any Philistine or Amalekite when I would enjoy the company of my God. "And reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them. And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, Lord, Thou art God, which hast made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is." Read through the song and you will see God's Sovereignty overruling man's sin against His Christ. Look at Rev. xix. 1-4. Here the veil which hides the heavenly country from our view is drawn aside, and the redeemed are seen round about the throne contemplating the wonders of redeeming love and reprobating judgment. As the smoke of eternal torment ascends before their wondering gaze, they cry, "Amen, Alleluia." But our text reveals a song of salvation. Look at the Spirit's instruction as to the mode of this singing in Col. iii. 16: "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord." This reminds me of that blessed account of spiritual singing in Solomon's Song ii. 8-13: "The voice of my beloved! behold, He cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills. My Beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, He standeth behind our wall, He looketh forth at the windows, showing Himself through the lattice. My Beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, My love, My fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone: the flowers appear on the earth, and the time of the singing is come." What singing? The singing of the Father, Saviour, and Spirit experienced in the heart of an eternally-loved one. "And the voice of the Turtle is heard in our land." Now, wrath and condemnation, distress and damnation, are gone, and nothing is seen or enjoyed but a precious Christ, with love beaming from His eyes, flowing from Ĥis heart, love bestowed from His once-pierced hand. Life, light, and liberty are enjoyed, and I find myself in possession of the land of Divine revelation, spiritual promise, and covenant relationship. This brings me to notice III. THE LAND-"In the land of Judah." This is the land which belongs to the Jews! But who are the Jews? I cannot believe they are those whom JEHOVAH has given over to judicial blindness, and who, according to the vain notions of some, are to be brought back to inherit the land accursed by the power of the infidel. Ah, my dear friends, as we are lifted up to enjoy the sweet liberty of the Gospel, to experience oneness with God in the land of Gospel light and love, we glory in the fact that "he is not a Jew which is one outwardly, but he is a Jew which is one inwardly" (Rom. ii. 28, 29). He is a Jew who has been brought through the day of the LORD, the day of Jacob's trouble, and who has experienced deliverance therefrom by the redeeming blood of our Lord. Such are taught to sing the song of salvation in the land of JEHOVAH'S preparing, "an honest and good heart" (Luke viii. 15). "In the land of Judah." The name Judah indicates praise blended with prayer. Where there is praise to God for blessings bestowed, there is sure to be prayer to Him for a succession of them, even grace upon grace, faith upon faith, and visitation after visitation of the Covenant Three, with power and great glory, to our hearts. Come with me to Deut. xxxiii. 7: "Hear, LORD, the voice of Judah, and bring him unto his people." Judah pleaded with his father Jacob to send Benjamin with his brethren into Egypt, saying, "I will be surety for him." Does not that lead you to Jesus? See how he pleaded with Joseph for Benjamin's deliverance: "Now therefore, I pray thee, let thy servant abide instead of the lad, a bondman to my lord, and let the lad go up with his brethren" (Gen. xliv. 33). This is Jesus foreshadowed. In Rev. v. 5 we see Jesus as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, breaking the seals of Divine mysteries, and revealing their contents to the wondering gaze of those who are Jews in deed and in truth. Now turn to Heb. vii. 14: "For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Juda." He was born of a lowly maid in Judah's royal tribe. He could say to the Father, "I know that Thou hearest Me always" (John xi. 42); this is the voice of Judah. "He ever liveth to make intercession for them" (Heb. vii. 25); this is the voice of Judah. "We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (1 John ii. 1); this is the voice of Judah. Look at the many prayers recorded in the Scriptures as flowing from the land of Judah! David (2 Sam. vii. 18-29); Solomon (2 Chron. i. 10); Asa (2 Chron. xiv. 11, 12); Hezekiah (Isa. xxxvii., xxxviii.). Read these and see if you can find any oneness of spirit with them. Wherever the children of God are found in union and communion with such as these, there they possess the spiritual land of Judah-a land of covenant favour (Psa. lxxxv. 1); a land of Divine revelation (Gen. xii. 1); a land which can never be alienated, sold, forfeited, or cut off (Lev. xxv. 23); a land abounding with spiritual fruits and covenant blessings (Lev. xxvi. 4); a land where God's salvation is nigh unto all the inhabitants thereof, and His glory in the midst of it (Psa. lxxxv. 9). In the sweet experience of this the child of grace can sing, "Oh! I am my Beloved's, And my Beloved is mine! I stand upon His merit, I know no other stand, May the Lord add His blessing for His name's sake. Amen. RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION REALITIES. Sermon PREACHED IN GROVE CHAPEL, CAMBERWELL, ON SUNDAY MORNING, JANUARY 19TH, 1879, BY THOMAS BRADBURY. "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory."-Col. iii. 1-4. THE HE design of the Holy Ghost, and the desire of the apostle Paul, in the Scripture before us, was to lead the mind of the Colossian Christians away from everything short of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Paul delighted in being the honoured instrument in the hand of God in drawing their minds away from earthly, fleshly, perishing things, and fixing their attention upon those spiritual and heavenly realities which are to be found nowhere but in the great and glorious Head of the Church. This was his object and aim in every sermon he preached, in every letter he wrote, but is not so apparent in some epistles as in others. In the epistle to the Ephesians this shines forth most gloriously. There was a reason for this, because throughout the whole of it he was describing a people in blessed association and identification with the Lord Jesus Christ, and the spiritual privileges and blessings they possess and enjoy in Him. you read through the Ephesian epistle, you will not find an allusion to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. But you will find something concerning His coming in almost every other portion of the New Testament. You who are spiritually one with Him will notice amid all the fleshly religion surrounding you, that the majority of professors speak not of a present Christ, a Christ in the midst of them. They enjoy not the glorious millennium of grace in union with Him, no true freedom from sin, no sweet deliverance from the fear of death, no immu No. 112.-PRICE ONE PENNY. nity from hell and the grave, and generally place an adjective before that word "coming," and call it, "the second coming." My dear friends, I want something more than that. I desire His third, forsooth, ay, I want His thousandth coming. I rest not satisfied without His continual coming. I love His appearing, for when He appears not, it is very dark and dreary, and spiritual deadness is irksome to my soul. I do love the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ with the blessings of grace and the hope of glory to my heart. I love to experience His loving embrace, to know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that He is mine, and I am His, to throw back Satan's "ifs," "buts," and "peradventures" upon himself. I love to delight myself in the company of the God of my salvation, and to rest in the sweet assurance that I am a member of that family which is loved with an everlasting love, redeemed by precious blood, quickened and kept alive by the Holy Ghost, ennobled by grace union to the King of kings, and heirs of that glorious inheritance which can never be moved, even God Himself, without whom I can neither be gratified nor satisfied. As we look through that blessed epistle to the Ephesians, we learn that those whom he addresses are in eternal union and spiritual communion with Christ, in whom before all worlds they were blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies (chap. i. 3). In the heavenlies they are blessed with resurrection-power, and ascension-glory with Him according to chap. i. 20: " Which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenlies." The place of blessing and glory is also one of fellowship, communion, refreshment, and rest. See chap. ii. 6: “And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenlies in Christ." It is also the place of Divine communication to spiritual revelation, where JEHOVAH is pleased to make known His mind and will to His redeemed and to use them as dispensers of His truth to the angels who surround His throne. It is a marvellous mercy for us to know that God has made me a messenger of peace and consolation to His tried and tempted children; and more than this, for, as Augustus Toplady declared, when he stood preaching in his Church at Broad Hembury, when only very few poor sinners were met together to hear him, angels formed part of his congregation. It is a wonderful mystery of redeeming love that poor worms of the earth should be the instruments through whom God reveals His mind to angelic beings. You see this in chap. iii. 10: "To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in the heavenlies might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God." But with the enjoyment of all these privileges the child of God forgets not that he is still in the flesh, and surrounded by sin, suffering, temptation, and tribulation. Turn to chap. vi. 12: For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against prin cipalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in the heavenlies." That is something more than visiting the dens of vice and striving to make the thief an honest man. The would-be philanthropist may succeed in making such religious, while his religion will make him two-fold more a child of hell than he was before. You may go to the beershop and the gin-palace and reclaim the drunkard, or the debauchee, and make of him a sober man, and what is styled, an ornament of society, yet he may go down to the depths of eternal despair with all his moral and religious ornamentation on his head. The living child of God is lifted above such flesh and blood wrestling, as saith the apostle: "We wrestle not against flesh and blood." We see sin in the root, while the moralist sees it only in the fruit. "Spirit, not letter, is my motto," said the valiant William Parks of Openshaw, to which my soul responds "Amen." When God blesses His message of love and mercy to the heart of a thief, that will make him honest. Grace alone can make a man sober in God's sight. Do we know anything of the transforming power of grace? Yes, blessed be God, we do; and we bless Him because the work is all His own. peace When we come to consider this epistle to the Colossians, we see the apostle dealing out the same truths with something concerning the coming of the Lord. Why is this? Because Jesus was not quite the All in all of the Colossian Christians. The Ephesian Christians were wholly occupied with their great and glorious Head. The Colossians were engaged with the outside trappings of Christianity, the so-called means of grace, and the conveniences of public worship. Ah! say some of you, that is what you are doing. See how you have got into debt in repairing and improving the chapel! Are you not troubled? Not a bit of it, for the gold and the silver belong to Him, whom we worship here, and if He cannot provide us with £350, it is time to give up. That is the spot where my soul rests in and sweet composure this morning. The things that must perish with the using, but which are necessary, nevertheless, are at present no trouble to me, my God having made Himself so precious to me in His grace and beauty. As we proceed through the first chapter of the epistle to the Colossians, we meet with a characteristic word, and that word is "ALL." This is to express the glorious perfection of a gracious supply abounding by Jesus Christ to the whole election of grace. Whatever God does, He does perfectly. There is no half-doing with God. David could say: "The LORD will perfect that which concerneth me" (Psa. cxxxviii. 8). Solomon declared: "I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it: and God doeth it, that man should fear before Him" (Eccles. iii. 14). Paul was confident that He who began His good work of grace in a |