appropriate in any measure such language to ourselves. And this is the beauty of the Psalms, that we need to realize all the grace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ to enable us to read them with self-application.

"You refer to 1 Peter i. 5. Who could have written so pointedly on this subject as Peter? Compare his words, 'kept through faith,' with the Lord's words to him, 'I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.' It seems to me a miracle to be kept, when one realizes that one's heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked;' and if I judge aright the knowledge of its deceitfulness is the fruit of more matured experience than the knowledge of its desperate wickedness. There must be a daily putting off and putting on. In Colossians iii. there is a double putting off, and putting on; and I must say that I feel most consciously poor, as yet, in my spiritual wardrobe.

"Before we came down to breakfast this morning, I asked my wife to read to me Psalm xc., the tenth verse of which— 'The days of our years are threescore years and ten,' &c.— is very present to my mind; and growing infirmities warn me that my sphere of active ministry is becoming, not only yearly but I may say daily, more and more limited. I often turn to Ps. xxxi., where we evidently find Christ, as is apparent from v. 5, Into thine hand I commit my spirit.' But I desire, as having this spirit, especially to make my own (in my measure) that word which was so perfectly applicable in Him, My times are in Thy hand' (v. 15). I desire submission to His will; whether it pleases God to measure my times by days, weeks, months, or years. J. L. H."

"Feb. 15th, 1873."

FRAGMENT.-In Christ we have, as believers, put off the "old man," and have put on the "new man;" but our difficulty is to get rid of the habits of the old man, and to 'put on habits becoming the new man. This is an inward work; thus, "anger" has to be replaced by "bowels of mercies."

THE FALL: WAS IT A NECESSITY?

FEW subjects have exercised the minds of Christians more than that of man's fall. The question naturally arises: As God might easily have prevented the fall of our first parents, why did He place them in the garden with a possibility of sinning, guarded only by a solemn warning, perhaps not well understood by them? Some, looking at the Fall in the light of the glorious results of the redemptive work of Christ, with too little regard to the unutterable woe of the lost, are prone to exclaim with Augustine of old, as he contemplated the Fall, “Oh, happy fault!" assuming that God could find no other way of accomplishing His purposes in connection with the redeemed. Some, on the other hand, regarding perhaps more the miseries of the lost than the bliss of the redeemed, and thinking it derogatory to the character of God to say He could find no other way of accomplishing His end than by the allowance of sin and its terrible consequences, are bold to say, "The Fall is no advantage."

Now, in both these views of the Fall, it has to be observed that the thoughts of the reasoners are occupied with the creature, rather than with the Creator. In every

Christian doctrine, and in all Bible truth, the question of God, His honour, and His glory, stands first: the question of the creature, its blessing and its good, stands second. To invert this divine order, though it may not be so intended, is to put the creature in the place of God, and to forget that creation, with all its untold mysteries, spiritual, moral, and physical, is designed to subserve first, and chief, the glory of that Almighty One who created things for

Himself, and in the knowledge of whom alone is the creature's fullest good.

The path of faith in regard to all the mysteries of God is the path of child-like trust. Many mysteries are unveiled to us in that divine revelation which has been put into our hands, and many more yet remain unrevealed, awaiting the unfoldings of the world to come, when we who now know but in part, shall know even as we are known. Faith is happy and rejoicing in what it knows, and is also trustful and thankful regarding that of which it is ignorant; for truly there is not only much grace in revealing what is open to our view, but much goodness in veiling what is at present shut out from us. He who in wisdom revealed to His apostle in the Isle of Patmos the meaning of the seven trumpet sounds, said, when the seven thunders uttered their voice, "Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not." God alone knows what He can wisely communicate to us, and faith can rejoice in a blissful ignorance that hangs implicitly on God.

Let us suppose for a moment that there were two ways by which the All-wise could accomplish the same end, though we do not allow for a moment that it is so. Supposing, for argument's sake, that God could have accomplished all the good He designs to accomplish, either with or without the Fall, and yet that the God of all grace allowed the Fall to supervene and mar that creation-work which He had pronounced very good, faith will at once say, whatever the natural thought might be, that the Fall was the very best, if not the only means whereby God's purposes of self-revelation and of blessing to His creatures could be accomplished. Faith would also regard as little short of blasphemy, the assertion that the Fall has no advantage; for it must be borne in mind that in the

Bible, God never removes from Himself the direct responsibility of whatever He allows. In the history of Job, Satan is brought before us in the first chapters of the book as the moving cause and active agent in all Job's miseries; but when God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind, He never once alludes to Satan, taking upon Himself the whole responsibility of what had happened to His servant. So, also, when Peter speaks to the Jews of their wickedness in crucifying Christ, he does not for a moment hide the fact that He was delivered "by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God;" and He who in His eternal wisdom foresaw the death of Christ by the hands of wicked men, yet said in prophetic vision to Zechariah, Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd." By the same pre-determinate counsel and foreknowledge God delivered man up to the possibilities of the Fall, for ends and purposes of which we know something now, and shall know more hereafter.

But the word of God, while saying comparatively little, directly, of why He allowed the Fall, has not left us without analogies in certain matters, and in connection with these He has revealed His purpose so explicitly, that we are by no means without light concerning many of His ways which would otherwise be involved in dark, inscrutable mystery. The epistle to the Romans is especially helpful to us here; for in that precious epistle, the counsellings, plannings, and orderings of God in the past are handled with a profoundness, probably not surpassed in any part of Scripture. We would, in passing, refer to the first eight verses of the third chapter of the epistle. In the fourth verse Paul lays down an important principle, in answering the question, "Shall their want of faith make of none effect the faithfulness of God?" He replies, "God forbid : yea, let God be found true, but every man a liar,

as it is written, That Thou mayest be justified in Thy words, and mightest prevail, when Thou comest into judgment." (R.V.) These words are quoted from David's penitential Psalm, the fifty-first, and the very same words would be true if applied to the penitent utterances of our first parents in the garden; for all temptations from without are divine testings, the object of which is to prove the creature to be what God knows that it is. Thus, in the Fall, while man was proved to be false, God was proved to be true, and perhaps in the universe of God there is no greater necessity than that God should be demonstrated to be what He essentially is.

In verse 5, the apostle puts another question into the mouth of an objector-"If our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who visits with wrath?" and he at once replies, "God forbid for how then shall God judge the world?" assuming that God's allowance of sin is no justification of the sinner, and gives him no plea whereby to escape the righteous judgment of God. Again, the objector is supposed to ask, "If the truth of God, through my lie, abounded unto His glory, why am I also still judged as a sinner? and why not (as we be slanderously reported, and as some ffirm that we say) Let us do evil that good may come?" To such the answer is, Their "condemnation is just."

Thus the apostle appears to take it for granted that the fall of Adam at once brings to light the righteousness of God on the one hand, and demonstrates the truth of God on the other. It may be asked, " Might not the righteousness and truth of God have been shown in some other way?" But faith's answer is, "God has revealed no other," and we may well assume that the way chosen is the only one and the best; for it is impossible that the God of infinite grace and of fathomless compassion, who rejoices in