CHAPTER VIII.

THE TRUE BELIEVER PREPARING TO UNITE WITH THE CHURCH AND COME TO THE LORD'S TABLE.

JUST as assuredly as any man desires and hopes for salvation, must he yield himself unreservedly and without compromise, to that God who provided salvation for him-to that Saviour who has redeemed him by His own precious blood and to that ever-blessed Spirit who has so graciously undertaken to work in our hearts to will and to do according to the purpose of God. This is the word of the Gospel, that "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart, thou shalt be saved." Thus thought and thus acted the primitive believers. They "first gave their ownselves to the Lord, and then to His church, according to the will of God."

This, many now living have felt to be their happy privilege to do; and this you, my dear reader, are now, I trust, about to do. Be

thankful, my friend, that God has heard your supplication, and that you have been encouraged to participate in such great and unspeakable privileges. Remember, however, that such encouragement is founded, not upon any fitness, preparedness, or worthiness in you, but upon the hope that you have become sensible of your own ignorance, guilt, and insufficiency, and have embraced Christ, and that you are looking to Him by prayer, and the diligent use of every means of grace, for wisdom and righteousness, and complete redemption; for His Holy Spirit to renew and sanctify you; and for grace and mercy according to your every need. This, and THIS ALONE, can give you a well-grounded hope that you have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that you have fled from every self-righteous dependence, and "laid hold on Christ as THE ONLY hope set before you in the Gospel." See to it then, my dear friend, that such is your spirit, your determination, and your hope. Without this you are still without Christ, and consequently "without God and without hope in the world." Without this your profession will only be hypocrisy, and your communicating in Christ's presence only a

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crucifying of Christ afresh," by a shameful denial of the freeness, fullness, and all-sufficiency of His work and mercy, His Spirit and grace. Not to communicate is a dreadful sin, but so also is unworthy communion. As the one is an open rejection of God's authority, so is the other a daring insult to God's omniscient purity and holiness. The one refuses to obey the invitation to come to the feast, and the other comes without a wedding garment. The one lives without Christ and without God in the world, and the other in the church. The one is rebellion and the other is hypocrisy, and both sinful exceedingly.

See to it, then, that "Christ is formed within you the hope of glory," and that you are "in Christ," "not having on your own righteousness, which is as filthy rags" in the sight of God who looketh upon the motive and the heart, but that you are clothed in the true and only wedding garment, "the white robe" of the spirits of the just made perfect in heaven. "Prove, therefore, your ownself; know you not your ownself; how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobate." For if you are not in Christ-if you are not dead to any further

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confidence in yourself, and to any hope of salvation, or of sanctification, safety, and persevering holiness, except through Christ,—your "goodness will be as the morning cloud, and the early dew, that soon passeth away;" and, "having put your hand to the Gospel plough," you will be found among those "who turn back unto perdition," and concerning whom Christ will say, at the day of judgment, "I never knew you." He alone can "stand fast," who has built his hope upon the rock Christ Jesus, since He is not only an immoveable rock to sustain, but also a spiritual rock to follow Him through all the wilderness, out of which will flow living waters, to quench and satisfy his thirsty soul. He alone is alive to God, so that he shall "grow in grace, and in the knowledge of God," who, from the bottom of his heart, can say, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." Blessed is the man whose hope is thus fixed in Christ, "whose sins are covered." He shall not be moved by any slight of men, or artifice of the devil, but shall be "like a tree planted

by rivers of water, whose leaves are always green, and its fruit plentiful, and whose root fadeth never." The confession made by such a man, being rooted in the grace of Christ, will never issue in broken vows and cursed apostacy.

"Take heed then," my dear reader, "that there be not in you an evil heart of unbelief,' which will assuredly lead you "to depart from the living God." How many professors, that once appeared "hot," (Rev. iii. 14-16,) have cooled down into lukewarmness and indifference, into worldliness and formality, and sometimes even into the icy form of ungodliness and infidelity, and having "begun in the Spirit," have "ended in the flesh." Their foundation being in themselves-their hope springing from excited feeling, and not from the word and promise, the person and the Spirit of Christ, and "having no root in them,—after a time they fall away, and "walk no more with Jesus." They never really knew Christ and the power of His Gospel, and therefore He never knew them. And hence "they have gone out from us, because they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would still have continued with us."