THE BRIDEGROOM DELIVERER.

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This secret of living in the faith of an ever present Saviour-loving, tender, watchful, faithful—is the secret learned by those of the eighth chapter class, and this is the secret of their zest in repeating the triumphant answer to the sad question, Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And this is the secret which they, of the class of the seventh chapter, have not learned, and therefore it is that they still sigh in their bondage and groan under the weight of the body of death.

It is quite remarkable, however, that while these last point to the seventh of Romans as the exposition of their state and condition, they always clip this graphic chapter at both ends to make it suit their experience. It opens with the beautiful representation of the matrimonial relation as that between Christ and his followers, and closes with the exultant note of deliverance from the very state of bondage to which these sighing ones point as their

own.

A moment's thought should make them see that they are not honoring the Bridegroom Deliverer when they point to this hopeless bondage; this struggling, sighing, groaning condition; this slavery to sin; this wedded state with a Body of Death as the Bridegroom, as the state and condition to which he has introduced them. A poor bridegroom, surely, he must be, who holds his bride as a slave, sighing

and groaning for liberty, and crying out, Who shall deliver me from the body of this death!

And a poor bride must she be, whose heart goes abroad for its pleasures away from the embraces of her groom; so fascinated by the contraband delights of the world, that even when she would be true to her home and her spouse, she is always haunted by thoughts and desires after others!

Perhaps there is no more striking example of the contrast between the two classes, than that which is presented in the Bible between the two states of the apostles themselves, before and after the Pentecostal baptism.

Like the twelve found at Ephesus by the apostle Paul, if the question had been asked them before the day of Pentecost, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? the appropriate answer would have been: We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. And like Apollos, before he was taken by Aquilla and Priscilla, and instructed into the way of the Lord more perfectly, they had as yet only the baptism of metenoya conversion - a change of heart—and not yet a heart filled with the faith of a present Saviour, wrought in them by an indwelling Holy Ghost.

Those two disciples, on their way to EmmausO, how pensive! how sad and sorrowful in the thought of a Saviour, absent from them. They thought it should have been He that would have de

SONGS IN THE PRISON HOUSE.

livered Israel.

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But alas! he was dead - he was

gone, and Israel was not delivered. A Saviour passed away, mighty in word and deed, but gone not with them.

A

O, how different from Pentecost onward. Saviour ever with them. Mighty in word and deed, and always present. Always directing them where to go; always, in every moment of trial, putting words into their hearts which all their adversaries could not gainsay nor resist; always, in every temptation, making a way of escape; always hearing their cries unto Him; always giving power to their words, spoken in weakness; always gladdening their hearts, even in dungeons and in the stocks, and in the fires and under the scourge.

Paul and Silas, with their bodies lacerated, bloody, sore and stiff in their gore from the terrible scourge laid upon them each forty strokes, save one,- thrust into the inner prison, and their feet made fast in the stocks; were yet happier there in their prayers and praises to a present Saviour, than the eleven were in their liberty and in their safety, with all the assurance that Jesus was risen from the dead which their own eyes, from seeing him, and their own hands, from feeling the print of the nails and the print of the spear, could give them, while yet their faith was not sufficient to see and feel and know that he was present with them in invisible reality and power.

To know that Jesus is with us, and that He will

keep us by His own power, and wash us in His own blood, and lead us by His own hand, and uphold us from falling, or lift us when fallen, and watch over us day and night — our Shield, our Friend, our Shepherd and King, our God and Saviour! O, this is the crowning happiness of the Christian's heart and the Christian's life in this the house of his pilgrimage! Give me rather to stand with the three in the furnace seven times heated, and the Son of Man with me there; or with Daniel in the den of lions, and Jesus with me there; yea, a thousand times rather, than to recline or walk, or feast, in the palace of a king, if the King of kings be not with mc there!

From this contrast of the two states and stages of experience, as they affect the Christian in his own heart and life, giving to his course the cast of sadness and sighing under bondage in the one case, and of exultant joys in the glorious liberty of conscious deliverance in the other, we must now pass to these things as they affect the Christian in the power of his usefulness as a soldier of the cross, and as a worker together with God in the spread of His gospel. But this must form the subject of another chapter

OR, THE CUMULATIVE PROGRESS, AND CUMULATIVE POWER OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE.

"THE FEAR OF THE LORD IS THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM. ""

"THY STATUTES HAVE BEEN MY SONGS IN THE HOUSE OF MY PILGRIMAGE."

"YE SHALL RECEIVE POWER AFTER THAT THE HOLY GHOST IS COME UPON YOU; AND YE SHALL BE WITNESSES UNTO ME IN JERUSALEM AND IN ALL JUDEA AND IN SAMARIA, AND UNTO THE UTTERMOST PART OF THE EARTH."

THE contrast drawn in the seventh and eighth of Romans, between the Law and the Gospel is strong. And just, too.

The law, to those who cling to it and reject the grace of God, hoping to be saved by their own merits and works, does work bondage and death.

While the gospel, to those who receive it does work liberty and life.