IV. Let us attend to the Expectation of Green Pastures in greater and more abundant measure.

Experience of past love is the strongest foundation for the anticipation of future love. Experience of exquisite delight and substantial kindness gives a certainty to the hope of increasing joy, and more abundant favour from the same hand. The fact that the habit of my neighbour or my relative, in his dealings with me, is to impart enjoyment, tends to assure me that he may be relied upon for continued and enlarged efforts towards my happiness. He that maketh me to lie down in green pastures is the very one from whose power I may hereafter expect a provision of green pastures in larger varieties and in greater richness. "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not, with Him, also freely give us all things? He that gave Himself a sacrifice for sin, how shall He not, with exuberant loving-kindness, extend to us every demonstration of His liberal and tender beneficence? That Good Shepherd, who has given His life for the sheep, how shall He fail to make His goodness abound toward them, with mighty overflowing, in the pastures which He provides for their enjoyment?

Have you tasted and seen, my brethren, that the Lord your God is yours? Have you known and felt that Christ, your Saviour, is precious? Have you found a sweet resting-place, amid earthly trials, for your wearied and famished souls? Looking to the Lamb that was slain, have you welcomed and embraced a peace of God that passeth all understanding? Burdened with guilt, and overcome by corruption, have you been enabled to delight yourself with the blotting out of sin and the possession of Heavenly strength, through faith in the precious blood of Jesus? Has there thus been opened up for you a bright oasis in a wilderness of sin and death-a blessed spot of verdant ground, inviting you to a sure and safe repose-a place of refuge, in which you cannot be injured or destroyed, because it is a rock of strength, and in which you can be more than satisfied, because it is fertile in all that can minister to your comfort and joy. Weary and heavy laden in your souls, have you thus attained to rest? Hungering and thirsting, have you thus fed upon unspotted righteousness, and been sustained by the spirings of spritual life? Have you learned, in the school of Jesus, through deep acquaintance with His Word, to cherish a hidden joy, which no man can take from you, even though the hardest earthly trials seem to have hemmed

you in, and threaten to overwhelm you? Has the thought of Christ and His cross bestowed upon you a wondrous elevation of spirit, the high pleasure of which is never approached by the men of the world, even when their corn and wine do most abound? Have you thus lain down in the green pastures of the Gospel? Have you thus put yourselves with joyful confidence into the hands of Jesus, your Good Shepherd, and experienced abundantly the tenderness and fulness of His unremitting care for all your need? Do you thus know, as matter of habitual thankfulness, that He maketh you to lie down in the green pastures?

O, then, you have a bright expectation that your spiritual provision will not only abide for your repose and sustenance, but will minister to you fresh satisfaction every day. The exercises of prayer and meditation on the Divine Word produce, by the Holy Spirit's effectual work, a growing enjoyment. Rich fruit springs up out of these exercises. The operation of faith strengthens faith, so that believers abound in hope. You have much to try you. You have a large share of the ills that flesh is heir to. Peculiarities in outward position and inward temperament bring many perplexing clouds to hide the face of God from your souls. But you have felt and tasted the green pastures. Your hearts have been lifted up through the peace-speaking blood of Jesus. The Spirit of Jesus has taken of the things of Jesus and shown them to your souls. Your persuasion has become stronger, that He who has begun a good work in you will perform it unto the end. Therefore you feed by faith upon Jesus, the Bread of Life, and you discover more of His strength and excellency, the more that you seek Him as your refuge in trouble, and your support in weakness. You have received great things from Him, and you expect greater things. There may be much before you, on the path of your natural life, which has a disheartening appearance. But Jesus is all the more full of light, the greater the darkness through which He shines upon you. Your refreshment and nourishment in Him do not depend upon the sufficiency of external means. His pastures are all His ownthe pastures of one who bestows life in the midst of death, and who, having given His life for His sheep, will help them more and more abundantly, the more that they need His help, He leads them to a rich variety of green pastures. That rich variety will be enlarged, the more frequently that their faith makes trial of His faithfulness and love: according to their faith it shall be done unto them. If you trust in Jesus, you may expect to find

His pastures brighter and more sustaining, on each occasion of your secret converse with Him before the throne of grace, on each occasion of your searching into the declarations of His Word, and on each occasion of your active service to Him among His people, or in the world. The more that you look upon Jesus, the more shall you see of His bounty and glory; the more simply that you trust in His words of promise, the better experience shall you have of His fellowship. Thus, the spiritual feeding of believers in the green pastures brings them continually onward, to an improved spiritual growth, and introduces them continually to extended views of the provision made by their Shepherd for their peace and consolation. They thus come into a habit of strong expectation. They expect richer greenness and wider fields of pasture. And they are not disappointed. For faith, in proportion to its exercise, leads the soul, on an ever-rising path, towards the fulness of spiritual joy. Are you strong in the Lord, my friend, and in the power of His might? O, then, you are looking for a greater strength through the increasing exercise of your faith. Do you feel yourselves weak in faith, while you cling, even in darkness, to the strong hand of your glorious Shepherd ? expect that He will not only take you off the hard and barren ground, to which your own waywardness and the allurements of the world have brought you, but that He will give to you a richer taste of His exquisitely soft and soul-sustaining pastures than you ever had before.

Then you

And if such expectations spring from the exercise of faith in any circumstances, much more do they arise in the mind when Jesus specially invites His people to a feast of good things. Many of you, my brethren, have sat in former days at the table of your Lord. I trust that many of you have tasted of His rich loving-kindness, in the breaking of bread and the pouring out of wine. I trust that you have partaken spiritually of His refreshment and His nourishment, while you were eating and drinking in remembrance of His death. But if He have thus made you lie down in His green pastures, while He came near to your souls with peculiar tenderness and power through the medium of His special ordinance, He has surely taught you to expect a more abundant fulness of enjoyment when He repeats His invitation. Now, surely, you may look out intently for a brighter greenness in His pasture than you ever saw before. This day, assuredly, you have ground for expecting that you shall taste, more largely than you ever did before, of His delightful provision for your wants.

Some of you may intend, on the present occasion, to feed upon your spiritual provision in a manner unknown to you at any previous period. You may not have sat at the Lord's table in time past. You may now have formed the resolution, for the first time, of showing forth the death of Jesus in the feast of the Supper. Led by the Spirit of God to feel your need of Jesus, the love of Jesus may now, for the first time, constrain you to honour Him by a public profession of your attachment to His name. Or perhaps you feel and know, that, though outwardly engaged in this celebration before, your hearts were not truly in it. Perhaps you have recently awakened from delusive dreams; perhaps now, for the first time, you have come towards the table with a true sense of your own sinfulness, and with a true knowledge of the excellency that is in Jesus. Then you are indeed welcome to this feast! But if you have thus been enlightened to know your Lord, you have been taught by him to expect great things, while, by faith, you seek to feed upon Him in His own appointed way. You have learned, through converting grace, that He maketh you to lie down in the green pastures; and now it is your hopeful and fervent desire to experience the richness of those pastures in an extraordinary manner. Now you seek, along with your brethren, to delight yourselves by a special participation in the provision made for your souls. May the Holy Spirit bless your endeavours, and satisfy your believing desires.

But if, even on earth, we are called to expect green pastures in richer and more abundant measure, how great ought to be our expectation of heavenly rest and heavenly nourishment beyond the grave! If Jesus make us to lie down in green pastures amid the adverse elements of a corrupt world, and in opposition to the impulses of corrupt nature, what must be the richness of those fields for our enjoyment which He is preparing for His chosen ones around His Father's house on high? Let us eat and drink in strong faith here, that, throughout our earthly pilgrimage, we may lie down with sweet satisfaction in the green pastures. But let us have the eye of faith habitually fixed on the purer and greener pastures of the Heavenly Canaan. Let us be always full of expectation as to the joy which we shall share, when brought in safety to the complete possession of the inheritance which is incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away.

The peculiar excellency belonging to the pastures of Christ's inheritance, while it is laid hold of in faith during the continuance of our trials upon earth, is their tendency to become all the

greener, and all the more nourishing, in very proportion, not only to the weariness which they are designed to remedy, but even to the afflictions and harassments, the pressure of which nothing else can overcome. Those afflictions and harassments are signs, to our natural minds, of the desolation and woe which follow in the train of sin, and which will reach a fearful consummation in eternity. But to the spiritual mind-the mind visited from on high by the light of God's reconciled countenance in the face of Jesus Christ— they appear as the means whereby our gracious Father is preparing us for a higher appreciation of what He has in store for us beyond the grave. He is reminding us thereby, that, through suffering, Jesus won for us our salvation from the devil; and that now, through suffering, Jesus is bringing us into conformity to His own likeness, and thus fitting us the better for the fulness of His own enjoyments.