"Then shall the king say unto them on His right hand, Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you"1 even as He now says, "Fear not, little flock, it is your sure to give you the kingdom."

Father's good pleaHis, in remainder, "the crown of

ד

are "the crown of righteousness,' life," and "the crown of glory." Thus, called by "the God of all grace unto his eternal glory, by Christ Jesus," the pardoned believer's first step out of prison is into the palace. "The king hath brought me into his chambers"-"the king's daughter shall be brought unto the king." To enunciate, without trope or figure, this blessed truth-"Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom also we HAVE ACCESS into this grace, wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." Here are the past, present, and future of salvation. Faith looks back on Calvary, and brings peace to the conscience; hope reaches forward to the coming glory, and ministers joy; in the meantime, our standing is in present grace. A salvation affecting the soul has been wrought out for us; a salvation extending to the body is in prospective before us; and, a present salvation ever in progress within us, we realize ourselves as under the disciplining, chastening, 2 Luke xii. 32. 8 2 Tim. iv. 8. 5 1 Pet. v. 4.

1 Matt. xxv. 39. 4 James i. 12.

6 In 1 Peter iii. 18, in the expression, Greek word occurs, in its verbal form.

"bring us to God," the same 7 Rom. v. 12.

8

scourging hand of the Father of spirits. "Tribulation" is the school, and its heaven-taught, heavenwrought lesson of "patience" tells of the design of love which has placed us therein; and its fruit or effect" experience," (the proof of reality in the heart; its standing the test of the furnace, the import of the Greek,)' lodges the believer in a higher degree of "hope," which is his "helmet of salvation" on the battle-field of life,1 and his anchor amid all its billows of trials; and, as with the divine Head himself, each member of His body can look forward and say, "My flesh shall rest in hope; for thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades.""

"Onward,” then, "and upward!" is the Christian's motto. Onward, here in grace; upward there to glory! His first step out of nature into grace was "unto salvation;" every after step, we have abundantly seen, has been "unto salvation”5 in a more enlarged sense; and it is not until sleeping believers, in their raised, and living believers in their changed bodies, "shall be caught up together to meet the Lord in the air," that the final step shall be made by them "unto salvation;" and the hallelujah of Revelation vii. be to the redeemed "the employment of a never ending rest."

Part EE.

66 EVERY MAN IN HIS OWN ORDER: CHRIST THE FIRSTFRUITS; AFTERWARD THEY THAT ARE CHRIST'S, AT HIS COMING." 1 Cor. xv. 23.

In order to unfold, as much as may be, the import of the term SALVATION, and more fully, as concerning it, to come at the mind of the Spirit, who is the glorifier of Jesus, in the Old as in the New Testament, I would, in the first place, add to the foregoing observations a supplemental allusion to the Book of Psalms, as shedding much and interesting light on the text which heads this and the foregoing part of my subject.

Conceiving that even then an outstanding signification of that term will present itself as yet unnoticed, I shall, in the next place, from the same portion of God's Word, aided by collateral evidence from the prophets, seek to attain the object I have in view, by considering in detail "what is written" regarding salvation, in immediate connection with the future earthly glory of Messiah, and of the rela

tion of the Jewish remnant toward Him in that glory.

1

Let me, then, direct notice to the last recorded reference of Christ to the Old Testament scriptures, differing from all other previous references thereto by the introduction, for the first time, of the mention of the Book of Psalms, as a distinctive portion of the sacred canon. "All things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and IN THE PSALMS, concerning me." Hitherto the designation of the standard to which He was wont to refer His teaching had been "the Scriptures"—"Moses and the Prophets”—“ the Law;" but now that the crisis had arrived when full light was to be let in on the apostles' minds, and He was about to substitute for His own personal teaching that of Him who was to "lead and guide into ALL TRUTH," and to take of the things of Himself and shew them unto them; now that He had left death and resurrection behind Him, the term "all the scriptures" is added to the mention of "Moses and the Prophets," when the two Emmaus disciples are to be directed, through death, to His glory; and when He turns for the last time to those who are to be witnesses of His resurrection, the Psalms, with marked significancy, are thrust upon their attention, that, through their Messianic enunciations, the light,

1 Luke xxiv. 44.

which was needed to unfold to them the nature of His mission and kingdom, might flow in on their opened understandings.

Let us now catch that glimpse of this living and life-giving Saviour, which the Holy Ghost presents to us in Ps. cxviii.: "The Lord hath chastened me sore; but he hath not given me over unto death: I SHALL NOT DIE, BUT LIVE." This is the language of Messiah acting faith (as, in Ps. xvi., we may behold Him exercising hope) for His own resurrection. When, in the days of His flesh, He offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, it was to Him whom He realized as ABLE TO SAVE HIM FROM DEATH;" and, "being made perfect (only to be predicated of Him in the consummation

2 Luke xxiv.

See Matt. xxi. 9, 42, compared with verses 22 and 26 of this Psalm. It is manifest, by these acclamations of the multitude in the former verse, that the Jews understood this Psalm as prophetic of their Messiah. Hence the appeal of Christ, in the latter verse, to those who had heard this multitude. This view also is strikingly brought out in Luke xx. 17. Our Lord had been alluding to the rejection of Him as the "beloved Son"-"the heir;" and it is recorded, that "He beheld them, and said, What is this then that is written, The Stone which the builders rejected," &c. Mark the force of the particle "then," or, as it is in Greek, "therefore," thus illatively pointing to the fulfilment of the prophecy, in the deadly hatred of the Chief Priests and Scribes, whom, in verses 19, 20, we find, in the same hour, seeking to "lay hands on Him;" and when they could not, "for fear of the people," proceeding to hatch that conspiracy, which issued in His being "delivered unto the power and authority of the governor."