VOL. IV.

THE PRESENT BLESSINGS OF THE NEW CREATION.

BY THE EDITOR.

No. I.

"IF any man be in Christ there is a new creation." The old and the new creations are represented by, and summed up in, the first and second Adam. The new creation is the new sphere into which the sinner passes when he believes in Christ. Faith is an act by which the soul passes into Christ. To be in Christ is to be in the new creation. And to be in the new creation is to be a new creature. The fact that there is a new creation-that it was necessary—is of itself sufficient to prove that the old has failed. The Old Testament records the complete failure of the first Adam. It contains also the promise of the coming and triumph of the Second Adam.

The New Testament is a revelation of the new creation. It proclaims the fact that the Second Adam has come, that the battle is over, that the victory is won.

Salvation comes by believing into Christ. In Him we find all the blessings of the new creation. And if we ask what becomes of the former state of things-the conditions of the old life? the Scripture answers, "Old things are passed away: behold all things are become new."

That is to say the children of the new creation-believers in Christ-are introduced into a new condition of things; they are put on an entirely new basis, a new footing. It is not a restoration to the Adamic condition. Not

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an improvement of the old creation. The new creation does not make me as yet either innocent or sinless. The flesh is not eradicated. "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit (ie. the Holy Ghost), and the Spirit (Holy Ghost) against the flesh" (Gal. v. 16). The power of evil is present, but if you are in the Spirit you are not under it; but you have the benefit of a superior power with which to meet it. You are in the power of God. That power not only meets but overcomes the flesh, so that you need not do the things which you would otherwise do. You shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh.

Adain was made sinless. He had no evil nature. In his original condition he did not possess that evil principle which the Scripture calls the "flesh." He stood by virtue of his own innocence. But he failed. His own sinlessness was not sufficient to keep him from falling.

Adam, in his original condition, had no need of the blood; the holiest saint to-day needs it every moment.

Adam, in his original condition, did not stand by virtue of Christ's risen life. But the believer needs that life every moment. He is saved in His life (Rom. v. 10). The believer has the flesh in him though he is not in the flesh. The flesh, of course, here not being understood in the sense of our mortal bodies. We believe that what the Apostle says, in the fifth chapter of Galatians, is true of the holiest saint on earth. There is nothing in that chapter to discourage him, or, on the other hand, to give him the slightest excuse for sinning. There is nothing in that chapter which would lead him

to think that complete and continual deliverance from the power of sin is not possible in this life. Quite the contrary. In spite of the presence of evil, in spite of the power of the flesh, the power of God is present to give a full and complete triumph over all, and so perfectly to take the strain and burden of sin's assault that some delivered souls have fancied that even the flesh itself was gone. They have not been conscious even of its presence, and if they have spoken from their consciousness, they have said the evil was eradicated. To guard us against this delusion, we believe 1 John i. 8 was written. By all means let us live in Christ's delivering power to the very full; but in our estimate of what we are let us take the witness of God's written Word, rather than that of our own consciousness, as our guide, however blessed our experience may be.

Thus the trusting soul is more than conqueror through Christ. But this is brought about not by restoration to a state of sinlessness, nor indeed by a restoration to the first Adam's condition of things at all, but by being translated into a new condition of things, into the new creation. In the first we see the trial and failure of a perfect creature. In the second we have an imperfect creature renewed, preserved and kept by a perfect Saviour. It is not the sinless man keeping himself, but it is Christ, who was begotten of God, keeping the imperfect creature so that the evil one toucheth him not (1 John v. 18). It is safer to stand enclosed in Christ, though you are imperfect, than to stand by virtue of your own sinless perfection. In the one case Satan cannot touch you, in the other you become an easy prey to his devices, even were it possible for you to stand in the sinlessness of unfallen Adam.

In our next we propose considering some of the blessings that belong to the new creation; those provisions which God has made for His children, and which are essential to their peace, purity, and power in their pilgrimage here on

earth.

My faith looks up to Thee!
My faith so small, so slow,
It lifts its drooping eyes to see
And claim the blessing now.

Thy wondrous gift

It sees afar;
Thy perfect love

It claims to share,
And doth not, cannot fear.
My faith takes hold on Thee!

My faith, so weak, so faint,
It lifts its trembling hands to be,
Trembling, but violent.

Thy kingdom now

It takes by force,
And waits till Thou,
Its last resource,
Shall seal and sanctify.

My faith holds fast on Thee!

My faith, still small, but sure, Its anchor holds alone to Thee, Whose presence keeps me pure.

And Thou alway,

To see and hear,
By night and day,

Art very near-
Art very near to me.

HOLDING

say to an unconverted man, as we can to a Christian, in reference to some great earthly anxiety: "Trust in God that it will work for your good." Being what he is, he has no promise that God will listen to him, for "God heareth not sinners." Take the largest promise you can think of, as-e. g., "Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out." Yes, but that is no promise to him who will not

"come." "Whosoever will let him take of the water of life freely." Yes, but that is no promise to him who does not "will." A solemn thought it is that the impenitent have no promises! The heaven above them is brass, and the earth beneath them is iron. How mysteriously terrible is sin, which can thus command the sky to rain no rain upon the withered heart, and which chokes the channel by which God's enriching grace can stream into the poor, parched, lifeless soul ! Yet so it is. We may clutch our idol; we may cry out, "Oh Lord; anything but that! He that touches that touches the apple of my eye. I cannot give it up. It is there I have garnered up my heart. Is it not a little one? Just let me keep it, and I will surrender everything else."

Little, yes; but not too little to make void for us every promise in the Bible. And it is a profane misuse of God's consolations, an unwarrantable cheapening of His offers of grace, to claim them for the impenitent when they are meant for Christ's own followers.

Here, at least, is a promise which no man who is not abiding in Christ has any right to appropriate. To you, Christians, it belongs. You shall be conquerors alike over the enemy within and the enemy without. Now all that exalts itself against God within our hearts may be comprised in one word of four letters-self. Have we never been forced to cry out, "If only I were true to myself! If only there were perfect loyalty to Christ! But I am wrong within; weak, wilful, tormented with lawless inclinations. Lord, save me from myself."

Yet the majority of us expect great things from improving self! we say more prayers, go to more services, do something more for others. Is then your experience of self such that you can really trust it in the matter of your soul's salvation? Have you not found that in exact proportion as you built upon self, your failure was complete and humiliating? Have you been led to believe that a partnership would do? Christ does not favour these joint undertakings. He is willing and able to take your soul's affairs into His hands. He only asks you to place and leave them there. There is much instruction in the account (2 Sam. vi. 6) of the man who would put out his hand to steady the ark. Do we not fall into precisely the same sin,

when, beginning by giving our affairs into God's safe keeping, we put out our hands to keep them from going wrong?

But we are 66

more than conquerors" in regard to all that is outwardly adverse to us. There is a remark made somewhere by Coleridge, that the old Pagan drama represented man as conquered by cir cumstances, while the modern drama, in its best form, represents man as conquering circumstances. There is a great truth in this; without Christ men are conquered by circumstances; with, in, and by Christ, it is they who conquer circumstances. The freethinker, so called, may draw on all his powers to help him to face the dark future. He may amuse himself with his books, or with the questions of the day, and if he be unfeeling or short-sighted he may partially succeed. But he does not conquer circumstances. Surely a poor imposture is philosophy at such a moment! The stoic may set his teeth, may never move a muscle, or utter even a sigh, but he is conquered nevertheless. The Christian, on the other hand, following his crucified and risen Lord, conquers all ill, and even when he dies conquers death, the last and greatest ill. To him the end of all is not death, but life, and therefore existence to him cannot be failure. He challenges death to do its worst. It may wrack and convulse him, but the yielding up of the spirit is not the confession of defeat, but the signal of victory; no longer the plunge into nothingness or ruin, but the step over the threshold of this dark, outside world, into the presence of the King.

Let us believe in the possibility and the blessedness of this conquering life. Tell me not that you are poor, despised, delicate, unnoticed by the world, conscious that your life has been a failure, with few to love you, and few whom you can love. No matter. You may have this conquering life. Say with the patriarch, "All these things are against me." Be it so, but God is for you. Count up the things which make life a weariness or a crushing disappointment, and when you have closed the enumeration, say (if you can truthfully say it), "Christ is mine, and I am His," and you will have grasped a reality which will enable you to break the thraldom of all those hateful influences, and say with St. Paul, "None of these things move me. ask, "How can these things be?" Yet why should they not be, if it be no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you? You cannot break the power of these terrible things, but Christ can. Allow Him to perfect His strength in your weakness. Come, Lord, and enter in, and make our hearts Thy citadel. We cannot face these enemies which are thundering at the gates, but Thy right hand shall teach us terrible things. Scatter Thou the people that delight in war; so we, Thy people, shall give Thee thanks for ever. In the Lord we have righteousness and strength. "Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Do you

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE-A FOURFOLD

PARADOX.

BY REV. C. A. FOX.

"Put not forth thyself in the presence of THE KING.” THE King is present with us now in the midst; and this word suits me as I come to speak to you in His name. I desire to speak behind Him, let us hear behind Him. O King, our crowned Lord Jesus present with us, according to Thine own promise, hide me behind Thee; let me not put forth myself in Thy presence; hide each hearer that they may listen in Thy name. May Thy transcendent glory be seen to-day, humbling both speaker and hearers, that we may both see and hear only Thee! Yea, we see only Thee! Transfigure us now in Thee, that Thine shall be all the praise!

The Christian's history is a paradox, an everincreasing paradox. Therefore we need not wonder if we meet with constant surprises in it, for every step is a paradox.

Do

To begin with, the Christian lives by dying. you recognize this tremendous fact? That we begin our life by leaving our life, and losing it with Jesus; that we are left there, dead with Christ on Calvary; that there He not only died for us, but that we died there in Him. But you may answer, "I thought that we were dead; that He quickened us when dead in trespasses and sins, and that we are alive now." Nay, not so in one sense; now it is, "ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." Now we must maintain that position of death; we must keep ourselves always where Christ was once. "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be manifest in our mortal body. We which live are always delivered unto death." We cannot live unless we die. Keep yourselves by the Holy Ghost in the place of death, and then the Lord will live out His life in you: He will have room to live in you. It will be then as when He cleansed the Temple, "Take these things hence!" He will enter and live in you as King. Remember, when the Lord crucifies you in any way, either by bodily or spiritual weakness, it is the hand of God upon you, keeping you in the very place of death in which He can show forth His glory. Indeed we do need to remember that, "Except a corn of wheat fall to the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." We need it more and more. We need to die in temper, so that

if anything does not please us, we may give our testimony, if need be, and take the place of death, and submit. Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." Let the Lord go forth and fight for you. Open unto the Lord of battles, and keep the gates open. How? By keeping in the place of death. Dead hands cannot keep out the living Christ. Then keep dead, that there may be room for the incoming of the Lord of Hosts. He will give us power to keep in the place which is ours, for the wages of sin is death, and nothing else belongs to us. So shall the living power and presence of the Lord be seen with us to-day.

When we have learned this first paradox, we reach another; that we have Rest through a yoke. The Lord's yoke is a yoke of rest. He has brought us into rest, saying, "Come unto Me, and I will give you rest." Now comes the crucial test. He says next, "Take My yoke;" and it is just here that there is the source of the most of the failures in our Christian life-that we refuse to take His yoke. He says to us, "Thou hast found justifying rest, my child, by My taking thy place; I stood in thy place, now do thou take Mine; take My yoke."

What is it to take His yoke? It is to take His Will. We must each pass through our own Gethsemane, saying, "Not my will, but Thine, be done;" and this must be continually, every day, in all circumstances. And speak plainly to Him, not in conventional terms, but as to a dear Father, as He did—“ Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." Oh, the triumph of Gethsemane! oh, its peace and power! Do you know it? Is there anything in you striving against the will of God ; any stray affection or wish independent of Him? Put it now under the yoke; say, "Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine, be done." There you shall attain, there you will maintain, the perfect rest of being under His yoke. "Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”

There is a third paradox. Not only do we live by dying, and rest under a yoke, but we triumph by a thorn. He can make of the thorn in the flesh a palm in the spirit. He can make of its wound an open door for the incoming of His glory. That is why He answered Paul thus-"For this thing I besought the Lord thrice; but He said, My strength is made perfect in weakness." And He left the thorn; but Paul gained by it an inheritance for the whole Church of Christ-" My grace is sufficient