glory with Christ a place for His people. Christ has been refused His rightful place on earth; and God in His wondrous grace, now opens out glory where Christ is, as the home and hope of His members on earth. There is a ministration of righteousness from the divine presence, so complete through Christ (by whom all sin has been taken away,) that the glory in divine freeness and fulness, is able to receive and be the home of every one who is in Christ. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." It is the sphere where Christ is, where God in all His greatness and intrinsic blessedness expresses Himself in His Son. And to this sphere we are introduced by the gospel, because Christ is there. Thus it is to the apostle the "mark" known to him at his conversion; but kept in view "and followed after" all through his course; and to each of us, according to our acquaintance with Christ, it is, or should be, the same. But it is also our hope, for we "rejoice in hope of the glory of God; and when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory."

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Now there are two things connected with glory which give a finished view, a complete idea of Paul's gospel. One is our inheritance there, from which we derive our present position in heaven; and the other, the resurrection of our bodies. The apostle says, in Rom. viii., we are saved by hope." And as I have already noted from Col. i. 5, the word "hope, which is laid up in heaven," was "heard in the word of the truth of the gospel." The gospel includes this hope; nay, the hope was a main part of it, and is therefore called the " hope of the gospel," from which the saints were not to be moved; and which many, seeing it so distinctly insisted on, and not understanding what it truly meant, explained as the hope of salvation eventually. Now, it is as set with Christ in glory (glory being the sphere proper to our membership with Christ, that the formative process morally to that glory takes place in us) that we are "transformed from glory to glory." But in this glory there is an inheritance for us. Therefore the apostle prays, "that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of

his calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance," of which the Spirit is now the earnest. It is beyond my subject to speak of the inheritance, but I merely desire to assure the heart of the fact that, in connection with Paul's gospel, and because of the sphere in which the believer in Christ is thereby set, there is an inheritance "incorruptible, undefiled, reserved in heaven for you," (as Peter speaks of it) in that glory in which our association with Christ is now through the Spirit (and not merely in the future), and where we are now transformed into His image. For besides having an inheritance which is future (as Peter presents it) and which is properly the "hope," we are now seated in Christ in heavenly places; we are through faith made now to know that we have a place "prepared" for us in heaven. In a word, heaven, as a definite place, is our place, and that to which we belong even now. Glory is too indefinite an idea; for wherever God manifests Himself there the glory is; but heaven is a definite place, and in this definite place, we are now seated in Christ Jesus. And hence we are the heavenly family, as surely and distinctly as there will be an earthly family. It is not only that the inheritance is in heaven, but we are now by faith seated there, because partaking of the power of Him who has been raised up, above all principality and power, and has sat down at God's right hand in the heavenly places. He is there the head of the body, the Church, of which the Spirit is the unity; which truth Paul calls "the mystery of the gospel" (Eph. vi. 19); and we in spirit now reach up through His power to a sense of our exaltation, and our true locality in heaven because of Him. In fact (as we learn from Col. iii.), if we are risen with Christ, we seek the things which are above where Christ is. We set our affections on things above, and not on things on the earth. We are a heavenly people, though for a season on the earth; and our, conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile bodies, that they may be fashioned like unto His own body of glory." The body of glory will be the consummation; for when we see Him, we shall be

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like Him, and when He appears, we also shall appear with Him in glory.

Thus, very inadequately I know, but as carefully as I could, have I endeavoured to sketch Paul's gospel. It tells a man hopeless and undone, what God is in His own nature; and what He is for him. That He has established righteousness in Christ; that He has condemned sin in the flesh; having ended judicially there the body of sin; and that now His grace can reign through righteousness unto eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. That He has set aside the first man judicially in the cross of Christ and on the ground of righteousness; He forms us anew in Christ Jesus, in His life; so that we are no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit; Christ dwelling in us, and we in Him, and in His glory because of the same righteousness. That we now know by faith heaven as our definite place; our spirits' present home as well as our future inheritance; for which we shall have bodies of glory when our Lord comes, and we shall be for ever with the Lord.

To sum up. The parts of this great economy committed to Paul are:

1st. We are in God's righteousness.

2nd. So complete is God's righteousness, that all which offended against it has been judicially ended in the cross of Christ; the old man crucified with Christ.

3rd. Eternal life in Christ is given.

4th. We are in the Spirit, and not in the flesh... it is Christ liveth in us, and we in Him.

5th. The glory of God is our hope, and we are there through the same righteousness in Christ.

6th. We have a definite place now in heaven, as well as a future inheritance there.

7th. We look for Him to come to change our vile bodies, that they may be fashioned like unto His own glorious body.

The Lord give us grace to realise somewhat in our hearts the amazing elevation to which the blessed or happy God, in His ineffable wisdom and love, has raised us through the gospel in His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

J. B. S.

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No. 1V.

SHECHEM AND SYCHAR.

Ir may not be without interest to compare the historical notices of Shechem with that one visit of two days spent by the Lord Jesus at Sychar, so many of the events of which Shechem was the theatre in Old Testament times appearing, when we read John iv. as foreshadows of what should take place when the Messiah Himself should visit it.

Very early in the world's history after the flood, we have mention made of the land of Canaan, destined to be the scene of the pilgrimages of the patriarchs, the victories of their descendants, the blessings of the people and glory of the kingdom under David and Solomon, the nativity of the Lord, the sphere of His labours, the place of His crucifixion; within whose confines is that mountain from which He ascended to heaven, and on which He will stand when He comes back to earth. How soon after the flood the children of Canaan settled in it is not recorded, but we do learn that about three hundred and sixty seven years after the deluge Abraham first set foot in it. He was 66 seventy and five when he departed out of Haran" (Gen. xii. 4); and the first place in the land at which he rested, the name of which is recorded, is Shechem. There the Lord first appeared to him; and there he built an altar unto the Lord who appeared unto him, the first witness for Jehovah which he set up in that land.

years

old

Many years elapse ere we read of Shechem again. Then it comes before us as the first named resting place of Jacob on this side Jordan, as he journeyed homewards to Bethel and Hebron. Returning from the country of his exile he pitched his tent at Shechem, and "bought a parcel of a field, where he had spread his tent, at the hand of the children of Hamor, Shechem's father, for an hundred pieces of money," and he erected there an altar, his first altar after his return, to not simply Jehovah, as Abraham

had done, expressive of God as the self-existing one, but to God the God of Israel. The treacherous conduct of Simeon and Levi forced him to leave it; but, before he departed for Bethel, he collected the false gods of his family and their ear-rings, and buried them under the oak which was by Shechem, perhaps the very same tree under which Abraham between 180 or 190 years before had spread his tent. See Gen. xii. 6, where for the plain of Moreh we should read oak of Moreh. Sometime during his sojourn here he dug that well, mentioned in the gospel of John, and visited to this day by travellers. Owning no other spot in the country besides the cave of Machpelah, which came to him, as we should say, by the right of inheritance, though the reversion of the whole land belonged to him and to his descendants, he went down into Egypt, and there died, bequeathing as the birthright "the parcel of the field" to his son Joseph. Before his descent into Egypt his children revisited Shechem from time to time with their flocks (Gen. xxxvii. 12). But Joseph only entered on the possession of it as his place of sepulture and that, when the children of Israel fulfilled his command in laying his bones in that "parcel of a field," after they had crossed the Jordan under the leadership of Joshua (Joshua xxiv. 32). Before that took place, whilst they lay encamped in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho, Moses gave commandment respecting the solemn ceremony, which all Israel under Joshua and Eleazar were to be engaged in, on the slopes of both Ebal and Gerizim, and in the valley which lies between them. Situated on a shoulder of Mount. Gerizim (hence probably the name of Shechem), it must. have been within the limits where the Amen of all the people could be heard; and that shoulder of the mountain on which their forefathers had trodden, was now the ground which part of the six tribes appointed to stand on Gerizim must have occupied, not to pronounce the blessings as the others had the curses, but, to hear recited how, if obedient, God would bless His redeemed. people (Deut. xi. xxvii., Josh. viii.).

The next notice of Shechem which calls for remark is Shechem may mean "a shoulder."-ED.