bloody sweat of Gethsemane, the joy of God's countenance for the desertion on Calvary, when He cried, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" As we contemplate this, we must stand in awe at the sovereignty of God as displayed in all His doings, and what He doeth shall stand for ever, whatever infidels, sceptics, and mere professors may say to the contrary. "If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me: even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from Thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to Thee." The Psalmist might well say: "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it." But, blessed be God, according to the subsequent portion of the Psalm, that which God had ordained for His children, and they, because of their ignorance and inability, could not attain unto, He, in covenant and incarnation, has descended to for all the members of the one body. Here we see JEHOVAH, the incommunicable, communicating with His people.

JEHOVAH-GOD! Yes, there must be a communication of all contained in covenant connection with that name to His own; yes, of all that He has made Himself to them. Therefore we find here and there words of qualification or explanation added to this name. Look at a few.

JEHOVAH-JIREH, who will supply all my need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus (Gen. xxii. 14; Phil. iv. 19). JEHOVAй-ROPHI, who healeth all my diseases (Exod. xv. 26; Psalm ciii. 3).

JEHOVAH-NISSI, who covereth my head in the day of battle (Exod. xvii. 15; Psalm cxl. 7).

JEHOVAH-SHALOM, who is my peace in tribulation (Judges vi. 24; John xvi. 33).

JEHOVAH-TSIDKENU, the LORD my righteousness (Jer. xxiii. 6, xxxiii. 16).

JEHOVAH-SHAMMAH, who will be with His people in all places and at all times (Ezekiel xlviii. 35; Gen. xxviii. 15).

JEHOVAH-GOD. God is the old Anglo-Saxon word for good. God is good, and goodness is His nature. Goodness is not a mere attribute of Deity, but the expression of His nature to His covenant people. The Father's goodness is revealed in the Son of His love by the grace and indwelling of His good Spirit. Goodness is God going forth in covenant transactions. The Father blessing His people, the Son saving His people, the Holy Ghost regenerating, reviving, and restoring His people. The Father is good; the Son is good; the Holy Ghost is good. These Three are good in one undivided essence, will, and work. God is found by His own in every pleasure and in every pain; every friend and in every enemy; in every sorrow and in

in

every joy; in every trial and in every deliverance. But we must pass on.

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Merciful and gracious." What is mercy? Mercy is God's covenant favour shown to elect but miserable sinners. Where there is no misery, there can be no mercy. If you know not what it is to be miserable on account of sin, unbelief, and Satan's temptations, you must be destitute of an experimental acquaintance with God's covenant mercy; but brought to experience it as a sovereign favour from Him who will show mercy on whom He will show mercy, and whose mercy is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him, you will gladly join with Toplady and sing,

"A debtor to mercy alone,

Of covenant mercy I sing,

Nor fear with Thy righteousness on,
My person and offerings to bring;
The terrors of law and of God

With me can have nothing to do;
My Saviour's obedience and blood

Hide all my transgressions from view."

God's mercy is not only in the covenant, but flows from it in streams of redeeming love and blood. In His redeeming mercy He brings me from the hug of the devil, from his slavish chains, from the pit wherein is no water of life, love, or grace. But JEHOVAH is also gracious. What are we to understand by this term? When we hear of one person being gracious to another, if we have a right apprehension of the term, we know that the gracious person was not called upon to notice the one upon whom his kind attentions have been bestowed. God gracious, is the revealing of His love to unworthy, undeserving, and helldeserving objects. Many talk of grace who know nothing of their unworthiness, and who laugh to scorn as a vain idea the right of God to punish the wicked at all. But we, who have been brought to tremble at the thought of His wrath, through a true apprehension of what sin is, and some sweet realisation of His pardoning and forgiving love, can sometimes sing—

Long-suffering.

Precious fact! "He is long-suffering to usward, not willing that any one of us should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter iii. 9). God is so longsuffering toward His own that His anger never reaches or overtakes them. He bears with their rebellious and perverse manners in the wilderness, and though they sin against Him, wander from Him, and forget Him altogether, yet He is silent in His love, and neither crushes nor curses them. Nay, for their sake, His judgments against the world slumber, for while an elect vessel of mercy is found amid any moral desolation of this

evil world, He stays the rod of His wrath and the fire of His indignation from devouring His adversaries in one common ruin. You see this in the case of Lot. God was determined to destroy the guilty cities of the plain, but not while Lot lingered there. He hurries His righteous servant out of the doomed spot, saying, "Haste thee, escape thither, for I cannot do anything till thou be come thither" (Gen. xix. 22). "The same day

that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all" (Luke xvii. 29). Look at His long-suffering as described in that precious Scripture, Isa. xxx. 18: "And therefore will the LORD wait, that He may be gracious unto you, and therefore will He be exalted, that He may have mercy upon you; for the LORD is a God of judg ment: blessed are all they that wait for Him."

"My God, and did'st Thou wait for me,

To manifest Thy love?

Henceforth my soul shall wait for Thee,
To see Thy face above."

"Abundant in goodness and truth."

Look at the latter,

"abundant in truth." JEHOVAH is " JEHOVAH is "a God of truth (Deut. xxxii. 4). The Son speaks of Himself as "The Truth" (John xiv. 6). The Holy Ghost is called "The Spirit of truth" (John xiv. 17). The Gospel is styled "The Word of the truth of the Gospel" (Col. i. 5). Christ said of the Spirit, "He will guide you into all truth (John xvi. 13). For many years I was puzzled beyond measure how to understand this. I thought, here is one Scripture declaring that the world itself could not contain the books that should be written concerning the truth" (John xxi. 25), and here I see the promise of Jesus that I, a poor weak mortal, shall be guided into all truth. This was a mystery that I could not solve, until the Spirit opened my eyes to the fact that it is all truth designed for me to know, and into the knowledge of which I must be surely brought; all truth necessary to preserve me from the wiles of the devil; all truth necessary for my spiritual education. There is "abundance" of truth in JEHOVAH-JESUS to be communicated by the Spirit of truth in the set time of favour, causing the soul to rejoice in the enjoyment of the fulfilment of that promise, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John viii. 32).

Keeping mercy for thousands." He does not say for everybody, or for the great mass of mankind. Oh, no! but "for thousands." The Master said, "Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it " (Matt. vii. 14). The tried and tempted pilgrim knows and feels this, and would often cling to it to the ignoring of the words before us: "keeping mercy for thousands." Elijah felt his isolation so much as to say to God: "Lord, they have killed Thy prophets, and digged down Thine altars; and I am left alone,

and they seek my life." But what saith the answer of God to him? "I have reserved to Myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal" (Rom. xi. 3, 4). Those of us who are acquainted with God's blessed Word, know that the experience of Elijah was not peculiar to himself. It is the experience of the Church in every dispensation. Turn to Psalm cxlii. 4, where you see the isolation of the Man of sorrows, and of all the sorrowful ones in union with Him: "I looked on My right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know Me; refuge failed Me; no man cared for My soul." Read the history of Paul, and you will see that, possessed of all the light and grace with which God had blessed him, he was brought to the same spot of loneliness with his God. He could say," All men forsook me" (2 Tim. iv. 16). When we look at this great London-might I not say, This great Babylon of ours?-judging after the sight of our eyes, we might truly say, "Few are chosen;" but we cannot tell where God's hidden ones are. The other morning I received a letter from a poor old pauper in Marylebone Workhouse-should I not rather say, a prince in a poorhouse? Could our mental vision be so strengthened, we should see highly-favoured ones in prison cells, in hospital wards, in lonely chambers, in garrets and cellars. We would have them crowding to church, chapel, and meetinghouse, but our God will have His own where He will, and it is a marvellous mercy by the sweet constrainings of the Spirit to say Amen to this. When the grand finale takes place, and the whole election of grace whose names are in the Lamb's book of life are gathered together in one, then we shall see a multitude which no man can number. "The number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands (Rev. v. 11).

Some of us have experienced the tender mercy of our God and lost the felt possession of the same again and again, though in fact we can never lose it. He keeps and holds it for us in the midst of all our sins, follies, and imperfections. He will keep it, and neither hell, devils, sins, corruptions, doubts, fears, accursed unbelief, nor all combined can sever a soul from His loved embrace, or debar a child from the enjoyment of that which He keeps for it. This reminds me of an incident I have somewhere read. A prince presents to a subject a ring, the possession of which was the token, pledge, and security of his unchanging affection and regard. He leaves it to the judgment of the subject as to who should hold, keep, and preserve the ring. The subject longs for it, and is entrusted with it; but during his voyage over the ocean of life he loses his hold, and down it falls to the depths beneath. He meets his prince, who desires the production of the token of love. Confusion of face is the lot of the subject, when, to his astonishment, the prince produces the lost treasure. Blessed be God, He holds the waters in the hollow of His hand,

the very place where He holds His saints and the mercy kept for them.

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Forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin." Is there any difference here? Yes. Look at Psa. xxxii. 1, 2. Transgression forgiven. Sin covered. Iniquity not imputed. Eve transgressed, being deceived. Adam sinned with his eyes wide open. Out of love to his wife, and want of love to his God, he sinned. Iniquity! What is it? It is sin, arising from the enmity of the carnal mind and the deceitfulness of the devil. The slime of the serpent is always seen in it. Yet, whatever be the kind or degree of sin a child of God may fall into, the Father has forgiveness for it. One sins, and is scarcely sensible of it-there is forgiveness for him. Another sins, with aggravated guiltthere is forgiveness for him. Another sins, in foul succession, like David, and appears almost beyond the reach of covenant love, but not so. God, through His servant Nathan, draws out the confession, "I have sinned against the LORD," and blesses him with the gracious communication, "The LORD hath put away thy sin."

"That will by no means clear the_guilty." God is holy; He cannot pass by sin. He is just; He cannot regard it with impunity. Sin must meet with its desert, either in the person of the principal or the Surety. See! All out of Christ, left without remedy, must meet and bear the due desert of their transgressions, sins, and iniquities, while all in Christ are set free through the agonies and sufferings of their Surety on Calvary's hill. Now we come to the terrible part of the proclamation, and may God graciously speak a word of counsel to fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, and children now present.

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Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and to the fourth generation." The Psalmist prayed for an immunity from this "O remember not against us the iniquities of them that were before us" (Psa. lxxix. 8, margin). We see it bursting out in hereditary diseases. We behold it in the transmission of evil dispositions from father to child. Am I a father? O God, cause me to act as a gracious one in the presence of my children. Am I a husband? O, Thou Husband of Thy Church, teach me to love my wife, and be not bitter against her. Art thou a wife? May the Lord teach thee to be obedient to thy husband in Him. Whatever be our relationship, may it be sweetened by the mercy which He keeps for His own, and graciously communicates to them by the power of His own blessed Spirit.

May He add His blessing, for His name's sake. Amen.