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"ABLE TO SUBDUE

all things unto Himself." See Phil. iii. 20, 21: "For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby HE IS ABLE TO SUBDUE all things unto Himself." Sin subdued, fears subdued, death subdued, and Christ the Subduer the Strength of our heart and our Portion for ever. Once again, and I have done. After dissolution, there is presentation before His face in glory. Turn now to the short epistle of Jude, and mark well his doxology. glorious one: "Now unto Him that is

It is a

"ABLE TO KEEP YOU FROM FALLING." Are you fallen? He will provide carriers for you, and should these fail, He will Himself carry you. Do you mourn your unbelieving state? He will believe for you. Do you bewail your prayerless spirit? His intercession shall prevail for you. See!" HE IS ABLE to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy." This is overflowing joy. The joy of the Lord is the strength of His people (Neh. viii. 10). This is the joy of the glorious Three-in-One. It is the harmonies of Deity conspiring to fill all heaven with strains of ineffable music. It is the overflowing of Divine delight to the whole of the glorified ones before the throne. "Your joy shall be full," said the Lord Jesus to His sorrowing disciples. Elect vessels filled with the fulness of their God. The overflowing of Divine joy shall fill the whole redeemed throng throughout a neverending eternity. Presented faultless! Are you full of sin this morning? He sees not a sin in you. Are you sinning? You are free from all sin. Are you sensible of your depravity? says, "Thou art all fair, My love, there is no spot in thee." Do you mourn over your unrighteousness? You are righteous in Him. Do you bewail your manifold transgressions? They are all swept away in the flood of the Redeemer's blood. Are you grieving over your shortcomings? You are complete in Him. Do you dread rejection from His presence? You are accepted and graced in the Beloved. In Him you are blessed by the Great Sacred Three, never to be separated from Him, but through the countless ages of eternity to bask in the sunshine of His presence and be lost in His love.

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

He

PREPARED THINGS FOR A PREPARED PEOPLE.

A Sermon

PREACHED IN GROVE CHAPEL, CAMBERWELL, ON SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 2ND, 1879, BY

THOMAS BRADBURY.

But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him." -1 Cor. ii. 9.

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LAST Friday evening, at our weekly prayer meeting, it was my lot to dwell upon the pleasant and painful truths written by the apostle in the first chapter of this epistle. Pleasant in the first and last portions of the chapter. The first part, down to the end of ver. 9, describes the persons at Corinth for whom the blessings enumerated were designed. They were persons in union with the Lord Jesus Christ, and styled, "The Church of God which is at Corinth." The Church of God"not according to the world's acceptance of that title, but according to JEHOVAH'S decree, design, and determination. The Church of God is formed of the gathered-out ones, those who are gathered together by the power of the Holy Ghost to the name and to the person of Jesus, and to the enjoyment of the privileges and immunities which God has treasured up in Him. The Church of God knows nothing of sectarian differences or denominational distinctions. It requires not human laws or regulations to guide it, and all that man can do for it is but to perplex and distract. The Churchman will tell you that the Church of God is formed of those who have been sprinkled in infancy, confirmed in youth, and who remain staunch in their attachment to the Establishment. There are others who will tell you that only those who are immersed, who have dealt out their experience before the people, and have received the right hand of fellowship, are the Church. Well, I do not believe a word of it. The Church of God upon earth is composed of God's elect, redeemed and regenerate ones, who are gathered together to the person of a living Christ without the aid of any of those appliances which

No. 114-PRICE ONE PENNY.

any hypocrite or make-believe can submit to. We see this from the Saviour's own testimony in Matt. xviii. 20, where he describes the true Church: "For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them." There you have the Church defined.

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Look at ver. 2 of this first chapter: "Unto the Church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus," separated in Christ Jesus. "Called saints." I leave out those two words in italics" to be," because the people of God are not called to be saints, but before their calling are saints, and their calling declares them to be what they eternally are: "with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours." I like that! "With all that in every place." Oh, what a glorious declaration! Jonah in the belly of hell, down in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea; Peter on the house top at Joppa; John in the lonely sea-girt isle of Patmos. There are loved, yet tempted and tried ones up in dirty garrets and down in murky cellars, unknown and unnoticed by the world, yet belonging to Christ, and forming part of His glorious, elect, redeemed, and living Church loved by Him with an everlasting love. Paul's desire for all such is, Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ." He knew that they could obtain neither grace nor peace from any other quarter. He thanks his God for the grace of God which was given them by Jesus Christ." See how often he mentions that name, Jesus Christ. When you have a little leisure, get your Bibles and count over the number of times he repeats that name Jesus Christ in this chapter, and it will give you some idea how near and dear the Lord Jesus Christ was to the apostle's heart. That in everything ye are enriched by Him in all utterance, and in all knowledge." O, say you, I wish I was blessed with liberty in prayer and in praise to pour out my heart before Him as I would. As you would? If He were only to indulge you that you might do these things as you would, the doing of them would make you as proud as Lucifer. He will not bless you according to your estimate of your wants, and will often fall short of that which you think you should have, yet perfection is seen upon everything He does for you and in you. Mark those two "alls:" "All utterance and all knowledge." See! I am favoured with all the utterance at His throne of grace that He designed for me. I am blessed with all the knowledge of God in Christ Jesus by the power of the Holy Ghost that He ever intended I should possess. I cannot have more though I may desire it. "Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you: so that ye come behind in no gift." What a marvellous fact: "Come behind in no gift." All the blessings bestowed by the Father upon me in the Son of His love-all the gifts and graces treasured up in Him for me, and for the safe conveyance and communication of which He

has held Himself everlastingly responsible. Is that true? Ay, as sure as God is true, every member of the election of grace shall come behind in no gift. The gift of repentance comes in His own good time. The gift of prayer is experienced as my heart flows out towards Him when and where He will. The gift of a thankful heart is experienced when the winter of discontent is past and the time of the singing of God is come. The gift of a liberal disposition which can only be when God gives me to feel and prize His liberality to me. "Waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." Some would say, for the millennium. The millennium! See! It is waiting for a person, for a living person. We are here this morning waiting, not for His second, third, or fourth coming, for He has come again and again to our waiting hearts. Here we are waiting, and we cannot help but wait for the coming of Him whom our souls love. He has come by the power of the Holy Ghost with grace and glory to our hearts, giving to us the blessed assurance of the Father's love, and an experimental interest in the blessings of His kingdom. "Who shall confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ "—that is, in the day when He shall come to take the whole of His ransomed ones home to Himself. Then we have the precious declaration that " God is faithful, by whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord."

The other portion of pleasant truth commences with ver. 26: "For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble." There we stop. Our translators have added the words, "are called," but the subject is not so much that of calling as it is of choice. "But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not "-God's elect not yet born, but who shall appear upon the stage of time-" to bring to nought things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. "But of Him -that is, of God--are ye in Christ Jesus." Why does Paul write thus? Because of that state of things existing in the Church of Corinth described in that painful portion of the chapter, from ver. 10 to the end of ver. 25. Schism, contention, and strife were rampant. The apostle writes, "Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it hath been declared unto me of you, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you." See the honesty of the apostle. I sometimes sigh in my inmost soul, Would to God we had the same honesty now-a-days! But instead of this

we have confidential communications through the post, or whisperings in the ear, "I have been told so and so, but I must not split. I repose the strictest confidence in you, but I must not give my author." O my dear fellow, you had better keep your intelligence to yourself. None of your confidence tricks here. Satan's mischief always lurks beneath these confidential' communications. The apostle gave the Corinthians to know where they might find his author-in the house of Chloe. "Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ." I believe that those who cried, "I of Christ," were the worst in the whole lot. They simply used the name of Christ to hide their hypocrisy. The counsel of the Master in the days of His flesh was, "If any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not" (Matt. xxiv. 23). The apostle asks the question, "Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius." Then he proceeds to show the folly of these divisions and disputings in the Church, and in ver. 30 writes, "But of Him," not of Paul, not of Apollos, not of Cephas, not of Christ; but of the Father" are ye in Christ Jesus." In Christ Jesus by the will, decree, and determination of the Father. In Christ by the Father's electing love. In Christ by the Father's predestinating purpose. In Christ experimentally and feelingly by the Spirit of the Father. In Christ sanctified. In Christ saved. In Christ secured. In Christ preserved all life's journey through, and at last in Christ eternally glorified. In Christ we are anointed. In Jesus we are saved, and Christ Jesus is made unto us of God the Father and by God the Father, "Wisdom.” We need it, but it is a great mercy that we are not entrusted with it. Samson's strength lay in his head. In our great and glorious Head, far above all principality and power, far beyond the reach of sin, sorrow, or suffering, where the changes of this wretched world can ever effect it, there our wisdom is secure. "And righteousness." We are disobedient children: but Christ is our Righteousness. It is not simply He has wrought out a righteousness for us; but He Himself by His perfect obedience is our Righteousness, and we are made the Righteousnesss of God in Him. "And Sanctification." We loathe ourselves because of our corruptions, and we groan under a sense of our indwelling depravity; but Christ in the purity of His person and work is our Sanctification. "And Redemption." Christ our Deliverer from the curse of the law, from the power of sin, from the world, and from self. And then Christ is revealed as the sole Glory of the Church.

With the enjoyment of Christ as his All in all the apostle commences this second chapter thus: "And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God." You must not

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