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not commit sin." Only here the word "all" is in the masculine, while in John vi. 37, it is in the neuter. We have it put, however, in the neuter in a somewhat similar passage in verse 15 of the same chapter-"Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world." "all" in John vi. 37, evidently comprehends the entire clection of God, and excludes all other; and may not the "all" here and in verse 15 likewise comprehend all that is born of God in contradistinction to all that is born of nature ?

We are inclined, therefore, to think that the passage allude to the new birth of the spirit or spiritual nature in contradistinction to the old birth of the flesh or carnal nature; and if so the passage might not only teach that a believer does not willingly commit sin, but also that he has been made a partaker of such a divine nature (2 Peter i. 4) as is in itself incapable of sinning, and which sin cannot touch. This may seem a startling assertion, but we think it is fully borne out by other passages of Scripture. In the Old Testament we are told "the desire of the righteous is only good." (Prov. xi. 23.) But must not this refer to his new nature: for the desire of his old nature is only evil and that continually? (Gen. vi. 5.) See also Rom. vii. 18, 25. Is not this likewise the meaning of 1 John v. 18? Is it not what is born of God in the renewed man that the devil cannot touch, for he can touch them in their old nature? Witness the grievous falls of even the best of God's people. Let us look, however, into the subject somewhat more closely. First, then, we are taught that man of himself naturally can do nothing that is good. "The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies;" and that this testimony is not confined to any particular class, but is extended alike to all, we are told again, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." Now it does not say simply "the fool hath said "--but "the fool hath said in his heart"-"there is no God;" that is, he hath acted out from the deep-rooted depravity of his heart as if there were no God. "Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good. God looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand that did seek God. Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no not one." Besides the universality of these statements, the apostle Paul brings them forward in his Epistle to the Romans to prove of both Jews and Gentiles that they are all under sin." Nay, he himself asserts that "in me, that is, in my flesh, there dwelleth no good thing."

These are very sweeping assertions, but they are infallibly true; and if it be contended that unconverted men do, notwithstanding, works in themselves good, we answer, it is true; they may, but it does not follow that they do good works: for figs and grapes may be hung upon a bramble bush, but it does not follow that it therefore bore them. To be really produced by it, they should spring of necessity from the plant itself. "Either make the tree good," said Jesus, "and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit," ie., by the actual produce of the tree. Motive is everything in action. If actions spring from wrong or false principles (although beneficial to their objects) they are of no value to the agent. Indeed a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit;" and "the carnal mind is

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enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God: neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God." Independent of which considerations, we know not how far such actions may be influenced by God Himself, because man is not utterly given up of God, and many of his evil actions are undoubtedly restrained; and we know not how far his so-called good actions may be similarly influenced. For the apostle, speaking to this point that "not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified," says, "For when the Gentiles, which have not the law (i.e., have no written revelation from God) do by nature (in their natural state) the things contained in the law (by acting up to the light of their consciences), these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which shew the work of the law written in their hearts (which it is God's especial prerogative to do), their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another."

When, therefore, God begins a good work in any soul He does so by putting in it a principle of life and holiness, which is continued by the Holy Ghost. He gives it a new nature. He transforms it by renewing His image upon it, and giving it a principle of obedience founded on love to Himself. He implants within it a living and imperishable seed, which will spring up to perfection and issue in life everlasting. Not indeed that this seed is self-supporting, or can grow without the divine power and energy, for "without me, says Christ, "ye can do nothing," but that God has given this life for life, and it shall live and not die; it shall "live for ever:" "for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance." And now commences that " everlasting" life of God in the soul. "He that heareth my word and believeth on Him that sent me," saith our Lord, "hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life." Now the holy law is written on the heart.

Time was when "man" was "made upright," and the tables of the law were imprinted upon his heart; but when he fell, sin broke these tables and blotted out the law. It is the object, therefore, of the blessed Spirit, when He visits the sinner, to renew these tables in his heart and rewrite the law of God upon them. As it is written in Jer. xxxi. 33--" But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts," &c. And St. Paul expressly applies this to the sanctification of the sinner by the Spirit of God in Heb. x. 15, 16:-" Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that He had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them," &c. And thus believers are said to be "the epistles of Christ, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart."

When, therefore, "a certain lawyer" asked our Saviour, "Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy

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self. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matt. xxii. 35-40. See also Luke x. 25-28.) Hence, when God has implanted this principle of love in any soul, this law of God begins to be fulfilled in that soul. So St. Paul teaches us; for speaking of the second table he says: 'Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fiulfilled the law. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour; therefore love is the fiulfilling of the law." And again: "For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." And again: "Bear ye one anothers burdens," which love alone can enable you to do, "and so fulfil the law of Christ." The apostle John teaches us the same truth. "Beloved," says he, "let us love one another; for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.' "By this we know, that we love the children of God when we love God and keep His commandments." And since this principle is wrought in the heart, and kept up in it only by the Spirit of God, the former apostle speaking of this life says "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh : that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Hence, as the natural man "walketh after the flesh," or follows the course of his nature, "fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind," so the spiritual man "walks after the Spirit" and "fulfils the law" which has been written in his heart by the Spirit of God. Hence, we think it clearly follows, that if the new nature fulfils the law of God, it certainly does not fulfil the law of sin-does not and cannot sin; and this is exactly what the passage before us teaches. Is not the same truth likewise taught in Gal. v. 17? There "the flesh," or old corrupt nature, and "the Spirit," or new nature, are said to "lust against" one another, and to be "contrary to" one another. But how could they by possibility be contraries if they were in any degree the same?

We are not to understand, however, from these passages that the man himself does not sin, for we have clearly seen the contrary to be the fact. Of Christ alone can it be said that His whole heart was a perfect transcript of the law of God, which was shown in type by the second written unbroken copy of the law being put in the inside of the ark, as we read in Ps. xl. 8—“I delight to do thy will, O, my God: yea, thy law is within my heart," a passage which is brought forward with the context by St. Paul, in Heb. x. 5-10, to show this object of His coming into the world. But of the believer only in a modified sense is it asserted that "the law of his God is in his heart" (Ps. xxxvii. 31), and in another place (Isa. li. 7), "The people in whose heart is God's law," passages which of course apply to the new nature of the believer only, and to it not to prove a perfect fulfilment of the law, but only a fulfilment so far as it goes, and that solely in consequence of his union with Christ, the only law fulfiller.

Indeed St. Paul, speaking of the two natures of the believer, says of the first "For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing. ... I find then a law, that when I would do good, evil

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is present with me;" and then passing on to the second, he adds"For I delight in the law of God after the inward (which is elsewhere called 'the new man,' as being the last born, in contradistinction to the old man,' or firstborn; the old nature, so far from delighting in the law, being in enmity both against it and its author): but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind (or renewed nature), and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am!" says he, "who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God," he adds, "through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then," he concludes, "with the mind (the spiritual nature which Christ has given me by the Holy Ghost, which I have from the second Adam), I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh (or corrupt nature which I had from the first Adam) the law of sin." So that the believer, like Rebecca, has "two manner of people," as it were, "in his womb" (Gen. xxv. 23), "struggling toge ther" for the mastery (verse 22), and howsoever the old man or firstborn may seem to prevail, yet he shall not ultimately do so; for "the elder" shall not only "serve the younger" (verse 23), but shall ultimately die by his hand (Obadiah 17, 18; Rom. vi. 6, viii. 13) ; and God has so ordained it that that very event that giveth death natural to the believer, with a prospect of the future life of his "vile body" in a "glorified" form (Phil. iii. 21), giveth death eternal to his old nature, and frees the "perfected" "spirit" of the "just man " for ever." (Heb. xii. 23.)

CHRIST AT PRAYER.

WHEN we read our Saviour's discourses, we feel that they are the utterances of more than human intelligence, and that they deal with matters of intense and absorbing interest. Though we have not the advantage of hearing the sublime melody of His voice, yet we can fully sympathize with those who were astonished at His doctrine," and with the officers who excused themselves to the Pharisees for not arresting Him, by saying, "Never man spake like this man." The supernatural 'eloquence of those lips into which grace was poured overawed the rough messengers, so that they would rather face the anger of their employers than attempt to lay hands on that speaker. What a testimony this to the soul-thrilling words of the "Teacher sent from God!" But without imagining the exquisite modulation, the mellifluous tone, the heavenly harmony of those lips which were never stained by the breath of sin-for in the case of mere men, eloquence, like every other human attribute, has suffered by the Fall, and must be redeemed before it can reach its loftiest altitude-let any intelligent Christian carefully read the recorded speeches of Jesus, and he will soon discover enough to rivet his attention, and to awaken the emotions of his heart. He hears not the voice which entranced the surging multitude, and hushed them to breathless silence as soon as it fell upon their ear; and he sees not that marvellous eye which looked heaven to the weeping

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penitent, and terrified demons with a vision of their Almighty Judge; but without these potent auxiliaries to a full realization of the Lord's teaching, he can see enough to assure him that it is unique, soulsearching, living, divine; or, in the remarkable language of an apostle, "Quick and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." What delicate shades of meaning, what intense purity and spirituality, what depths of thought, what perfect mastery of the subject, what striking originality, and what unparalleled simplicity of language characterize these glorious discourses!

Take the sermon on the mount. Here you are completely in the grasp of the Speaker, and there is no escape. Your heart, soul, thoughts, feelings, your inner being, your whole history are in His hand; He is speaking to and through you, and there is no possibility of evading the point of the divine anatomist's lance. It is you and not another that He is dealing with. Your subtlest thoughts are analyzed; and the most profoundly secret wish of your heart is placed quivering with conscious shame and terror beneath the broad light of day.

Or take His valedictory address. What pathos, what matchless tenderness, what yearning love, and what glorious glimpses of gilded heavens, and sunlit mansions, and ecstatic enjoyment to him and his when the terrible tempest shall have spent its fury and passed away for ever! Christ's farewell sermon moves, melts, overwhelms, excites, delights, transports by turns. You are in the dismal valley, you are jostled by the blaspheming crowd, you are weeping in solitude, you are tossed on the billows of a frightful mystery, you are filled with unutterable joy, you are triumphantly waving palm branches in glory! Such speech as this stands alone in human language: "Never man spake like this man!" Most true, ye police officers of the old city of David; and, perhaps, when He comes again your brief criticism will be accepted as proof of a better state of mind than that of the haughty Pharisees who contemptuously scorned you as a portion of the "cursed" mob who knew not the law!

But His speech was not addressed exclusively to men; He spoke also and often to God. What He said on those occasions-what was the burden of His prayer when alone with His Father night after night on the mountain ridge, with the world asleep at His feet, how we long to know! The period may come when even this holy mystery shall be mystery no longer; but we cannot err in the conclusion that mankind at large, and the believing portion of the race in particular, are daily reaping benefit from these midnight petitions of the Holy One of God. How sublime the picture of the only sinless One on earth holding the world, with its tremendous burden of sins and sorrows, in His hands before God in prayer in the silence of night and the solitude of a mountain. An unutterable grandeur, unseen by mortal eye, surrounds the scene. God looks upon it, and is well pleased. The appointed Intercessor, the High Priest, whom the Father always hears, is there with large and far-reaching petitions, every one of which becomes a fresh bond of union between heaven and earth. Over the entire globe, with all its vastly varied sights and scenes, there is no spot like that nameless mountain top. While most of the inhabitants of Judea and