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II. You ask now, Did you know all this at first? Had you this clear perception of a present Christ and his various agency at the outset? I answer, No. We only trusted him for it, at the very start. We put our hand in his, but we had no experience of his help along the road, for we were not as yet travellers in it. We had the confidence that he could and would carry us through,

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a confidence inspired by nothing that we had known, but only by his word of promise.

III. You ask again, perhaps, how this knowledge has grown upon us. I answer, By two kinds of experience. Our experience of weakness, helplessness, and peril in the great work of escaping from the bondage of sin, and our experience of the actual fruits of resorting to Christ. If I could take a single instance of such a twofold experience, it might make the matter clearer. Suppose, then, that there grows upon me the conviction that a certain trait in my character greatly hinders my piety, obstructs my progress, grieves my brethren, stumbles sinners, and clouds my own soul. I resolve to put it down. I grapple with it. The struggle is long and severe. Sometimes I think I have got the better of it. But I find soon that it is as vital as ever. It needs to be plucked up by the roots. Its tyranny becomes so galling that I cannot endure it. I carry it to this Saviour and ask him to undertake my deliverance, and he begins upon it with a process of his own. His treatment is deep and thorough, though trying, his surgery sharp, but final. I am delivered and healed. Can I doubt who has done it? And as these experiences multiply, shall I not more and more come to

know him as a personal Saviour, and with increasing confidence carry all my needs to him?

IV. Do you ask again, How did this knowledge begin, how can it be entered upon? This is the way. The burden of wanting such a help was upon our hearts, the burden of sin, of captivity to it, and of condemnation for it, of helplessness in ourselves either to escape the latter or break from the former. We heard him set forth as such a complete and glorious Deliverer, as willing and ready to undertake for every soul that would confide its case to him. We said, If this Helper is what he is represented, he is what our great want requires. Tremblingly we approached him and retired again, then drew near shyly and once more retreated. Some single word of his caught our ear," Come,' ""Come unto me," and we went in the dark, and said there as we stood, alone, in the dark, "Is the Deliverer near? Let us know this great deliverance. Here we are, Lord, undertake for us." And we ventured to leave our case with him, as a faint echo stole out of the silence and seemed to whisper, "Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out." And we now know what we did not so certainly know then, at once, that he began with us that hour.

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V. Do you ask, Can we begin so? Yes, you can. Speak up to him now in the depths of your soul,Saviour, Master, Guide, whom as yet we know not, we have heard of thee as a Deliverer from the bondage of wrath and sin. We are in captivity to both. Thou art, we believe, the way of escape. way. We see not even thee.

We see not a step of the
But we stretch out our

hands to thee; we empty them of all our idols; we lift them for thy clasping and guidance. Only lead, we will follow thee. We trust thee, make us know thee." Remember this, "It is not know and then believe, but believe and you shall see the salvation of God."

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VI.

GOD AND THE WORLD RECONCILED.

GOD WAS IN CHRIST RECONCILING THE WORLD UNTO HIMSELF.-2
Cor. v. part 19.

HERE is condensed here into a single line the whole

THERE

breadth of the gospel. Every word is compact and weighty with the force of this great pressure upon it. The story of the incarnation, its necessity, and its purpose, the historic life and work of Jesus in the flesh, man's apostasy and alienation from God, and the sublime and touching spectacle of the infinite Father coming forth in the sacrifice of his Son and the energy of the new-creating Spirit to accomplish the marvels of redemption, — all these are here.

We have nothing that so rounds and completes the description of the gospel as this word, it is a RECONCILING gospel. It is not merely a refining and educating system, bringing out the occult virtues and graces darkly sphered in human nature, or training to athletic vigor moral forces already vital within us, though feeble and torpid. Its great work is not to polish the roughnesses of a spirit that only needs discipline and culture to put on the beauty of holiness, just as a lapidary cuts a

new-found diamond, that its imprisoned lustres may shine forth.

Its chief travail is to reconcile man to God. No other conception of it discerns its true glory, or enters into the purpose of its divine author. If it come to us merely as a code of higher morals, a stimulant to a more self-sacrificing charity of living, to open to us the inspiring example of that sinless Messenger from Heaven, to spiritualize by teachings of heavenly wisdom and beauty our life of sense, to lift us by its elevating truths above meannesses and vulgarities and dishonesties, if this be all, it is no gospel for our deepest and most helpless need. The angels might have hushed those choral chants that broke the silence and lit the darkness of midnight above the hills of Bethlehem.

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not one in the first

It is an atoning gospel we want, instance to excite and cheer us in our struggles after human perfection, but first of all to restore us to the favor of God, to slay our enmity to him, and propitiate him towards us, bringing us near to him in harmony and friendship forever.

And so it announces itself in our Scripture, “God in Christ RECONCILING the world unto himself."

I. If now this work of reconciliation, proposed as the chief function of the gospel, be a reality in the full significance of the language expressing it, then there is assumed here the essential fact of the GUILT and RUIN of We cannot advance a step in the explication of the text, without conceding that God and man are at variance. The holy inhabitants of heaven need no reconciling unto

MAN.

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