charity, or charity in more intelligent exercise, or called out in drawing near God, will make plain the motives of charity on the one hand or the other; and we may frequently discover that ours was only egotism.

Do you say, But what if the question be one neither of charity nor of obedience? Then I answer, You owe me a reason for acting; for if it is only your own will, you cannot make the wisdom of God bend to your will. Here again

we have the source of a numerous class of difficulties which God will never solve.

In such cases He will teach us, by His grace, obedience, and make us see how much time we have lost through our own activity. "The meek will He guide in judgment, the meek will He teach His way."

Let us remember that the wisdom of God leads us in the path of the will of God. If our own wills are at work, God cannot accommodate Himself to that. This is the essential thing to discover. It is the secret of the life of Christ. I know not of any other principle on which God could act, though He pardons and makes all turn to our good.

He guides the new man which has no other will than Christ, He mortifies the old, and in this way purges us that we may bear fruit.

it."

"Lo, I come to do thy will, O my God; I delight to do

It is the place of a door-keeper to wait at the door, but in doing that he is doing his master's will.

Rest assured that God does more in us than we for Him; and what we do is only for Him, just in so far as it is Himself that works it in us.

356

CHRIST'S CROSS, AND GOD'S "DUE TIME."

ROм. v. 6-8.

In the last verse of this chapter we have, in fact, the summing up of the great principles and ways of God's dealings with man-"grace reigning through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.”

What the apostle has been speaking of as to God's dealings, dispensational and personal, is, all is grace. "When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." (v. 6.) "God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.' (v. 8.) It is grace that did everything. (vv. 15-21.) "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners," and they may have gone on sinning and setting aside the authority of God; but "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." And, in the sum of the whole matter, grace reigns.

That which gave the apostle so much confidence in this was, that it was consequent upon the discussion of the whole condition of MAN, as looked at in every way and in every shape. The blessed result was not something that came in, and the discussion after; but, after the discussion of the whole condition of man (that having been gone through), GOD takes His own place, and manifests what He will be, and is, towards the sinner, in Jesus Christ. Now, that is, properly speaking, the gospel. The gospel is not what man is, or what God requires from man, but what God is, after He has thoroughly revealed what man is. When received in simplicity it leaves no possible question in the mind. It is the revelation of God, made after He has estimated all our need. The gospel, we repeat, is the revelation of what God is, when what man is has been fully revealed. "When we

were yet without strength, IN DUE TIME Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die : yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But GOD commendeth HIS love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, CHRIST DIED FOR US."

Peace of soul is constantly hindered through our not supposing that God has taken full cognizance of what we are. The gospel begins consequent upon His having made a full estimate. He knew from the beginning what man was, and would be; but after, in His history, He had brought out and demonstrated in ways and conduct what man was under all the possible circumstances in which he could be placed-when He had demonstrated him to be entirely lost, and that He could not trust him in any way or in any measure, He says, 'I cannot trust in you, you must trust in Me.' Hence the reason there is often a long and painful conflict, because of our not being brought down in conscience to the point where the gospel begins. A man may acknowledge himself to be ungodly, but then he hopes to cease to be ungodly; and God, perhaps, lets him struggle on thus for some time, until in his own soul he is brought to the place where the gospel begins. It is not that the gospel is not simple, but that in conscience we are not in the condition where the gospel sees us. The work must be in the conscience. We read in Matt. xiii. of a man hearing the Word, and anon with joy "receiving it," yet of his not having "root in himself." There is no work evidently in the conscience; it is not that he is insincere, but he has never been brought in guilty before God; "for," it is added, "when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the Word, by-and-by he is offended" (whereas, if he knew that his own soul was lost without Christ, surely he would say with the disciples, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life!" John vi. 68). It is a great deal harder to believe that we are "without strength," than that

we are ungodly." Many a soul believes the one that has not as yet been brought to believe the other. God has given us His history of the world from Adam to Christ. There was a "due time" for the death of Christ (a “due time" that is in the history of the world). So is there the "due time" of the individual heart; not that the same feelings pass through the minds of all, that each must be brought to the result given us by the history of man previously to the death of Christ.

It is true many a person admits himself to be ungodly that has not been brought to feel the full meaning of the word. It is wonderful how our moral distance from God

has rendered us incapable of judging of this. If a man say that God is holy, and that he is a sinner, as judged of by his natural conscience, yet not admit that he is shut out from the presence of God, but reply, "Oh, I hope not!" he has not the power of apprehending His presence. On the one side, God is "of purer eyes than to behold iniquity;" on the other, he is a sinner; but he has no sort of conscience or consciousness that he is in the presence of God. There is not a single individual that would not put off being there. Our consciences can never naturally bear it; the whole secret is, that we have never been in the presence of God. (In one sense we are always in His presence, but I speak now of being brought near in conscience.) A man may be living absolutely without God, and yet be accounted a very good man after all. If he hurts his fellow-man it is another affair. In judging of right and wrong in the world, God is always shut out. There is no surer proof of the way man has cast off God, than his judgment of right and wrong; he calls "wrong" that which injures man, but the Divine presence and claims are shut out. It all shows this first great

truth, that men are "without God."

It has been said with truth that man's extremity is God's opportunity.

But there is another truth stated here they are also "without strength." When a man is really brought to himself, it is always a question of present standing. An ungodly man will think (it is the natural thought) of meeting God sometime, of what He will be in the day of judgment. But is His presence revealed to the heart, is it His presence now that occupies it? Whilst there is merely the thought of going to God, there is another question man thinks about, how he can make up with God. He thinks the time is before him in which he can make his peace with God, though this is impossible: Jesus Christ alone could make peace. (Col. i. 20.) He is either unconscious of the state he is in, or is looking to something by which he hopes, at a future day, he may be able to stand before God. He has no real thought of God but as a Judge. Now hoping for mercy so, is no more than saying (and many mean nothing but this), that God is not of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, that He can let a little pass.

As to the first point, the state of the Gentiles was thorough ungodliness. (Rom. i.) The apostle, after looking at man in every way (proud as man is of himself), brings all in guilty. But men have a natural conscience, and they are afraid to do in the light what they do in the dark. When in the outward darkness of Satan and ungodliness they "work all manner of uncleanness with greediness" (Eph. iv. 17-19), worshipping stocks and stones, &c. Christianity makes men ashamed to do in the light what they did before in the dark (the profession of it, I mean; in that sense, it is borrowed light). Being in this condition, his own lusts his springs of action-the slave of Satan and of his own lusts, gratifying his mere natural wicked inclinations, that was a clear case. not become a holy God. It was plainly ungodliness.

It did

But besides this, there was another thing. God singled out a nation, to which He showed great kindness, and gave (as His people) a rule. And then the question was, whether