it help but be so, when through His holy indwelling the "spirit is life because of righteousness,”* and that life is love and freedom? But not even so is this liberation complete and final, until (3) the body also is rescued from corruption. The full-ripe fruit of the resurrection of Jesus and of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is not put forth till the body too is made partaker of this redemption. From its former weakness, subjection, humiliation, and death, it must be raised incorruptible and glorious. The Apostle seeks with all the force and energy which inspired utterance rising to its utmost height can reach to impress on us the thought that we are none of Christ's, except God's Spirit is thus sanctifying us wholly in body, soul, and spirit; that He can leave no part of us outside of His working. If He be truly and indeed within us, nothing can escape the influence of His quickening touch. Whatever soul He enters to set up Christ's kingdom there, He will leave no part or parcel of it unoccupied and unsubdued. Would not one captive left in chains mar the glory of His triumph? a triumph in which the Three Persons of the ever blessed Trinity are joined in perfect oneness of purpose and harmony of working. The body then must be raised; and this as the direct and natural result of the present indwelling of that Spirit which raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. Strangely but sweetly do the words of the Creed, "I believe in the resurrection of the body," fall on the ear of the poor Greenlander or African, as the Bishop of Grahamstown speaks of a man (or men) of one of the African tribes, who, hearing and being taught to repeat those words, said, "How wonderful it is that though we have never before heard these things, yet * Rom. viii. 10.

now we have heard them they seem to come to us so naturally and reasonably as things we ought always to have known and believed." (Report of the Norwich Church Congress.)

I wish I could have put this subject before myself and you, dear brethren, as I feel it ought to be put; with all its lessons of anxious striving in prayer and patient waiting, after this full freedom of pardon, peace, holiness, the present pledges of other freedoms afterwards dwelt on in this chapter, which we must leave for the present; and above all, of final and complete redemption, in the resurrection of the body unto life everlasting!

IX.

The Belieber's Infirmities helped by the Spirit in Prayer.

ROM. viii. 26, 27.

"Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered."

WE

E spoke two Sundays since of that great liberty which is described in the early part of this chapter as arising to the spirit heavy laden and groaning under the burden of the flesh, so soon as it experiences the power and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. He that enjoys this freedom is said to have the Spirit; to be in the Spirit ; to be led of the Spirit to mortify the deeds of the body. That Spirit indwells as the Spirit of life; and that life is love, and that love is liberty.

Such is the tendency, such the general result: the believer in Jesus is encouraged to aim at this; boldly and with good courage to claim it; to try to rise to the full height of it; to be satisfied with no less; to expect great growth in it.

This liberty is not wholly and perfectly enjoyed, because when we try to put it forth in some directions we find ourselves hampered and trammelled; and "even we also," says our Apostle, "that have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”

Until the Church of God attains to this full liberty

by the return of Him who is her great Head, all creation is crushed down, stifled, under the sense of a depressing load, which overbears it, and sets limits and restrictions to its yearnings, or to the results of its yearnings, for something better, nobler, purer than it can at present realize. And what the rest of creation is conscious of in some lesser degree, but cannot express in words, the children of God consciously and intelligently express in prayer. The prayer of God's faithful people is thus put before us as the crown, the topmost height, the full expanded flower of that longing cry for deliverance and liberty which all God's travailing creation sends up to heaven. The aches and pains, sorrows and sufferings, toils, wearinesses, disappointments, heart-breakings-these all cry: put them into words, and the substance of it all would be, "Lord, how long?' But when the Spirit of God indwells, that cry takes shape and voice: it has an added significance, a far increased and heightened value: it besieges the ear of God with that force with which Jacob wrestled with the angel. It is the recognised call, the authorized plea and plaint of God's redeemed ones, which He cannot, has pledged Himself not to, resist: it is redemption present and incomplete; craving, rising to, and ere long attaining, that complete and final redemption of which itself is more than the earnest!

The sum of this is, that one of the ways and methods by which the indwelling Spirit brings the deliverance and liberty to pass of the people of God is to give them a holy liberty in prayer, taking the drag-chain off them: awakening in their hearts a fervent response to the promises of God, arousing in them sincere and hearty desires, stirring up their wills, and thus

maintaining them in a posture of waiting, expectant longing, and more whole self-dedication, which is ever God's plan of paving and preparing the way for whatever blessing He has in store, and purposes to send.

May He whose presence and indwelling and effectual might this day's* services encourage us to recognise as a great and abiding fact in the Church of God, help us to be strengthened and quickened and helped in duty, by the examination of some of the contents of this passage.

I. The text assumes that all God's people pray; that there are none of those who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, none in whom He is truly, however as yet feebly working, that do not pray. And from what this chapter has taught us about prayer-what it is, that it is the topmost crowning-point of the longings, the restless upward strivings of creation-we see that prayer is not mere uttering sounds, and repeating words, as a talking bird may be taught to do, as an echoing rock may do, that yet is hard and unfeeling as ever; but it is a speaking to God, a cry to God which is sprung of the heart's convictions, emotions, desires: it is the broken heart's outgushings, the awakened soul's disburdening of itself; it is the opened lip charged with the utterances of the opened heart; it is the secret longing for redemption finding vent, and telling out itself in such poor speech as it can-for poor it is at the best—not as the lion roaring after its prey seeks its meat from God; it is something higher far, and better befitting the image and likeness after which man was created; it is a cry of release for itself first, and then for others also, from the remainder of pressure, bondage, conflict.

* Whit-Sunday.