again when earth rejected and cast Him out. Earth had given to Him a cross, and then had rejected heaven's recognition of Him, and the Holy Ghost sent down from Him who was Lord and Christ there. Light and darkness stood in contrast. Did not Saul know when in that light, the darkness which had been, which was still, in him? Set heaven and its thoughts and ways as to Jesus in contrast with earth's thoughts and ways as to Him:and are the openings in the sieve too large to catch and arrest a sinner? If heaven is wholly occupied with Jesus, what was I to think of myself, who never had had one correct thought, one right affection toward Him; who lived as though He were not, and whose purpose, plan and business, when He met me, were all about myself and the world.

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Fourthly. And this unknown Jesus, Lord of all and Christ in heaven, what His character and what His ways? As Lord, or Master of all, He had all power in heaven and in earth; and now, got back again from among men, what sort of a person is He, and what does He do? First, before He went on high, He said that mercy should be preached, the whole earth over, "beginning at Jerusalem " (Luke xxiv. 47). For this, too, He gave power on the day of Pentecost; and not only so, but He gathered out from the Jerusalem-sinners 3000 and 2000 unto God. These He made to be a house of God, through the Spirit. But the aggressiveness, the craving of His love toward man was not content with this, and He raised up witnesses and testimony still in Jerusalem. Jerusalem would not have Him, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, and the bright promise of His return on their repentance; and they of Jerusalem stoned Stephen. Did this change the Lord's character, and stop the outflow of His love? His delight in blessing, and in making man blessed? No. The persecuted went everywhere "throughout the regions of Judæa, preaching the word." Philip is sent to the city of Samaria, and preaches Christ unto them; and then to draw the bow and wing the arrow that should go into distant lands, through the eunuch of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians; and then the Lord, that had looked

down and sustained Stephen in his martyrdom, and had seen Saul there-Saul, a Goliath after Satan's own heart, whose mind was held as under Satan with a lie, so that he could not say, "Is there not a lie in my right hand?” and whose heart, in his blindness, felt called upon to carry out Satan's love of destroying and pulling everything to pieces that Saul, who had had no pity for Stephen, no power to appreciate Stephen's character and conduct in contrast with his own-that Saul who breathed destruction-to him spake Jesus, from His own proper glory all divine, yet with a gentleness and a tenderness all worthy of Himself. [He wanted one to preach the gospel to every one under heaven, and Saul should be the one.]

Cannot this Person-Jesus, in His own place in heaven, acting according to His own character in contrast with us in our place on earth, and acting according to our own characters, be set forth in preaching? God manifest in flesh, in eternal glory in heaven, cares, and shows He cares, that we (who care nothing about Him or His glory) perish not under Satan. Is not this true? Is it not a reality? Has it no voice to sinful man, dead in trespasses and sins?

Fifthly. God and His ways stood in contrast with man in the world and his ways. His Son, the beginner of the new creation of God, was revealed; where and what now was the first Adam? where and what the world that had crucified Him? where and what the serpent that had wounded His heel? All the wisdom of God, and His righteousness and His power, and His majesty and His love, all stood out in contrast to the folly, unrighteousness, weakness, frivolity, and hatred of menall showed that God's ways were not as man's ways, nor God's thoughts as man's thoughts.

Sixthly. And not only so, but in this scene He showed how His principles in redemption stood in contrast with His principles in creation, in providence, and in govern

ment

By weakness and defeat,

He trod the victor down;

Trod all our foes beneath His feet,
By being trodden down.

Seventhly. Christ on the one side-Satan on the other. The energy of Jesus, working by the truth and through the Spirit, upon a man-upon men, whose energy, whose plans, purposes, objects, and motives are all selfish and darkness. Man on earth and in time is looked down upon by Jesus in heaven, and from His own proper eternity. Will man have that Lord Jesus?

To the remark, "You must know yourself to be a sinner, ere you can value a Saviour," I would only answer, "If you know Himself, in whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily-Him who is the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truthHim in heaven, according to the ways in which the heaven of heavens stands in contrast with earth-Him calling men down here to notice the light wherewith He has lighted up heaven's high throne-as the Lamb that was slain, but is alive again for evermore; I say, if you know Himself, you will know yourself too." Consciousness of things done down here, which are contrary to a man's duty to God and his neighbour, do give the sense of need of salvation from the just consequences thereof. But what is this compared to the discovery of the contrasts between Himself and myself? Himself, as a Man perfect and His will always, in times past, present, and to come, subject to God; and I, a wilful one by nature, glorying to be wilful, ere I knew Him, groaning ever since I did know Him, under this part of my fallen nature, though fully hoping to see Himself soon, and knowing that then there will remain no more will in

me.

But it is not Himself, as a perfect Man only, that is there; He is God manifest in flesh-He is the faithful servant (though Son) of God, and that which leads Him to reveal His light is the desire that man may become part of the new creation, one Spirit with the Lord.

And will any one tell me that if the curtain that did shut into heaven its light has been rent, and that the light now shines forth from the face of Jesus Christ-I say, will any one tell me that if that light can be brought to bear upon a human heart down here, that its vail will remain untaken away-that this light of the glory of

God in the face of Jesus will produce no sense of light and blessing, no sense of sin and of need in man?°

And will any one who has a human heart, a human mind, say that he can set Christ Jesus' ways to Saul of Tarsus in contrast to Saul of Tarsus' ways towards Christ Jesus, and find nothing to which he can respond?

Besides the giving of a new nature, making us partakers of the Divine nature, creating us anew in Christ Jesus, born again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, by the word of God, that liveth and abideth for ever, one great result of the Spirit of God's presence with man is, that He enables man, and makes him, to see the things of God as he sees the things of man. They become real, have their eternal and their heavenly nature, as he looks upon them; and thus can a believer respond to the vision of the glory of God in the face of Christ most truly and truthfully in spirit and in truth.

And this One-Himself-in all that He is-Himself in heaven, revealed the love that was in Him to Saul of Tarsus. Saul knew Himself-knew the interest which He had in himself in all his littleness-took a living interest in Himself up there, ere ever he knew one office of Christ, or what his own need of offices and the fruits of them was. I cannot doubt but that, like Abraham of old, the knowledge of the Lord Himself decided every question at once summarily to Paul. Nor can I

• Is the contrast greater or less between

What I have done and left undone, and what Adam was in his innocency;

Or between-What Christ is as the last Adam, and what I was when He found me ?

What I am, on the one hand, is the root of all that I have done and all that I have left undone-includes it and a great deal more. On the other hand, the last Adam, life-giving Spirit, what is He as to fulness and contrast to the first Adam, when he had become a perishing soul?

God demanding of me, a ruined creature, what, because of sin, I can never pay, is in contrast too with God, as the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, showing to me what He has provided for Himself, in that last Adam-the fountain and channel of His grace and glory. What a contrast!

P He that has become the Rock on high, whence eternal life flows down to us, is the One who was smitten down here for our sins. In giving the new life to us, in putting a new nature into

doubt, with Paul's writings in my hand, that the unsearchableness and the glory of the One that had revealed Himself to him, gave that vividness and that power to all Paul's thoughts about sin-bearing on the cross, atone, ment made in heaven, acceptance, etc., which is so peculiar to himself among the writers of the New Testament. Romans vi., Hebrews ix. and x., and Ephesians i are proofs of this. But Saul knew Who was in heaven, and what was in His heart, and mind, and ways, ere he knew any one office of the Blessed One, either down here or up there-past, present, or to come.

I turn now to Acts xxii. 1-13, which gives the account of how he, as Paul, put home upon the consciences of his Jewish brethren his own conversion; for the facts which he had to record at once fully justified his own course and position, and, while they condemned their conduct and ways whom he loved, presented the only ground of escape, rest or hope for them.

In passing through the history of his conversion I (with, I think, but one exception which I marked off in brackets []) avoided everything which (though he knew afterwards) Paul knew not at the time;-such things as Ananias must have told him and the Christians at Damascus; and perhaps some which were revealed to Luke when he wrote the Acts of the Apostles.

These things are now in our hands, and they enable us to set forth what the light is which shines now from Heaven upon a sinful earth. The Lord knew none could arrest Saul save Himself, but He will have His saints down here in fellowship with Him in His work. Himself prepares Ananias, and shows how watchful He had been over His praying yet timid flock. Ananias freely states his thoughts to the Lord. But he has to submit to have this honour put upon him and learns the Lord's own thoughts and intentions about Saul: "He is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel," and the

us, He does it in the full consciousness that He has met sin for us.