take rank with Christ Himself, and of Him it is predicated that He should abide with them for ever. Not as a visitant should He be, as the Lord had been, here for three years of ministry and testimony, and then cut off, but an abiding Comforter; for He should dwell with them; and also, instead of being seen of them, He should be in them. Moreover, He should so make good to their hearts the blessed ministry of Christ in its sweetness and plentitude, that all sense of desolation should be removed, and they should compass the precious fact that Christ was in the Father, and no less were they in Him, and He in them.

Secondly (xiv. 26), as the Comforter He should be sent of the Father in all the value and the virtue of the name of Christ, with all which that name is designed to convey to our consciences and to our hearts. 'He shall teach you all things," it is added, "and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." The whole of the truth of God for God's saints; all the Master's teaching to His beloved but forgetful disciples, should be brought again to their remembrance in the energy and unction of the Holy Ghost. What an inestimably blessed and cheering word both for them and for us!

In the third case (xv. 26), He is the sent One of Christ Himself from the Father; as such, He is the Spirit of truth, proceeding from the Father, and testifying of the Son. Here He is presented in connection with that testimony which should follow the rejection of Christ and His exaltation to glory. As the Lord Jesus had been the faithful witness of the Father, so

should the Holy Ghost be the faithful and official witness to the refused One of earth, glorified at God's right hand, in which testimony the saints are clearly embraced also, as the Lord graciously added to His disciples," And ye also shall bear witness."

Lastly, in xvi. 7 we have for the fourth time the Comforter named, and there it is in His relation to the world. In connection with this is the statement, that of such importance was His advent, that it was expedient for them that the blessed Lord should retire, that He might send Him unto them. It was unto them He should be given, unto them He should be sent. He should not be given or be sent unto the world as Christ had been (only to be rejected by it), but to them alone; yet He should have a relation and aspect towards the world, but it would be purely judicial. He should convict or fasten home its guilt upon it. The presence of the Lord Jesus in the world had been the testimony of God's love to it; the presence of the Holy Ghost (none the less real though unknown by it) should be of an opposite character. It is no longer testimony given in grace to the world, but given to the saints against it. The world is convicted of having refused and slain Him who came in grace to it, and is branded with its guilt. This the Holy Ghost's presence attests. God's grace and mercy were to be presented, and His goodness displayed, for eighteen centuries or more; but the reconciliation of the world as such is no longer contemplated. Its day of visitation had passed. Thenceforth it was the election of grace according to the sovereign goodness of God. It should be individuals only, picked up and saved out of the world, that His grace embraced. But as to the world itself, its sin was fastened on it because

it had believed not on Christ, God's gift to it. Righteousness as a divine principle was witnessed to also; for the Father had received to highest glory, on His own throne, Him whom the world in its unrighteousness had refused. And judgment alone remained, and was established as a future certainty, because in the cross the prince of this world (Satan) was already judged.

This closes the Lord's fourfold testimony to the person of the Comforter, and the effect of His presence. Many things more the Lord might have said, but they were not equal to it. This only He adds, that when He of whom the Lord had spoken should come, not from Himself should He speak, He should guide them into all the truth-the past, for He should bring all things to their remembrance; the present, what we may term the current thoughts of God to His saints, for whatsoever He should hear should He speak; and the future, for He should show them the things to come.

Surely we may say, How blessed and perfect a servant and Comforter is the Lord Jesus on high, and how equally blessed a servant and Comforter is the Holy Ghost, the divine witness in and with us of an earth-rejected Christ received up into glory! W. R.

"THE PEOPLE OF GOD."

NOTHING can be more solemn than the way the epithet "Christian" has been abused for well-nigh eighteen centuries. It has been adopted by many who have no sense of the responsibilities attaching to it before God, and much less possessed of the qualifications necessary

for the remotest attempt at a fulfilment of them. It is unquestioned there may be an outward conforming to "the faith of God's elect" as a system, without the living connection with God, which bows one before Him as supreme, holy, interested in His creatures, and revealed in entreating tenderness of grace; without, in short, "faith in Christ Jesus," by which one becomes a child of God, and appropriates, in obedience to His command and invitation, the blessings which His elect shall eternally share. There are dispensational marks which the ostensible body of professors bear, separating it from the rest of mankind; but there are certain determinative points also, which distinguish the true from the false in that ostensible body, and as these connect the soul with God in an essential and vital way, cognizable only to faith, it is sustaining to dwell upon them. One will be found in each of the five chapters of 1 Thessalonians; thus: Election, i.4; Calling, ii. 12; Appointed place on earth, iii. 3; True character, iv. 7; Hope, v. 9.

It is impossible to over-estimate the blessedness and importance of the first point, that there is an election from among Jews and Gentiles, according to "the eternal purpose of God." The frequency of reference to it by the apostles throughout the epistles bespeaks this importance, not only as implying the sovereignty and absolute grace of God, but for sustenance to the soul, which realizes it in a scene where the need of such sustenance is every day felt. There are those who reject or slight it in the first aspect, except as a general fact, supposing it incompatible with man's responsibility; and others again who, while professing it in the first aspect, are at one with the former in abolishing its

utility in the second, maintaining that it is presumptuous to be quite sure of being one of the number. 2 Tim. i. 9, and 2 John i., however, distinctly prove that both purpose and election concern individuals, and 2 Peter i. 10 that God's intention is we should be sure of our "calling and election."

A line of Scripture speaks volumes for the simple and submissive. The very strength and marrow of the gospel of Christ is that I (if one may speak for all the people of God in what is a matter, not of experience but of faith) may know I was chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world; that I was even then an object of the Father's concern and His; as certainly as that, being His, I was given to His Son out of the world, amongst "the many" whose individual sins were borne and put away at Calvary, in view of the day when we should be brought to God, graced in all the acceptability of His finished work, by which moreover He glorified God. All is secured and made known to us for our present enjoyment, as a fruit of His atoning sufferings. Blessed be His precious name!

Here then is a basis for divinely-given and divinelyexercised affections, which become duly manifest in "work of faith, labour of love, and patience of hope," as was the case with the Thessalonians. It is perfectly beautiful to witness the array of evidence brought forward in chapter i., upon the strength of which the apostle could be so confident as to the election of those to whom he addressed his epistle. They had received the gospel, turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and followed this up with praiseworthy consistency; looking also for God's Son from heaven with all the earnestness and reality implied in