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The First Sunday after Trinity.

EVENING SERVICE.-Second Lesson: 2 Cor. i.

Verse 22.-"Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts."

THE promises of God are co-extensive with the wants of His people. They are positive in their nature, they are broad in their application, and they are lasting in their effects. There is no circumstance into which the child of God can be brought but that he will find a promise adapted to his case tending to animate and console his mind in the midst of the changes of life. Like the bright beam of the sun bursting through the darkness of a thunderstorm do these promises penetrate through the clouds of human sorrow, and, with a life-giving influence, they cheer us onward in our heavenly course. On the positiveness and unchangeableness of God's promises the apostles founded the doctrines which they preached to the world. There was, therefore, no inconstancy and uncertainty in what they taught; they did not-affirm a thing at one time and deny it at another. "But as God is true," St. Paul declares in this chapter, "our word toward you was not yea and nay, for the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you, was not yea and nay, but in him yea." Inasmuch as God is faithful and true, never deceiving nor promising that which He does not perform, so true is it that there is no fickleness and changeableness in the preaching of Christ, whom we have held forth among you as the centre in which all God's promises meet, and the stay in which they are invariably fixed. "For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us." All the promises which God has made to His people are made in Christ and

ratified by Him. Christ acts the part and office of a surety; He undertakes and engages for God that whatever He has promised shall be made good to us. In Him they are yea,

and in Him Amen.

The security for the positiveness of the Gospel, and for the steadfastness of those who believe the Gospel, is this. "Now he which establisheth us with you in Christ and hath anointed us, is God." Being thus established by one who cannot change, and being anointed by the sanctifying grace. of His Holy Spirit, we are assured of the final result. Though we are naturally like reeds shaken with every wind, in God we shall be made like pillars, strong and firm to withstand the most violent blast; though we are naturally cold and indifferent to all that is holy and good, by Him we are consecrated to the best of purposes; and as the anointing oil refreshes, heals, comforts, beautifies, and strengthens, so shall we be made partakers of all the internal virtues and external excellences which His sanctifying grace can bestow. He has done more for us than even this, "Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts." He has set His seal upon us as His own, and as such has given us a pledge of our future happiness.

This is a most encouraging portion of Holy Writ. It brings before us, First, God's seal upon, and Secondly, God's pledge unto His people.

I. We have God's seal upon His people. "Who hath also scaled us." The reference is evidently to the various usages in which a seal is employed in the transactions of life. It is used to close up letters and books, to set them apart for the sole purposes of the owner; the seal indicates that they are not to be scanned by every prying eye, not to be read by every curious mind, and not to be handled by every unhallowed hand. The owner has some peculiar purposes for their use, and they are thus dedicated entirely to his service. When God imparts His Spirit to the soul, it is an indication that that soul is consecrated by Him to Himself

for His own peculiar service. "The Lord hath set apart him that is godly for himself." By setting the seal of the Spirit in his heart He declares the ownership; none henceforth has a right to meddle with what is God's. The devil has no right to lead that soul captive at his will; sin has no right to his service; he himself has no right to give himself away to serve any other purposes. Being bought with a price, he is not his own, he is God's. Having sealed him, God has a claim to his person, to his heart, to his affections, to his services, to his all. St. John tells us, "Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit." And again, "Hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us." The seal is the mark by which we have an assurance that we are His. Brethren, we are none of God's unless we have this seal in our hearts.

2. A seal is attached to a document to show that it is genuine, authenticated, and confirmed. A deed, or compact, or agreement is sealed to signify that it is approved by the parties signing it. Being thus signed and sealed, it is established and made sure. In a similar manner Christians are said to be sealed by the Holy Spirit. St. Paul, in writing to the Ephesians, says, "In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise." The Holy Spirit is given them to produce in their hearts those feelings, hopes, and desires which are an evidence that they are approved of God; that they are regarded as His adopted children; that their hope is genuine, and that their salvation and redemption is sure. There is nothing miraculous in this. It consists of the ordinary operation of the Spirit on the heart, producing repentance, and faith, and love, and hope, and joy, and conformity to the will of God, and the love of prayer, and praise, and the Christian graces generally. These things are the evidences that the Holy Spirit has renewed the heart to believe, and that the believer is "sealed for the day of

redemption." This Spiritual seal does not secure the confirmation of God's promises on His part, but He condescends to set His seal to His promises for the confirmation of His people, that they also may be assured of their authenticity, and "that by two immutable things (the promise and oath), in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge, to lay hold on the hope set before us." Thus we are confirmed in our Christian graces, going from strength to strength, renewed in the spirit of our minds, strengthened in the inner man, and pressing "forward to the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

3. A seal is used for the purposes of security. Formerly it was employed to secure a place of confinement, to indicate the safety of the person or thing confined. When Daniel was cast into the den of lions by the wicked decree of the Persians, confirmed by King Darius, we are told that "a stone was brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet, and the signet of his lords, that the purpose might not be changed concerning Daniel." We have an equally wicked act of the Jews, when they placed our Saviour's body in the grave; "they went and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone and setting a watch." This act of sealing the stone made it a crime of high treason, which involved inevitable death, to unclose that place of confinement.

By a more sure act God secures the safety of His people from all assaults that may be made upon them. The impious conduct of the Persians and the Jews does not afford a parallel further than the seal was used for security. He places His seal as a mark upon the persons of His people, so that no destructive weapon is allowed to touch them. In the vision of Ezekiel he heard the Lord say to the man clothed with linen, with the writer's inkhorn by his side, "Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark on the foreheads of the men that sigh, and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst

thereof." Those were the only men that were saved when all the rest were destroyed, both old and young. In the vision of St. John, he heard it said, "Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads." To whatever spiritual danger or calamity others may be exposed, those who bear the seal of God are perfectly safe. "There is now therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." The Apostle, in the confidence of a holy enthusiasm, asks the comprehensive question, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" Then with renewed energy he says, "For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Finally, the image on a seal is transferred to the object impressed by it, as is the image of God transferred to the souls of those whom He seals. They are "renewed in His image." By the act of regeneration they receive the impression, perhaps not fully at once, it may be the work of years to receive a clear likeness of God's image; but gradually, through the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit, they grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, until ultimately, like the circulating coin of a country, they bear the exact impression of their Sovereign.

We observe

II. God's pledge unto His people, "and hath given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts."

The word earnest, or the phrase earnest of the Spirit, as used here and in other places by the same Apostle, means properly a pledge given to ratify a contract; it is a part of the price or purchase-money, or a first payment which confirms the bargain, and which is considered as a guarantee that all the price will in due time be paid. It refers to those influences of the Spirit on the heart upon earth as a pledge