of somewhat similar habits and pursuits. If language can speak clearly at all, it certainly speaks here of propriety,-of a close and endearing interest possessed by the Redeemer in those whom St. Paul addresses. Similar forms of expression, and obviously with similar meaning abound in his Epistles. "Whether we live, we live unto the Lord, or whether we die, we die unto the Lord; whether we live therefore or die, we are the Lord's." "All things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's."2

Now mark the whole course of this inexpressibly blessed assurance. Every thing, whether in nature or in grace, is the absolute and unquestionable property of those who are "washed, sanctified, and justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." And what constitutes the reason of the grant, and the validity of the rich endowment? The interest which Christ hath in them, and the interest which God hath in Christ. Is this an interest of imitation, or of right and possession? The chain is perfect in all its links: and God be praised, that it cannot be

Romans xiv. 8. 21 Cor. iii. 22, 23. 3 1 Cor. vi. 11.

broken by any of those cold and comfortless interpretations, whose authors seem to enjoy a perverse satisfaction in lowering and chilling the spiritual tone of religion among us. The scriptural assurance of identity between the Bridegroom and the bride, the Head and the members, the Vine and the branches, is a rock of immovable refuge to a Christian's hope: "I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one: and that the world may know that Thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved me.

If the infallible guidance of Scripture be taken to direct us, we shall find no difficulty in determining to whom this high distinction belongs. We may easily discover who are thus numbered among the saints of God for glory everlasting. They have been given by the Father to his Son, in the mediatorial character which He assumed for the world's salvation; that He might restore them from their lapsed and lost condition in sin and condemnation ;-that He might once again impress upon them the image of God, and readmit them to the family of heaven;—that He might see in them of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied. "Thine they were, and Thou gavest them unto Me."2 He received them at the 2 Ibid xvii. 6.

1 John xvii. 23.

Father's hand, in that eternal engagement of his love, whereby He undertook to raise up in them a temple to Himself, from the dust and ruin of the fall; and to make them meet for the inheritance of the saints in light. He undertook their otherwise hopeless cause, as a community of property and possession, wherein both his Father and Himself might have a perpetual interest of complacency and delight. He engaged to remove the guilt they would incur, by its assumption upon Himself, in virtue of his one oblation of Himself once offered, as the one full and perfect satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; to maintain their cause by an unceasing and prevailing advocacy on their behalf in the court of heaven; to sanctify them, body, soul, and spirit, by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost; to leave no work for them imperfect and undone. He pledged Himself to persevere in these unfathomably mysterious offices of love, until God in Him, having accomplished the number of his elect, and made ready his kingdom, He should say as its everlasting Administrator, "Those whom thou gavest me have I kept.

All mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them."1

1 John xvii. 10,11.

He covenanted,

B 5

not only to bring in an everlasting righteousness, which should be unto all, and upon all them that believe; but to dwell in their hearts by his Holy Spirit; and by the almighty energy of his grace, there to unlock the springs of that holiness, whereby they might adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour in all things, and without which no man shall see the Lord. Participation,' saith the judicious Hooker, is that mutual inward hold which Christ hath of us, and we of Him, in such sort that each possesseth other by way of interest, property, and inherent copulation. We are in God through Christ eternally, according to that intent and purpose whereby we are chosen to be made his in this present world, before the world itself was made. We are in God, through the knowledge which is had of us, and the love which is borne towards us from everlasting. But-our being in Christ by eternal foreknowledge, saveth us not without our actual and real adoption into the fellowship of his saints into this present world. We are therefore adopted sons of God to eternal life by participation of the only begotten Son of God, whose life is the wellspring and cause of ours. It is too cold an interpretation whereby some men expound our being in Christ to import nothing else but only that the self-same nature

which maketh us to be men is in Him, and maketh Him man, as we are. For what man in the world is there, that hath not so far forth communion with Jesus Christ? The church is

in Christ, as Eve was in Adam. Yea, by grace we are every one of us in Christ, and in his church, as by nature we were in those our first parents.'1

Contemplate especially The Price paid by the Son of God when He bore the overwhelming load of human transgression in his own body on the tree; when it pleased the Lord to bruise Him, and to make his soul an offering for sin. And this view being taken, we may ask whether in those who are Christ's He may not challenge a right of purchase for an interest mutual and interchangeable between them and Himself; immeasurably more close and endearing than could be imagined on the ground of discipleship alone, could that connection be separated from the other relations in which every believer must stand to his Lord?" Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot."

"Ye are

not your own, for ye are bought with a price." 3

1 Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 56.

21 Pet. i. 18, 19.

31 Cor. vi. 20.