CHAPTER XI.

THE GRÁCE.

OUR fountain-head of blessing here is

GRACE. It was to this grace or free love of God that we came when first the consciousness of want and sin awoke within us. This grace of God we found to be large enough for us, and altogether suitable; so that while we felt ourselves unfit objects for any thing else, we were just the more, on that account, fit objects for grace. Either for wrath or for grace we were fit, but for nothing else—for nothing between. We shrank from the wrath, and we took refuge in the grace. Between the one and the other, the blood of the accepted sacrifice had made a way, 66 a way of holiness;"

we saw that way, we saw it to be free and unchallenged, we fled along that way, and soon found ourselves beyond the reach of wrath, under the broad covering of grace, nay, under the very wing of the gracious. One, of him who is "full of grace and truth."

It was the knowledge of this grace that rooted up our doubts, that quieted our fears, and made us blush for our unbelief and suspicious mistrust. It is the knowledge of this grace that still keeps our souls in peace, in spite of weakness, and sin, and conflict. Being permitted to draw upon it without limit and without restriction, we feel that no circumstances can arise, in which we shall not be at liberty to use it, nay, in which it is not our chief sin to stand aloof from it, as if it had become less wide and free. With all this large grace placed at our disposal, to draw upon continually, what folly to be afraid of enemies, and evils, and days of trouble!

For thus saith the prophet, "Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be

as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit." (Jer. xvii. 7, 8.)

It is in this grace that we "continue." (Acts xiii. 43.) It is in this grace that we "stand." (Rom. v. 2.) It is in this grace that we are to "be strong." (2 Tim. ii. 1.) It is this grace that we are to "hold fast." (Heb. xii. 28, margin.) It is this grace that is "sufficient for us." (2 Cor. xii. 9.) It is this grace that we desire for others, saying, "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you." (Eph. vi. 24.) All is grace, from the beginning to the end, unmingled grace, in which no respect is had to aught of good done, felt, thought, spoken by us. So that the history of our life is wrapt up

in these blessed words, "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." (Rom. v. 20.) We have found that the new sins of each hour, so far from closing the fountain of grace against us, opened new springs of grace for us-springs of grace which we should never otherwise have known, nor thought it possible to exist. Not as if sin were less vile on this account. David's horrid sins were the occasions of opening up new depths of grace, unimagined before; yet his iniquity lost none of its hatefulness thereby. So grace is ever gushing forth upon us to sweep away each new sin, yet in doing so it makes the sin thus swept away to appear more hideous and inexcusable. The brighter the sun, the darker and sharper are the shadows; so the fuller the grace, the viler the sin appears.

And as our personal history, as saved men, is the history of abounding sin met by more abounding grace, so is the history

at large of all things in this fallen world. What is all Israel's history, every step of it, but the history of man's boundless sin drawing out the more boundless grace of God? What is the church's history but the same, so that each of the chosen and called ones who make up its mighty multitude, can say with him of old, whose name was chief of sinners, "The grace of our Lord was EXCEEDING ABUNDANT with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus." (1 Tim. i. 14.) And what is even the history of this material creation, on which the curse has pressed so long and heavily, but the history of grace abounding over sin and rescuing from the devouring fire this polluted soil?

All has been of grace hitherto. And all shall be of grace hereafter. In this respect there shall be no change.

Yet this is not the whole truth. For the brightest disclosures are yet to come. . The first coming of the Lord opened up to us heights and depths of most wondrous