OUR LORD went up to the great feast of tabernacles at Jerusalem, and, as His custom was, entered the temple and instructed the assembled audience. In consequence of this, the priests and doctors, the scribes. and pharisees, commenced hostilities against Him. It is true many of the people believed on Him; but when this fact was communicated to the pharisees and chief priests, they sent officers to take Him and bring Him before them. But mark the omnipotent power of Divine Truth. These officers had heard our Lord preach the gospel, they themselves had witnessed the words of Divine wisdom, the accents of goodness, the precepts of heavenly truth which proceeded out of His mouth, and they returned again to the pharisees; who, when they saw that they had not brought Jesus with them, inquired why they had not brought Him? And what was the answer of the officers to these persecuting, self-righteous pharisees? Even this. "Never man spake like this man." His words were accompanied with such Divine power, such heavenly wisdom, such invitations of mercy, and such attractive sentiments of love and of goodness flowed from his heavenly lips, that we felt our wills reluctant to give consent to the exertion of physical force, and our hands refused the office assigned them by you pharisees, so that we could not even interrupt him in his discourse, much less seize him and bring him before you; it was not in our power to arrest him! But what was the reply of the pharisees to this unexpected account with * "And every man went unto his own house."-John vii. 53. NO, XXXIX.-VOL. IV.

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which the officers returned to them? Just such as we expect in the present day when truth is declared and error denounced. Just such as we may expect to meet from the professing world, if our views do not correspond with their system. For as it was with the believers in the doctrine of Christ, in the days of his flesh, even so it is now. The pharisees met the candid and undisguised report of the officers with this question, "Are you deceived also?" And, "Have any of the rulers believed on him?" "But this people who know not the law are cursed." Then Nicodemus, one of their rulers-he that came to Jesus by night-he to whom but a short time previous to this circumstance our Lord had said, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God;" he to whom the Saviour had said, "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil;"-this master in Israel said, "Doth our law judge any man before it hear him, and know what he doeth?" This unexpected query from one of their own counsel, again excited them to anger, and they signified their displeasure by the following sarcastic inquiry, "Art thou also of Galilee ? Search and look; for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet." They knew that Jonah arose out of Gath-hepper, and Nahum from another village in Galilee, and that the town of Elijah the Tishbite was in Galilee also. And from the public register and the genealogies of the family of David, they might also have known that Jesus was not born in Galilee, but at Bethlehem. It is evident that Nicodemus had used an argument which they could not fairly controvert, and they were reduced to the necessity of answering him by personal reflection. Such are the subterfuges to which the adversaries of truth are driven, and who among us have not witnessed demonstrative proofs of the fact. "But a word spoken in scason, how good is it," whether it offend or please! The plain observation of Nicodemus gave a home thrust to their evil designs, the counsel broke up with all the haste and confusion of disappointed malice, and "every man went unto his own house."

Such is the brief outline of the historical facts recited in this chapter; facts which teach us that doctors and priests, scribes and pharisees, with all their store of boasted erudition and religious know. ledge, may, nevertheless, be the worst of men, "blind leaders of the blind," and violent persecutors of that Redeemer, who in mercy to us men, and for our salvation, took upon him our nature, to redeem us from hell, and open the gates of the heavenly paradise to all the faithful.

Without any further introductory remarks, we will now proceed to an illustration of the words of our text, viz.: "And every man went unto his own house."

The merely natural man-the man who has not been previously acquainted with the internal beauties of the Word of God—yea, all those, whether professed Christians or otherwise, who have been accustomed to look no farther than the letter of the Sacred Writings, may be ready to say, the words of the text are to us unimportant, destitute of religious instruction, as they merely inform us that the people went to their own house, each one to indulge his own opinions and conjectures as to the person and work of Christ. But, every verse and sentence in the volume of Divine Revelation contains an interior and spiritual meaning independent of the letter, which is but its covering; and that its inmost ground is altogether Divine, being spirit and life. With this true and consistent, as well as exalted view of the Sacred Writings, you will be enabled to draw the inevitable conclusion for yourselves, if the Word of God be important at all, it is all-important, since, being spiritual in its nature, it must be adapted to the spiritual wants and necessities of man. Although the events here recorded literally occurred, and every man went unto his own house, yet it has a spiritual signification also. By the term house in our text, we are not to understand an edifice raised by physical power, and formed of earthly materials, else, with equal propriety, might the term Church be understood to mean a pile of buildings surmounted with a tower, whenever the word occurs in the Sacred Volume. term house sometimes applies to the Church of the Lord, sometimes signifies religious worship, sometimes has reference to heaven, sometimes to the souls of men. The term house is used in reference to the Church of the Lord in the sixtieth chapter of Isaiah, where, speaking of the future glory and establishment of the Church, it is said, "they shall come up with acceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the house of my glory." Again, it is recorded by the prophet Micah, speaking of the Church, "Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest." And again, by the same prophet, Many nations shall come and say, Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob." And again, "The vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant." And the Psalmist says, "Those that are planted in the house of the Lord shall be fat and flourishing." Timothy, also, speaking of the members of the

The

Church of Christ, says, "In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earth, and some to honour and some to dishonour." And in Heb. iii. 6, we read, "Christ as a Son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the faith firm unto the end." In the sixth chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians, believers are called, "the household of faith." And the apostle, writing to the church at Ephesus, expresses himself in the following consolatory language, "Now, therefore, you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God." And, lastly, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is thus written, "Having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water."

But sometimes by the term house is signified heaven. Hence, we read in the fifth chapter of the Second of Corinthians, "We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." And in the fourteenth chapter of John, our Lord uses the term in reference to heaven, when he says, "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you."

We have said there is another sense in which the term is used; namely, to signify the soul or mind of man. Hence, when the scribes and pharisees accused the Saviour of casting out devils through Beelzebub, he spake unto them in parables, and said, "If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand." "No man can enter into a strong man's house and spoil his goods, except he shall first bind the strong man, and then he will spoil his house." And, again, "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return to my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he and taketh with himself seven other devils more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so also shall it be unto this wicked generation." And, lastly; the apostle speaking of his departure, when he should leave this frail tabernacle of clay behind, to be resumed no more; when, as he expresses it, he should be "absent from the body, but present with the Lord,” (that is, in a spiritual, substantial body,) he says, "for in this body we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven." For, as the apostle says elsewhere, "there is

a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." The natural body being an outward covering for the spiritual body, or spiritual house.

Having thus determined the spiritual application of the term house, we proceed to the consideration of the term in its internal signification, as used in the text, viz., the soul or mind of man. But, before we proceed, it may be necessary to observe, that there is a house which (in the phraseology of the text) may be properly called our own in several respects; and that there is a house which is not our own, but which we may also possess and enjoy, if we become truly wise unto salvation; which particulars we will endeavour briefly to elucidate.

And, first. There is a house which may be properly called our own, and into which the generality of mankind are disposed to enter, although they are apprised by Scripture, as well as by daily facts, that ere long they will find that house in ruins. You, no doubt, perceive that I allude to man's own depraved, natural mind. And yet, to understand this subject, in its proper light, it is necessary to add, that there exists an internal and an external man; or, in other words, that man is composed of a spiritual and natural part. The spiritual part of man receives the infusion of divine life from the Lord, who is the fountain of life, and through which man is not only endowed with rationality, in contradistinction to the brute creation, but is stamped with the indelible impress of immortality. The soul, immortal as its sire, can never die. Another distinction in man, which forms no part of the prevalent theology of the day, is, that man possesses a natural as well as a spiritual mind, which is constituted of an acquisition of knowledge and a formation of affections, derived from the world, together with those hereditary principles connected with natural birth. Now, this natural mind may be termed, with the strictest propriety, his own house, since it is the common receptacle of everything which properly belongs to man. Oh, that this great truth was more frequently contemplated, that men might be more careful as to the nature of the things to be treasured up in this depository! For there is nothing on the face of this earth which may be acquired by man, of an extraneous nature to that of the mind, whether "gold, silver, wood, hay, or stubble," which can truly be said to belong to us but in a comparative sense. It may be a man is possessed of extensive domains, elegant mansions, and hoards of golden treasure; but are they entirely and exclusively his? No. They are only lent him for a little season; and to the great and universal Lord of all, whose are the cattle upon a thousand hills, he is responsible either for its use or abuse. Well indeed for him, if with a grateful and discerning mind, he can say with