but we know not how. Satan taunts us with the insinuation that if we do not ask, we shall not have. But when we cannot pray as we ought, here is the marvellous mercy, He comes to the very spot of our necessity and gives us to feel the power and preciousness of those words which we have sung again and again,—

"Our righteousness-what He hath done,
Our prayer-His prayer for us to Thee."

As we experience the fact that He is the Intercessor for us, poor transgressors, the Advocate for us, the Father's sinful children, the Great High Priest for us, weak, unworthy worshippers, our grateful hearts bound with thankful praise, and we exclaim, Whom have 1 in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee" (Psalm lxxiii. 25). "Who is like unto Thee?" We now look at,

III. THE REASON FOR THIS CHALLENGE- "Which deliverest the poor from him that is too strong for him, yea, the poor and the needy from him that spoileth_him." Who are these characters? All the members of our Lord's body while in their wilderness state are spiritually poor and needy. They are poor when they cannot produce the faith demanded from them, the love which is required, the hope expected, nor the prayers sought for. We hear much of meetings for united prayer, but let me tell you that I have no faith in such meetings, for you will find nothing of the unity of the Spirit, or of the bond of peace in them. Poor and needy ones who would, but cannot, pray, find no rest there. Yet these who are bereft of their wisdom, stript of their righteousness and shorn of their strength, find in their glorious Head, JEHOVAH-JESUS, a gracious Deliverer. How does He deliver? I will tell you how He has ofttimes delivered

me.

When I wanted to pray, but could not, He came in the sweet whispers of His Spirit and said to me, as He said to Peter, "I have prayed for thee" (Luke xxii. 32). When I have mourned over my unbelieving state, He has said, "I have believed for thee" (Heb. ii. 13). When I have been at my wits' end and ready to perish without hope, He came and said, I am thy hope (1 Tim. i. 1). For all my spiritual wants and necessities a copious supply is revealed in and by my living Head. That is a gracious deliverance indeed. But our text speaks of a deliverance of the poor from him that is too strong for him. Have you ever had anything to do with one stronger than yourself in spiritual matters? In deed and in truth you have. You had to do with a just and holy God revealed to you in the demands and requirements of His holy law, and He won't be put off. His demands bring to light your helplessness, His requirements prove to you your weakness. The curse of His law startles you with the unwelcome intelligence that the greater your inability, the greater your responsibility. No Arminian or free-willer can understand this. The law says, "Cursed is every

one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them" (Gal. iii. 10); but the poor in spirit, as taught by the Holy Ghost can say, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: as it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree (Gal. iii. 13). The demand of the law for perfect obedience is met in the perfect obedience of Zion's Deliverer, and as this is seen, and known, and felt by the child of God, he cannot refrain from giving utterance to the exclamation, "Who is like unto Thee?"

SIN is too strong for the poor and the needy. It is personified in God's Word. "Sin hath reigned unto death" (Rom. v. 21). You who have known sin according to the painful experience portrayed in Rom. vii. 13—“Sin became exceeding sinful" -tell me, Are you a match for it? Can you put it away from you? You cannot. And you know that were it not for the power of JEHOVAH'S grace, your lives would be one continuous course of sin against Him. But the Deliverer appears. It is He who put away all your sin by the sacrifice of Himself, and now by the application of His precious atoning blood to your heart gives you to know and feel that every question of sin between you and your God is everlastingly settled. This, indeed, is a glorious deliverance, and in the enjoyment of it we can sing, "Lord, who is like unto Thee?"

SELF is too strong for the poor in spirit. Self is sure to assert itself, and who can bear up against its accursed movements? Well might the apostle cry out in the bitterness of His soul, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom. vii. 24). Who? Christ the Deliverer as He makes Himself the All in all of His poor child. THE WORLD is too strong for the poor and needy. Can you grapple with its accursed influences, its pride and rebellion against Israel's covenant God? I cannot. DEATH is too strong for me, and enters into every earthly relationship and association. It is stamped upon everything here below. But the Deliverer appears in the glorious declaration, "He hath abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel" (2 Tim. i. 10). Look at His gracious promise to the poor! "I will redeem them from death. O death, I will be thy plagues (Hosea xiii. 14). Blessed be the name of Zion's gracious Deliverer, He has bound Himself by the most solemn engagements to deliver His people out of every temptation, trial, and tribulation, and when all the sighs and tears of the wilderness are over, they shall join in one long round of eternal praise, and the spirit of their song will be, "Lord, who is like unto Thee?" May He add His blessing for His name's sake. Amen.

COMPARISON AND CONFIRMATION.

A Sermon

PREACHED IN GROVE CHAPEL, CAMBERWELL, ON SUNDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 15TH, 1878, BY

THOMAS BRADBURY.

"And what one nation in the earth is like Thy people, even like Israel, whom God went to redeem for a people to Himself, and to make Him a name, and to do for you great things and terrible, for Thy land, before Thy people, which Thou redeemedest to Thee from Egypt, from the nations and their gods.

"For Thou hast confirmed to Thyself Thy people Israel to be a people unto Thee for ever and Thou, LORD, art become their God."-2 Samuel vii. 23, 24.

HESE are words of assurance flowing from an experimental

acquaintance with JEHOVAH in His dealings with His people, and with the speaker personally. David was not one of those who are lost in a crowd, and yet he would not make an ostentatious display of himself because of the grace bestowed upon him by the anointing of God the ever-blessed Spirit. His mind was one with Paul, who, though he magnified his office, he magnified not himself because of his office. Paul had a message to deliver from the King, therefore he preached not himself, but Christ Jesus the Lord. He had a God-given and gracious experience, yet it was not his to be incessantly harping upon that experience, for in so doing he might have distressed the spirits of many in the living family. You can see this by reading at your leisure 2 Cor. xii., where he tells us that he had more to glory in than any other mortal, but he would not only as concerned his infirmities, that the power of Christ might rest upon him. David was like-minded with Paul. He delighted to exalt his Lord and Master and to worship at His footstool. It was his joy to declare what was revealed to him by God the everblessed Spirit, and to speak of himself as a sinner saved by grace, a pensioner upon Divine bounty, and a pre-eminent type of that great and glorious King who should reign throughout all ages over that Israel which God had distinguished as His own in a spiritual and heavenly manner.

No. 107.-PRICE ONE PENNY.

This chapter discloses a practical and experimental view of David's experience. He had planned and purposed for God, but all his plans and purposes were overthrown. He had designed, but all his designs were thwarted. He had declared, but his declarations were proved contrary to the mind and will of God. In his plans, purposes, designs, and declarations, he fell far short of those purposes of grace which God had toward him. You see this in the circumstances narrated in this chapter. David proposed to build God a house and communicates his intention to God's prophet. Nathan said to the king, "Go, do all that is in thine heart, for God is with thee." That same night God wrote foolishness upon the declaration of the prophet, and sent him back to David with the message, that he should not build a house for the LORD; but that the LORD would build him a house. This house of David should be spiritual, incorruptible, eternal, never to fall into decay or ruin. Can that be true? say you, in surprise. Perfectly true. But we read in Acts xv. 15, 16, that David's tabernacle did fall into ruins. James said, "Men and brethren, hearken unto me. Simeon (that is, Simon Peter) hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name. And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written, After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up that the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles upon whom My name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things. Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world." James, in speaking of ruins, refers to the earthly house of David, which was thoroughly broken down, and because of which sceptics might scoff and taunt the Israelites, saying, Where is the faithfulness of your God? Where is the performance of His promise? Now, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ we see the tabernacle of David set up. The world judges according to the flesh, literally and carnally; but those who are spiritually one with Christ judge according to the Spirit, and while they behold the ruin of all earthly things, they rejoice at the sight and possession of a spiritual house and kingdom which cannot be moved. The house of David built by God is a spiritual house, of which Paul could say, "Whose house are we" (Heb. iii. 6). When we look at any portion of the Scriptures which speaks of God's Israel, God's people, God's redeemed, God's elect, if we look at it with a carnal, fleshly, or intellectual eye, we fall far short of the glorious realities couched beneath the letter of the Word. In all these God points the eye of faith to His Church separated to Himself before time, preserved near to Himself through time in the face of all the opposition and persecution assailing it, and to be glorified with Himself when time shall be no longer.

But it is our privilege this morning to dwell upon this

precious portion, and endeavour to extract some little instruction and consolation therefrom, knowing that these are the words of the Holy Ghost flowing from the exercised heart of an eminent child of God. It leads the mind to contemplate the glories and excellencies of that kingdom which can never be moved, of that spiritual house which can never fall into ruins, of that Church which the counsels of hell can never prevail against, and of that people which can never be lost. We will notice the text in the following order :

I. A BLESSED COMPARISON- "And what one nation in the earth is like Thy people, even like Israel?"

II. A GLORIOUS REDEMPTION- "Whom God went to redeem for a people to Himself, and to make Him a name."

III. A RIGHTEOUS VINDICATION-"And do for you great things and terrible, for Thy land, before Thy people.'

IV.—A GRACIOUS SEPARATION-" Which Thou redeemedest

to Thee from Egypt, from the nations and their gods."

V.-" AN EVERLASTING CONFIRMATION-" For Thou hast confirmed to Thyself Thy people Israel to be a people unto Thee for ever and Thou, LORD, art become their God."

I.—A BLESSED COMPARISON " And what one nation in the earth is like Thy people, even like Israel?" If we look at Israel after the flesh, we may well ask, What one nation so besotted, foolish, rebellious-so wandering and wavering as Israel? Look at the description given of it by the Holy Ghost in Nehemiah ix., Psalm lxxviii., and cvi. Look at Psalm lxxviii., especially; over which my soul would linger moment by moment, because there I see awful incorrigibility like my own, and the marvellous mercy and wonderful forbearance of God. That is the God I love to worship. After the declaration of mercy succeeding mercy, always accompanied with Israel's base departures from, and rebellion against, God, we come to that precious portion commencing with ver. 31: "The wrath of God came upon them, and slew the fattest of them, and smote down the chosen men of Israel. For all this they sinned still, and believed not for His wondrous works." What think ye of such a people as this? We may well say, What one nation in the earth is like Israel for sin, unbelief, and rebellion? "Therefore their days did He consume in vanity, and their years in trouble. When He slew them, then they sought Him." A strange expression, experimentally explained in the first part of Romans vii. This is God coming down by the power of His law, killing His own to all hope in themselves. And they returned and inquired early after God. And they remembered that God was their Rock, and the high God their Redeemer. Nevertheless, they did flatter Him with their mouth, and they lied unto Him with their tongues. But He, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not: yea, many a time turned He His anger away, and did not stir up all His wrath. For He

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