as the law of your life, that you have got something else to live for besides the salvation of your soul, and by the light of God's Holy Spirit, make it the object of your life to discover what it is that God thus holds up before you as the prize of

your high calling."

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Now, although God does first of all appeal to our selfregarding instincts, yet the revelation which brings salvation. to our souls is of such a kind as to lead us away from ourselves unto Him. He does not give us salvation apart from Jesus, but He gives us salvation in Jesus. I have been speaking a good deal this week about faith. Did it ever occur to you to sit down for five minutes and quietly consider this question,-Why has God appointed faith as the condition of my salvation? When God obtained salvation for me, by the death and sufferings of His own dear Son, the gift being purchased, why does He not bestow it upon all freely? Why does He appoint any conditions at all? Why is it necessary that I should trust Him in order to obtain the salvation that Jesus Christ has procured? This is a reasonable inquiry, and one upon which you would do well to fix your attention. Let us endeavour to answer it. I cannot think of any other condition that would not in some way or another have built up, more or less, a barrier between yourself and your God.

Suppose God had given us this revelation. "My Son has bought salvation for you; you shall have it, if you will only pray so many hours, or pray so fervently." Suppose that had been the condition-what would have been the effect? It would have been that we should have claimed it as of right, in virtue of the earnestness of our prayer-" I have pleaded with God in prayer, and now I have established a claim." Thus the very prayer designed to be the medium for communicating salvation to us,-would have become a sort of barrier and partition wall between us and the person of God Himself.

Suppose He had appointed tears as the medium of communication, or works, any particular work, the giving a sum of money, or enduring a certain amount of hardship for a specified number of days; if He had done so, there would have been a dangerous tendency to put this condition, which He had established, between ourselves and Him.

But what does faith do. Faith leads me right up to the Person of God. Faith is not some objective entity, which I

put between myself and my God. On the contrary, I am then most believing when I am least thinking about my own belief. I find that many anxious souls are so taken up with thinking about their own faith, that they cannot believe. You have been scrutinising your own faith and turning it over and over. "Have I got the right kind of faith?" You have been so busy about your faith, that you have not believed. What is belief? Belief is looking straight into the face of Christ, and forgetting yourself, and just seeing what Christ is, and resting in the finished work of Christ, embracing the person of Christ, casting yourself into the arms of Christ, leaving yourself with Christ. "Christ my all in all."

When you thus lay hold of Christ, there is nothing between you and Him. God has appointed the condition of faith because it is the only one which can strip man of all merit, and the only one that brings us up directly into His presence. Thus no man is "justified by faith" without coming into personal contact with the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom all his soul's wants are met and satisfied.

The life of God in the soul of man begins not in the mere granting of a favor, but in our acquainting ourselves with a person. This truth is as old as the Book of Job, "Acquaint now thyself with Him, and be at peace." We lie down at the foot of the cross and gaze at Him. It is not His work that will satisfy us (we thank God for His work!); it is not the doctrine of justification by faith that will give us peace (we thank God for that doctrine !), but we find the doctrine in the Person; and we find the work in the Person; we get, by faith, right up to Himself, and as we lay hold of Him, the germ of love is planted in our hearts, and we begin to "love Him because He first loved us."

Now have you got thus far? If you have not, you do not know anything about the" life of love." It is possible to be devoted to an idea. We may be very earnest indeed-throw up our position in life under the inspiration of a new enthusiasm, but the apostle tells us that "it is possible to give all our goods to feed the poor and not have Love." He goes farther than that; he says, "it is possible to give our body to be burned, and not have Love." A man may be so mastered by sentiment, as to go through fire and water, rather than turn his back upon what he believes to be really true and just and good, and yet all the while his heart may be destitute of love

to a personal Saviour, just because he has never come into personal contact with Him. Love is always the result of personal communications. If you were to read to me the life of the Duke of Wellington, I might admire his character, but that would not make me love him. If I read the writings of Plato and Socrates, my whole heart may be stirred as I read of their groping after truth. I may admire them, but I do not love them. I cannot love a person till I am brought into contact with him; mind to mind, and heart to heart. Thus, dear friends, I venture to say, it is impossible for us to love God, till, first of all, we have been brought by the Holy Spirit into conscious fellowship with Himself. It is only when there is real contact between the living, personal Christ and my human soul, that the real life of love begins. You may shut yourselves up in a monastery, because you desire to devote yourself to the service of God, yet there shall be no real love. You may become a "sister of charity" and go to the hospitals, and work there like a slave, till you die, and yet there may be no real love! Legalists have done it; like slaves under the lash, under the fear of the judgments of an offended God! The real devotion of the heart to God will and must arise from the consciousness of "the love of God shed abroad in our hearts." And that love only comes when, by faith, we cast ourselves upon Him.

This then, is the beginning of the life of love. But it is only its beginning: we have no sooner come to Christ and accepted Him as our Saviour, than our love begins to deepen. If we are faithful to Christ, He will make a fresh revelation of Himself. And I want you to observe that in every fresh revelation that the Lord makes of Himself, there is a deepening of our love. There comes to us, first of all, a revelation of Himself to us as a Saviour. Now if you rest in that, you know you are resting in your " first love." We often hear Christians say, "Oh, dear me, I don't feel the love I once did; my first days were my best days; I wish I felt as I did once." My dear friend, hast thou lost "thy first love?" I will tell you how it is, you did not go on to your second love. You did not look for other revelations of the Beloved. You satisfied yourself with that first revelation. You say, "I have not lost my assurance. I believe I am still a child of God. I do not believe He will let me perish, though I am so cold, and my heart is so shrivelled up." No wonder! It is in

the mind and will of God that you should love Him in the various manifestations of Himself that He would make to you. But thou, in thy sluggishness, hast rested satisfied with the first.

We want fresh revelations of Christ of a kind to meet our own spiritual experiences, in order to keep bright the flame of love within our soul. I do not dare to say that I can lay down any law of the Divine operation, and indicate with precision the various steps in the life of love; but I may venture to point out to you a few of the ways in which the Lord Jesus Christ does manifest Himself to His people.

After a manifestation of Him as the Saviour, there comes a manifestation of Him as a Guide. The Lord Jesus Christ stands before us in all our perplexities; we feel ourselves surrounded with all the alluring objects of life, and we know not which way to turn; and the Lord Jesus Christ stands before us, and says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life.” He take us by the hand; "He leads the blind by a way they know not," the right way, although not always the most pleasant way at first, and "when He putteth forth His own sheep, He goeth before them, and the sheep follow Him, for they know His voice."

You can scarcely have failed to notice the joy that is evidently indicated to us as thrilling the hearts of the disciples of old, when they had found the Master, the “Rabbi.” "We have found Him." They had been under the teaching of John, he had led them up to a certain point, but could not lead them further; they wanted some one to take them by the hand, and lead them on. John had said, "There cometh one after me that is preferred before me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose." Their heart's zeal went out towards Him. "Rabbi, where dwellest Thou?” “ Come, and see." That is the revelation love makes to us. We have found Him as our Saviour. We know we are pardoned, and now we say, "Rabbi, what is Thy way along the journey of life? Which path dost thou take? Where shall we find

Thy habitation?" "Tell me, O Thou whom my soul loveth, where Thou feedest, where Thou makest Thy flock to lie down at noon?" We want to follow Him; we want to know where He dwells. The Lord Jesus Christ begins to reveal Himself to us. It may be, first of all, a revelation that startles and pains us. He stands before us with His cross on

His shoulder and says, "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me;" and we are ready to say, "Be it far from Thee, Lord!" "Art Thou not going to take us to heaven pillowed on downy beds of case? Canst Thou not float us up in a rising tide over all these trials and hardships?" Then Jesus replies to us: "Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of, and with the baptism that I am baptised withal shall ye be baptised." By-and-by we begin to love the shadow of the Cross; we thank God that He thwarts our human will, that He takes us by the hand, and leads us out of the flowery paths that we were choosing into this higher air. He is ever near us to be our Guide.

Dear child of God, if you want to know more of the love of God, do not take the law of your life into your own hands. Do not say, "I will cast my lot here; I will avoid this trial, and stand out of the way of that difficulty." O just be content to be guided by the eye of Christ. Believe that although He seems to be leading you blindly, He is leading you rightly. And if only you are following, step by step, the Divine guidance, you are sure to find the straight road that leads home.

When the Lord Jesus Christ has thus undertaken for us, it seems to me that it will not be very long before He will assert His own supremacy over us. You remember there were two sets of persons that came to the cradle of Bethlehem. First, there were the shepherds; they came to find the Saviour; and next there were the wise men, and they came, having been guided by the Star. Christ was the light that guided them; they came to find a King, and the question was, "Where is He that was born King of the Jews?" Now I have not found that this great truth of the supremacy and kingship of the Lord Jesus is grasped just at once by every believer. The first thought of the soul is, "I want to be saved," and the revelation is Unto you is born a Saviour." We rejoice in the fact, and we very often go travelling on in the greatness of this joy for months, and even years. Some Christians make no further discovery than that! But those Christians who, having been saved, commit themselves to the Divine guidance, will very soon be led on to the discovery of the King, that is to say, in plain language, sooner or later the Holy Spirit of God will enlighten your understanding as to