them among His children. "Ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing."* Encourage them ever to feel towards God and think of God thus, as indeed He is, caring for, watching over, them; wishing their happiness; being such as Jacob described Him: "The God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil.”+ And David, "Leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation. When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.”‡ X. Lastly, forget not that of all these doctrines it holds ever true, both in earth and heaven, "The Lamb is the light thereof."§ The cross and the bleeding victim there is the great centre of these truths; there, under the shadow of the cross, or rather in its light, are these things best expounded, best taught and learned. "Having yet therefore one son, his well-beloved, he sent him also last unto them, saying, They will reverence my son. But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours. And they took him, and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard." In that death was the reconciliation made. Apart from that cross and bloodshedding, no reconciliation, no peace, no sonship, no inheritance. * 2 Cor. vi. 17, 18. + Gen. xlviii. 15, 16. Ps. xxvii. 9, 10. § Rev. xxi. 23. || Mark xii. 6. XIII. God's People Predestinated to partake of His Holiness. HEB. xii. 10. "HE for our profit, that we might be partakers of HIS HOLINESS." Ου UR course of thought for several Sundays has led us to dwell on the work of the Holy Spirit. And whether we consider the name, nature, or work of the blessed Spirit, we are brought face to face with holiness, the holiness of God. This attribute of God most high is intolerable to the natural man. Tell him of the power, wisdom, goodness, and mercy of God, and you win his assent, you carry him along with you; it may be he is affected to tears; language of surprise and delight, if not of adoration, springs to his lips. But dwell on the holiness of God, and he shrinks, quails, shudders before that thought. He continually grieves the Holy Spirit, and the thought of the HOLY SPIRIT is grievous to him. Yet, in God's unutterable love and condescension, that holiness which he so much dreads is proposed to him for his imitation. Conformity to that holiness is charged upon him as his most solemn duty and most exalted privilege: "Be ye holy; for I am holy. Before the tribunal of that God of truth and holiness he must stand. Hence, like fallen Adam, he hides himself * from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden; or, like the sinners of Isaiah's day, he cries defiantly, "Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us."* To angelic natures, on the other hand, the holiness of GOD is a constant theme of holy rapture, of adoring wonder and praise. "They cried one to another, and said, HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, is the Lord of hosts." + It is not at all surprising that when Isaiah heard this antiphon of the angels, as they discoursed one to another of the holiness of God, he was undone and lost in humiliation and confusion of face; that he was bowed low with unutterable shame at the thought of being charged with a message from a Being of such stupendous and awful majesty. "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD OF HOSTS." And if it was so with the prophet, much more amazing and overwhelming must it be to an ordinary man speaking to his fellow-men on so great a theme! And great need have we all to pray that the live coal with which the prophet's lips were touched, and by which his iniquities were taken away, may touch my lips and your hearts; and that the Holy Spirit, who "sanctifieth all the elect people of God," may so bless to us the study of that attribute by which He has especially chosen to be named and known in the Church, as to cause it to minister by His grace to our growth in holiness, i.e., our growing conformity to the holy image of God in Christ. We propose to divide the subject so as to consider it under three heads. * Isa. xxx. II. + Isa. vi. 3. Isa. vi. 5. 1. First, God's eternal choice of His people unto holiness. 2. The nature of that holiness. 3. The principal means by which it is inwrought. I. First, God's choice of His people unto holiness. It might have pleased the Most High to make known to us by name only His intrinsic attribute of holiness, to have set it before us as something conceivable indeed, yet so abstract and abstruse as to be unattainable and inimitable; something to be adored from an infinite distance, but of which all participation were hopelessly excluded. But praised be His name, for the most part when He discloses His attributes, His purpose is not to astound, so much as to propose them to the imitation of His intelligent creatures, of the subjects of His moral government. Whatever He is pleased to manifest of His name and nature is to be as a sunshine that brightens and gilds, that warms and cheers. His Father's smile is no cold, distant, rayless smile, but so as that beam answers beam, and the joy, beauty, goodness that is in Him wakes up the same in the creatures of His hand, so far as the finite can reflect and image forth the Infinite. And as this is so in the case of others of His attributes, so it is in respect of His holiness also. From of old, in the midst of this sin-polluted world, of His great grace He called a family, and then a people, and brought them near to Himself; and amongst them again the Levitical tribe, and the family of Aaron; and the head and crown of all these, the high priest himself: ever in nearer and narrower circles, in ever-heightened gradations of holiness, upwards towards Himself, culminating in the high priest, that might once a year Of the tribe of Levi, Moses break through, with awful reverence and prostrate soul, into the most holy place itself, and look with human eyes upon the close-veiled and hidden glory, and touch, but only with blood-sprinkled finger, the mercy-seat above which the glory rested. Of that race He said, "This people have I formed for myself, they shall show forth my praise."* And in the Book of Leviticus, "Ye shall be holy unto me; for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine." bore witness, "Hear, ye sons of Levi! Is it a small thing unto you, that the God of Israel hath separated you from the congregation of Israel, to bring you near to Himself to do the service of the tabernacle of the Lord?" And we know the minute and special directions which were given for the anointing, consecrating, sanctifying, of Aaron and his sons; how for the high priest was made a plate of pure gold, and there was graven upon it like the engravings of a signet, "Holiness to the Lord." "Thou shalt sanctify him therefore; for he offereth the bread of thy God: he shall be holy unto thee: for I the Lord which sanctify you, am holy. The crown of the anointing oil of his God is upon him. I am the Lord." § Thus the nation with its sacred tribe and priesthood was to be a witness of God's holiness to the world. "Thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God." There is something very impressive and solemnizing in the constant repetition of this kind of charge. The first summons to be a holy people is re-echoed again and again. It is a continually recurring note; and this should strike us all the more, * Isa. xliii. 21. Num. xvi. 9. |