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dent; then it withers and dies. That is the condition of a natural thing. The man has power to sever himself from the Being who is the spring of all his memory, trust, hopes; he can say, 'I will try to live by myself and to myself.' That is the condition of a voluntary or spiritual being. But he need not say this. He may abide in his true proper state. And if he has not done so, if he has struggled to be independent, he may give up that struggle; he may discover that it is a vain struggle; he may learn from the pricking of his conscience that there is One mightier than himself whom he has been fighting against. He may learn what that Friend is; he may turn to Him and say, 'I desire to abide henceforth in Thee, for I have no strength, no life or goodness of my own.' This is what St. Paul did when he found, on his way to Damascus, that the Jesus whom he had persecuted was his true Lord. All who received the message of the Gospel from the Apostles, whether Jews or Greeks, did this. They were told that the Lord of their spirits had taken their flesh and had come amongst them, that he might deliver them from their tyrants, and claim them as His subjects and liegemen. They were told that they might turn to Him, and trust in Him, and abide in Him. They had wanted such a Deliverer, such a Lord, such a Brother. They were sure it was not a delusion that they had one. The more they acted

on this faith, the more they were sure that it was not. Every exhortation, then, of their teachers-if those teachers were true to their calling-had this burden: 'Abide

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in Him. Do not forget what you are. Do not forego your ' rights. Do not sink back into the condition of animals.' This exhortation is strengthened here by the argument:

'That when He shall appear ye may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.' I said that the Apostles expected a speedy appearing or manifestation of Jesus as the Judge of their nation and of all nations. I said also that they regarded every judgment upon their own nation or upon any nation in that age, or any age, as a manifestation or appearing of Jesus Christ. They believed Him to be the King of the World; they could not doubt that what we describe as crises or revolutions in the condition of society were, in very deed, discoveries of His purposes, the destruction of something which had interfered with them. Such a doctrine was involved in the belief which they had in Him as the Son of Man. But that same belief obliged them to suppose that a very thin veil is interposed between us and Him, and that when we shut our eyes upon this world that veil is removed. Then the outsides of the world which present themselves to our senses will vanish; the substantial principles and realities which the eye cannot see, but which the spirit confesses and believes in, will stand forth. Christ the Lord of our own selves will appear, when those things that have only been surrounding us disappear. When He does so appear, must it not be a terrible shock to those who have dwelt in the things which are fading away, whose hearts have known no home except them? Must there not be a sense of strangeness, of utter dissonancy, when He of whom we have thought nothing here, whom we have put away as far as we could, is known to be the ground of our being, the Life apart from which there is no life? What words. can be used to describe that awakening? St. John's are the best words and the simplest and truest-though they

SHAME AND CONFIDENCE.

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are not those which a rhetorician would make use of. He speaks of being 'ashamed' at His appearing. He has been ' with us ever since we began to exist, and we knew it not! 'He has been doing us good, and we turned away from 'Him! He has been tempting us into the light, and we chose the darkness.' Yes! infinite shame, the remorse for a self-chosen alienation,-does not that exceed all the mere outward horror which the fancy pictures to itself; do we not feel that is no picture—that is reality?

But St. John speaks to his disciples of their not being ashamed before Him at His coming, of having confidence in Him. This would be the effect of that abiding in Him to which he has urged them; so they would acquire a growing trust in Him to whom they were attached. Every step in their experience would deepen it. The accidents of the world which seem contrived to alienate them from it, would drive them to it. Their own weakness, ignorance, sinfulness, would be a perpetual excuse and warrant for it. They would be sure that God Himself was grafting them by all His discipline into that root which alone could cause them to bear fruit. What is there, in the event of death, to shake that confidence? What is the truth to which they awaken, but that which has been every hour becoming more certain to them? It is but the full life of which they had been sipping draughts from time to time. It is but the light to which they had been continually turning from their own darkness.

But our Apostle is never satisfied with emblems, not even with such beautiful emblems as that of the vine and the branches: His meaning is altogether practical. He wants men to be doing righteous, honest acts. He knows it is

very hard to do such acts, that there are ten thousand temptations not to do them, but to change them for mere words or professions. So he explains in the 29th verse what he has been saying before, by adding, We know that if He is righteous, every one that doeth righteousness is born of Him.' Righteous acts spring from a righteous person, as sound healthy branches proceed from a sound healthy root. When he speaks of Christ as the root in which we are to abide, he means that He is the righteous Lord, by fellowship with whom we may be able to do righteousness. He has no notion of divine knowledge which does not lead to this result. As I have said so often, he never separates knowledge from life.

But you observe, he changes his form of expression in the last verse. He leaves natural symbols; he begins to talk of human relations. He that doeth righteousness is born of Him.' Such a man has the signs of a heavenly parentage; he has a birth from above. Is it that he has earned his relation to God by doing righteous acts? Has he made himself God's child by some services which he has rendered to Him? No! these are the world's ethics; in these lies that self-righteousness which the Bible denounces, and which the conscience in us revolts against. Christian ethics proceed on the opposite principle. We do not attach ourselves to Christ by performing righteous acts. We are able to perform righteous acts because we are attached to Him. We do not become God's children because we are good; but being the children of a good God, we can be like our Father in heaven.

You see, therefore, how the first verse of the next chapter is connected with this: Behold, what manner of love the

THE DIVINE BIRTH.

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Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. 'Born of Him,'- think what that nothing less than this:

means. It means

God, of His own free and infinite love, calls you His children, 'claims you as His children, in His only begotten Son. 'Wonder at that announcement as much as you can. Refer your state to God altogether, not the least to yourselves. See in it the proof of what He is. But do not deny it; 'for so you deny that you can do what is right, what the righteous God would have you do. Say not that it is 'impossible; for so you say that it is impossible for you

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'not to be unrighteous; untrue men. And remember

always that this relation is one between God and your spirits; hidden, therefore, from the world; not to be ' recognised by those who see with the world's eyes. If 'you have ever been disposed to complain that you are not ' understood when you are acting as God's children, seeking 'to obey His will, nay, that the very notion of your being 'connected with a spiritual family and a spiritual Father 6 is scouted as ridiculous; then remember that He who was ' called the Only Begotten Son, the well beloved Son-that ' elder brother in whom we are united, and through whom we claim our filial rights—was unknown to the world, 'mistaken by the world, for precisely the same reason, be'cause He spake of a Father, trusted a Father, lived in a 'Father.'

That, as St. John shows us in his Gospel, was not merely a cause why the Pharisees, the leaders of the Jewish religious world, misunderstood Him and reviled Him, but the cause. They knew not,' he says, ' that He