Chapter V: AUTOGRAPH CONCLUSION.--1. The Judaisers' motive (ch. vi. 12, 13) (12)

1. _Most men have a general idea that religion is of some importance._--Few can wholly suppress it, or reason themselves out of it. But what religion is and wherein it consists they seldom inquire, and never examine with any degree of attention. Such opinions as flatter their ungodly lusts, or pacify their guilty consciences, they warmly embrace. That scheme of doctrine which will make converts without exacting reformation, and give assurance without putting them to much trouble, they highly approve. The path which will lead men to heaven with little self-denial they readily pursue.

2. _There are many who blindly follow the examples of the world._--Whether such a practice is right or wrong they take little pains to examine. It is enough that they see many who adopt it. They would rather incur the censure of their own minds and the displeasure of their God than stand distinguished by a singularity in virtue.

+III. They are under the influence of evil spirits.+--"According to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience" (ver. 2). The number of evil spirits is very great, but there is one distinguished from the rest, and called the devil, Satan, the prince of the power of the air. The manner in which he works in the minds of men is by gaining access to their passions and lusts, which he inflames by suggesting evil thoughts or by painting images on the fancy. It was by the avarice of Judas and Ananias that he entered into them and filled their hearts.

+IV. The wickedness of men consists not merely in their evil works, but in the corrupt dispositions which prompt them to those works.+--"The lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind" (ver. 3). The lusts of the flesh are the vices of sensuality, as intemperance, uncleanness, debauchery, and excess of riot. The desires of the fleshly mind are the lusts which arise from the corruption of the mind in its connection with flesh, as pride, malice, envy, wrath, hatred, ambition, and covetousness. Though no man indulges every vice, yet every unregenerate man obeys the carnal mind.

+V. The indulgence of carnal lusts and passions brings on men the wrath of God.+--"The children of wrath" (ver. 3). A mind sunk in carnality is incapable of rational felicity; it is miserable in itself and from its own corruption and perverseness. If man subjects his nature to the lusts and passions, the order of nature is inverted, the law of creation violated, and the Creator dishonoured and offended.

+Lessons.+--1. _If you have not abandoned yourselves to the grossest forms of vice, it is because you have been placed under superior light and enjoyed a happier education than the heathen._ 2. _Though you may not have indulged all the lusts and vices which others have done, yet if you are children of disobedience you can no more be saved without renovation of heart and repentance of sin than they can.--Lathrop._

Ver. 3. _The State of Nature._

I. If by human nature you mean nature as seen in this man or that, then +unquestionably nature is evil+--individual nature, personal nature, is contrary to God's will. But if by human nature you mean nature as God made it, as it has been once in one man of our species and only one, and as by God's grace it shall be again; if you mean nature as it is according to the idea of the Creator as shown in Jesus Christ, as it is in the eyes of God imputed not as it is but as it shall be,--then that nature is a noble thing, a thing Divine; for the life of the Redeemer Himself, what was it but the one true exhibition of our human nature?

+II. Paul says that by nature we fulfil the desires of the flesh and of the mind.+--I pray you to observe that it is the second and not in the first sense that he here speaks of nature. The desires of the flesh mean the appetites; those of the mind mean the passions: to fulfil the desires of the flesh is to live the life of the swine; to fulfil those of the mind is to live the life of the devil. But this is the partiality, not the entireness, of human nature. Where is the conscience, where the Spirit with which we have communion with God? To live to the flesh and to the mind is not to live to the nature that God gave us. We can no more call that living to our nature than we can say that a watch going by the mere force of the main-spring without a regulator is fulfilling the nature of a watch. To fulfil the desires of the flesh and of the mind is no more to fulfil the nature which God has given us than the soil fulfils its nature when it brings forth thorns and briars. St. Paul, in the epistle to the Romans, draws a distinction between himself and his false nature: "It is not I, but sin that dwelleth in me." Sin is the dominion of a false nature; it is a usurped dominion.

III. The next thing that Paul tells us is +that by nature we are children of wrath.+--In the state of nature we are in the way to bear the wrath of God. Yet God is not wrath; He is infinite love. The eternal severity of His nature does not feel our passions, He remains for ever calm; yet such is our nature that we must think of Him as wrath as well as love: to us love itself becomes wrath when we are in a state of sin. God must hate sin and be forever sin's enemy. If we sin He must be against us: in sinning we identify ourselves with evil, therefore we must endure the consuming fire. So long as there is evil, so long will there be penalty. Sin, live according to the lusts of the flesh, and you will become the children of God's wrath; live after the Spirit, the higher nature that is in you, and then the law hath hold on you no longer.--_F. W. Robertson._

_The Worst of Evils._

+I. By nature all are the children of wrath.+--1. Because we want that original righteousness in which we were created, and which is required to the purity and perfection of our nature. 2. Because all the parts and powers of our soul and body are depraved with original corruption. Our understandings are so bad that they understand not their own badness, our wills which are the queens of our souls become the vassals of sin, our memories like jet good only to draw straws and treasure up trifles of no moment, our consciences through errors in our understandings sometimes accusing us when we are innocent, sometimes acquitting us when we are guilty, our affections all disaffected and out of order. 3. Some may expect that as the master of the feast said to him that wanted the wedding garment, "Friend, how camest thou in hither?" so I should demand of original sin, "Foe, and worst of foes, how camest thou in hither, and by what invisible leaks didst thou soak into our souls?" But I desire, if it be possible, to present you this day a rose without prickles, to declare plain and positive doctrine without thorny disputes or curious speculations, lest, as Abraham's ram was caught in the thicket, so I embroil you and myself in difficult controversies. Let us not busy our brains so much to know how original sin came into us, as labour in our heart to know how it should be got out of us. But the worst is, most men are sick of the _rickets_ in the soul, their heads swell to a vast proportion, puffed up with the emptiness of airy speculations, whilst their legs and lower parts do waste and consume, their practical parts decay, none more lazy to serve God in their lives and conversations.

Transcriber's Note: Baptism is not a sacrament that confers
salvation. It is an ordinance that serves as a public
statement that salvation has already taken place. Parents
are to raise their children in the "nurture and admonition
of the Lord" (Eph. vi. 4).

+II. Ye parents to children,+ see how, though against your wills, ye have propagated this wrath-deserving on your children unto your children; you _are bound,_ both in honour and honesty, civility and Christianity, _to pluck them out of this pit._ 1. This you may do by embracing the speediest opportunity to fasten the sacrament of baptism upon them. 2. Let them not want good prayers, which if steeped in tears will grow the better, good precepts, good precedents, and show thy child in thyself what he should follow, in others what he should shun and avoid. 3. In the low countries, where their houses lie buried in the ground, the laying of the foundation is counted as much as the rest of the foundation; so half our badness lies secret and unseen, consisting in original corruption, whereof too few take notice. Witches, they say, say the Lord's Prayer backward; but concupiscence, this witch in our soul, says all the commandments backward, and makes us cross in our practice what God commands in His precepts. Thus every day we sin, and sorrow after our sin, and sin after our sorrow. The wind of God's Spirit bloweth us one way, and the tide of our corruption hurrieth us another. These things he that seeth not in himself is sottish, blind; he that seeth and confesseth not is damnably proud; he that confesseth and bewaileth not is desperately profane; he that bewaileth and fighteth not against it is unprofitably pensive; but he that in some weak manner doeth all these is a saint in reversion here, and shall be one in possession hereafter.--_T. Fuller._

_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 4-9.

_Salvation an Act of Divine Grace._

+I. Springing from the benevolence of God+ (vers. 4, 7).--A good old saint once said, "There is nothing that affects me more profoundly, or more quickly melts my heart, than to reflect on the goodness of God. It is so vast, so deep, so amazing, so unlike and beyond the most perfect human disposition, that my soul is overwhelmed." The apostle seems to have been similarly affected as he contemplated the Divine beneficence, as the phrases he here employs indicate. He calls it "the great love wherewith He loved us." God is "rich in mercy"--in irrepressible, unmerited compassion (ver. 4). Language is too poor to express all he sees and feels, and he takes refuge in the ambiguous yet suggestive expression, "The exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Jesus Christ" (ver. 7)--hinting at the sublime benignity of the Divine nature longing to express itself through the noblest medium possible. By his rebellion and deliberate sin man had forfeited all claim to the Divine favour, and his restoration to that favour, impossible of attainment by any efforts of his own, was an act of sheer Divine goodness. Its spontaneity breaks in as a sweet surprise upon the sinning race. The most vicious and abandoned are included in its gracious provisions, and all men are taught that their salvation, if accomplished at all, must be as an act of free and undeserved grace.

+II. Salvation has its life and fellowship in Christ+ (vers. 5, 6).--God has given us as unquestioned a resurrection from the death of sin as the body of Christ had from the grave, and the same Divine power achieved both the one and the other. The spiritual life of both Jew and Gentile has its origin in Christ, and the axe is thus laid to the very root of spiritual pride and all glorying in ourselves. We are raised by His resurrection power to sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. This we do already by our spiritual fellowship with Him, and by anticipation we share the blessedness which we shall more fully enjoy by our union with Him in the heavenly world. The spiritual resurrection of the soul must precede and will be the inviolable guarantee of the future glorious resurrection of the body. As the great Head of the Church is already in the heavenlies, so ultimately all the members that make up the body shall be gathered there. We are already seated there _in_ Him as our Head, which is the ground of our hope; and we shall be hereafter seated there _by_ Him, as the conferring cause, when hope shall be swallowed up in fruition. Our life and fellowship in Christ are susceptible of indefinite expansion and enjoyment in the progressive evolutions of the future.

+III. Faith, the instrument of salvation, is the gift of Divine grace+ (ver. 8).--The question whether faith or salvation is the gift of God is decided by the majority of critics in favour of the former. This agrees with the obvious argument of the apostle, that salvation is so absolutely an act of Divine grace that the power to realise it individually is also a free gift. Grace, without any respect to human worthiness, confers the glorious gift. Faith, with an empty hand and without any pretence to personal desert, receives the heavenly blessing. Without the grace or power to believe, no man ever did or can believe; but with that power the act of faith is a man's own. God never believes for any man, no more than He repents for him. The penitent, through this grace enabling him, believes for himself; nor does he believe necessarily or impulsively when he has that power. The power to believe may be present long before it is exercised, else why the solemn warnings which we meet everywhere in the Word of God and threatenings against those who do not believe? This is the true state of the case: God gives the power, man uses the power thus given, and brings glory to God. Without the power no man can believe; with it any man may.

+IV. Salvation, being unmeritorious, excludes all human boasting.+--"Not of works, lest any man should boast" (ver. 9). Neither salvation nor the faith that brings it is the result of human ingenuity and effort. The grand moral results brought about by saving faith are so extraordinary, and so high above the plane of the loftiest and most gigantic human endeavours, that if man could produce them by his own unaided powers he would have cause indeed for the most extravagant boasting, and he would be in danger of generating a pride which in its uncontrollable excess would work for his irretrievable ruin. The least shadow of a ground for pride is however excluded. God protects both Himself and man by the freeness and simplicity of the offer of salvation. It is the complaint of intellectual pride that the reception of the Gospel is impossible because it demands a humiliation and self-emptying that degrade and shackle intellectual freedom. Such an objection is a libel on the Gospel. It humbles in order to exalt; it binds its claims upon us to lift us to a higher freedom. So completely is salvation a Divine act, that the man who refuses to accept it on God's terms must perish. There is no other way.

+V. The glory of Divine grace in salvation will be increasingly demonstrated in the future.+--"That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of his grace" (ver. 7). The most valuable function of history is not that which deals with the rise and fall of empires, the brutal ravages of war, the biographies of kings, statesmen, and philosophers, but that which treats upon the social and moral condition of the people and the influence of religion in the development of individual and national character. The true history of the world is the history of God's dealings with it. The ages of the past have been a revelation of God; the ages to come will be an enlargement of that revelation, and its most conspicuous feature will be an ever-new development of the riches of Divine grace in the redemption of the human race. In all successive ages of the world we are authorised to declare that sinners shall be saved only as they repent of their sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

+Lessons.+--_Salvation_--1. _Is a revelation of what God does for man._ 2. _Is absolutely necessary for each._ 3. _Should be earnestly sought by all._

_GERM NOTES OF THE VERSES._

Vers. 4-7. _The Great Change effected in Man by the Gospel._

+I. The happy change which the Gospel made in the Ephesians.+--A change not peculiar to them, but common to all sincere believers.

1. _God hath quickened us._--Made us alive with Christ. (1) True Christians are alive; they have spiritual senses and appetites. (2) Spiritual motions. (3) Spiritual pleasures. (4) Spiritual powers. The spiritual life comes through Christ and is conformed to Him.

2. _God hath raised us up together with Christ_ (ver. 6).--His resurrection is a proof and pattern of that of believers.

3. _God hath made us to sit together in heavenly places in Christ._--His entrance into heaven is a proof of the final salvation of believers. He sits there for them, to take care of their interests, and in due time will bring them to sit where He is.

+II. Contemplate the mercy of God in this great change.+--"God, who is rich in mercy" (ver. 4). The mercies of God are rich in extent, in number, in respect of constancy, in variety, in value. "The great love wherewith He loved us." He first loved us. His love shines brighter when we consider what a being He is. He is infinitely above us. He is self-sufficient. The Gospel gives us the most exalted conceptions of God's character.

+III. The general purpose of God's particular mercy to the Ephesians+ (ver. 7).--God's mercy in reclaiming one transgressor may operate to the salvation of thousands in ages to come. The Gospel dispensation was intended to serve some useful purposes among other intelligences. Not only God's gracious dispensation to fallen men, but also His righteous severity toward irreclaimable offenders, is designed for extensive beneficial influence.--_Lathrop._

Vers. 4, 5. _The State of Grace._

1. _Salvation originates in the love of God._

2. _That it consists in emancipation from evil._--"Quickened us together with Christ;" that is, gave life. The love and mercy of God were shown in this--not that He saved from penalty, but from sin. What we want is life, more life, spiritual life, to know in all things the truth of God, and to speak it, to feel in all things the will of God and do it.

3. _The next word to explain is grace._--It stands opposed to nature and to law. Whenever nature means the dominion of our lower appetites, then nature stands opposed to grace. Grace stands opposed to law. All that law can do is to manifest sin, just as the dam thrown across the river shows its strength; law can arrest sometimes the commission of sin, but never the inward principle. Therefore, God has provided another remedy, "Sin shall not have dominion over you," because ye are under grace.

4. _Paul states salvation here as a fact._--"By grace ye are saved." There are two systems. The one begins with nature, the other with grace: the one treats all Christians as if they were the children of the devil, and tells them that they may perhaps become the children of God; the other declares that the incarnation of Christ is a fact, a universal fact, proclaiming that all the world are called to be the children of the Most High. Let us believe in grace instead of beginning with nature.--_F. W. Robertson._

Vers. 4-6. _The Believer exalted together with Jesus Christ._

+I. The believer is assured he is raised up with Christ by the proofs which assure him of the exaltation of Christ.+--These proofs, irresistible as they are, do not produce impressions so lively as they ought. 1. From the abuse of a distinction between mathematical evidence and moral evidence. 2. Because the mind is under the influence of a prejudice, unworthy of a real philosopher, that moral evidence changes its nature according to the nature of the things to which it is applied. 3. Because the necessary discrimination has not been employed in the selection of those proofs on which some have pretended to establish it. 4. Because we are too deeply affected by our inability to resolve certain questions which the enemies of religion are accustomed to put on some circumstances relative to that event. 5. Because we suffer ourselves to be intimidated more than we ought by the comparison instituted between them and certain popular rumours which have no better support than the caprice of the persons who propagate them. 6. Because they are not sufficiently known.

+II. The means supplied to satisfy the believer that he is fulfilling the conditions under which he may promise himself that he shall become a partaker of Christ's exaltation.+--Though this knowledge be difficult, it is by no means impossible of attainment. He employs two methods principally to arrive at it: 1. He studies his own heart; 2. He shrinks not from the inspection of the eyes of others.

+III. The believer is raised up with Christ by the foretastes which he enjoys on earth of his participation in the exaltation of Christ.+--This experience is realised by the believer. 1. When shutting the door of his closet and excluding the world from his heart, he is admitted to communion and fellowship with Deity in retirement and silence. 2. When Providence calls him to undergo some severe trial. 3. When he has been enabled to make some noble and generous sacrifice. 4. When celebrating the sacred mysteries of redeeming love. 5. Finally, in the hour of conflict with the king of terrors.--_Saurin._

Ver. 5. _Justification by Faith._

I. We hold +that we are justified by faith,+ that is, by believing, and that unless we are justified we cannot be saved. Of all men whoever believed this, those who gave us the Church catechism believed it most strongly. Believing really what they taught, they believed that children were justified. For if a child is not justified in being a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, what is he justified in being? They knew that the children could only keep in this just, right, and proper state by trusting in God and looking up to Him daily in faith and love and obedience.

II. +These old reformers were practical men and took the practical way.+--They knew the old proverb, "A man need not be a builder to live in a house." At least they acted on it; and instead of trying to make the children understand what faith was made up of, they tried to make them live in faith itself. Instead of puzzling and fretting the children's minds with any of the controversies then going on between Papists and Protestants, or afterwards between Calvinists and Arminians, they taught the children simply about God, who He was, and what He had done for them and all mankind, that so they might learn to love Him, look up to Him in faith, and trust utterly to Him, and so remain justified and right, saved and safe for ever. By doing which they showed that they knew more about faith and about God than if they had written books on books of doctrinal arguments.

III. +The Church catechism, where it is really and honestly taught, gives the children an honest, frank, sober, English temper of mind which no other training I have seen gives.+--I warn you frankly that if you expect to make the average of English children good children on any other ground than the Church catechism takes, you will fail. If it be not enough for your children to know all the articles of the Apostles' Creed, and on the strength thereof to trust God utterly and so be justified and saved, then they must go elsewhere, for I have nothing more to offer them, and trust in God that I never shall have.--_C. Kingsley._

Ver. 8. _Salvation by Faith._

+I. What faith it is through which we are saved.+--1. It is not barely the faith of a heathen. 2. Nor is it the faith of a devil, though this goes much further than that of a heathen. 3. It is not barely that the apostles had while Christ was yet upon earth. 4. In general it is faith in Christ: Christ and God through Christ are the proper objects of it. 5. It is not only an assent to the whole Gospel of Christ, but also a full reliance on the blood of Christ, a trust in the merits of His life, death, and resurrection, a recumbency upon Him as our atonement and our life, as given for us and living in us, and in consequence hereof, a closing with Him and cleaving to Him as our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, or, in one word, our salvation.

+II. What is the salvation which is through faith?+--1. It is a present salvation. 2. A salvation from sin. 3. From the guilt of all past sin. 4. From fear. 5. From the power of sin. 6. A salvation often expressed in the word "justification," which taken in the largest sense implies a deliverance from guilt and punishment by the atonement of Christ actually applied to the soul of the sinner now believing on Him, and a deliverance from the power of sin, through Christ formed in his heart.

+III. The importance of the doctrine.+--Never was the maintaining this doctrine more seasonable than it is at this day. Nothing but this can effectually prevent the increase of the Romish delusion among us. It is endless to attack one by one all the errors of that Church. But salvation by faith strikes at the root, and all fall at once where this is established.--_Wesley._

Vers. 8, 9. _Our Salvation is of Grace._

+I. Consider how we are saved through faith.+--1. Without faith we cannot be saved. 2. All who have faith will be saved.

+II. What place and influence works have in our salvation.+--1. In what sense our salvation is not of works. (1) We are not saved by works considered as a fulfilment of the original law of nature. (2) We are not saved by virtue of any works done before faith in Christ, for none of these are properly good. 2. There is a sense in which good works are of absolute necessity to salvation. (1) They are necessary as being radically included in that faith by which we are saved. (2) A temper disposing us to good works is a necessary qualification for heaven. (3) Works are necessary as evidences of our faith in Christ and of our title to heaven. (4) Good works essentially belong to religion. (5) Works are necessary to adorn our professions and honour our religion before men. (6) By them we are to be judged in the great day of the Lord.

+III. The necessity of works does not diminish the grace of God in our salvation nor afford us any pretence for boasting.+--1. Humility essentially belongs to the Christian temper. 2. The mighty preparation God has made for our recovery teaches that the human race is of great importance in the scale of rational beings and in the scheme of God's universal government. 3. It infinitely concerns us to comply with the proposals of the Gospel. 4. Let no man flatter himself that he is in a state of salvation as long as he lives in the neglect of good works. 5. Let us be careful that we mistake not the nature of good works.--_Lathrop._

Ver. 8. _True Justifying Faith is not of Ourselves._--It is through grace that we believe in the grace of God. God's grace and love, the source; faith, the instrument; both His gift. The origin of our coming to Christ is of God. Justifying faith, not human assent, but a powerful, vivifying thing which immediately works a change in the man and makes him a new creature and leads him to an entirely new and altered mode of life and conduct. Hence justifying faith is a Divine work.

_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verse_ 10.

_The Christian Life a Divine Creation._

+I. The true Christian a specimen of the Divine handiwork.+--"We are His workmanship." So far is man from being the author of his own salvation, or from procuring salvation for the sake of any works of his own, that not only was his first creation as a man the work of God, but his new spiritual creation is wholly the result of Divine power. Man, in the marvellous mechanism of his body, and in his unique mental and spiritual endowments, is the noblest work of God. He is the lord and high priest of nature and has such dominion over it as to be able to combine and utilise its forces. But the creation of the new spiritual man in Christ Jesus is a far grander work, and a more perfect and exalted specimen of the Divine handiwork. It is a nearer approach to a more perfect image of the Divine character and perfections. As the best work of the most gifted genius is a reflection of his loftiest powers, so the new spiritual creation is a fuller revelation of the infinite resources of the Divine Worker.

+II. The Christian life is eminently practical.+--"Created in Christ Jesus for good works" (R.V.). The apostle never calls the works of the law good works. We are not saved by, but created unto, good works. Works do not justify, but the justified man works, and thus demonstrates the reality of his new creation. "I should have thought mowers very idle people," said John Newton, "but they work while they whet the scythe. Now devotedness to God, whether it mows or whets the scythe, still goes on with the work. A Christian should never plead spirituality for being a sloven; if he be but a shoe-cleaner, he should be the best in the parish."

+III. The opportunities and motives for Christian usefulness are Divinely provided.+--"Which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." Every man has his daily work of body or mind appointed him. There is not a moment without a duty. Each one has a vineyard; let him see that he till it, and not say, "No man hath hired us." "The situation," says Carlyle, "that has not its duty, its ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy ideal. Work it out therefrom, and working, believe, live, and be free." There is no romance in a minister's proposing and hoping to forward a great moral revolution on the earth, for the religion he is appointed to preach was intended and is adapted to work deeply and widely and to change the face of society. Christianity was not ushered into the world with such a stupendous preparation, it was not foreshown through so many ages by enraptured prophets, it was not proclaimed so joyfully through the songs of angels, it was not preached by such holy lips and sealed by such precious blood, to be only a pageant, a form, a sound, a show. Oh no! It has come from heaven, with heaven's life and power--come to make all things new, to make the wilderness glad, and the desert blossom as the rose, to break the stony heart, to set free the guilt-burdened and earth-bound spirit, and to present it faultless before God's glory with exceeding joy.

+Lessons.+--1. _Christianity is not a creed, but a life._ 2. _The Christian life has a manifest Divine origin._ 3. _The Christian life must be practically developed in harmony with the Divine mind._

_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSE._

Ver. 10. _Interruptions in our Work, and the Way to deal with Them._--In proportion to the seriousness with which a Christian does his work will be his sensitiveness to interruptions, and this sensitiveness is apt to disturb his peace. The remedy is a closer study of the mind that was in Christ, as that mind transpires in His recorded conduct. The point in the life of our Lord is the apparent want of what may be called method or plan. His good works were not in pursuance of some scheme laid down by Himself, but such as entered into God's scheme for Him, such as the Father had prepared for Him to walk in.

+I. Notice His discourses both in their occasions and their contexture.+--1. His discourses often take their rise from some object which is thrown across His path in nature, from some occurrence which takes place under His eyes, or from some question which is put to Him. 2. The contexture of His discourses are not systematic in the usual sense of the word. There is the intellectual method, and the method of a full mind and loving heart. The only plan observable in our Lord's discourses is that of a loving heart pouring itself out as occasion serves for the edification of mankind.

+II. Study the life of Christ.+--The absence of mere human plan, or rather strict faithfulness to the plan of God as hourly developed by the movements of His providence, characterises the life of our Lord even more than His discourses. Illustrated from Matthew ix. God has a plan of life for each one of us, and occasions of doing or receiving good are mapped out for each in His eternal counsels. Little incidents, as well as great crises of life, are under the control of God's providence. Events have a voice for us if we will listen to it. Let us view our interruptions as part of God's plan for us. We may receive good, even when we cannot do good. It is self-will which weds us to our own plans and makes us resent interference with them. In the providence of God there seems to be entanglements, perplexities, interruptions, confusions, contradictions, without end; but you may be sure there is one ruling thought, one master-design, to which all these are subordinate. Be not clamorous for another or more dignified character than that which is allotted to you. Be it your sole aim to conspire with the Author, and to subserve His grand and wise conception. Thus shall you find peace in submitting yourself to the wisdom which is of God.--_E. M. Goulburn._

_The New Spiritual Creation._--God has kindled in us a new spiritual life by baptism and the influence of the Holy Spirit connected therewith. He has laid the foundation of recreating us into His image. He has made us other men in a far more essential sense than it was once said to Saul--"Thou shalt be turned into another man." What is the principal fruit and end of this new creation? A living hope. Its object is not only our future resurrection, but the whole plenitude of the salvation still to be revealed by Jesus Christ, even until the new heavens and the new earth shall appear. Birth implies life; so is it with the hope of believers, which is the very opposite of the vain, lost, and powerless hope of the worldly-minded. It is powerful, and quickens the heart by comforting, strengthening, and encouraging it, by making it joyous and cheerful in God. Its quickening influence enters even into our physical life. Hope is not only the fulfilment of the new life created in regeneration, but also the innermost kernel of the same.--_Weiss._

_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 11, 12.

_The Forlorn State of the Gentile World._

+I. Outcast.+--"Gentiles, . . . called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision" (ver. 11). The circumcised Jew regarded himself as a special favourite of Heaven, and superior to all other men. He hardly felt himself a member of the human family. He was accustomed to speak of himself as chosen of God, and as holy and clean; whilst the Gentiles were treated as sinners, dogs, polluted, unclean, outcast, and God-abandoned. Between Jew and Gentile there was constant hatred and antagonism, as there is now between the Church and the world. On the one hand, the old religion, with its time-honoured teachings, its ancient traditions, the Church of the Fathers, the guardian of revelation, the depositary of the faith, the staunchness that tends to degenerate into bigotry--here is the Jew. On the other hand, the intellectual searchings, the political aspirations and mechanical contrivings--science, art, literature, commerce, sociology, the liberty which threatens to luxuriate into licence--here is the Gentile. Ever and again the old feud breaks out. Ever and again there is a crack and a rent. The gulf widens, and disruption is threatened. The majority is outside the circle of the Church.

+II. Christless.+--"That at that time ye were without Christ." The promises of a coming Deliverer were made to the Jews, and they were slow to see that any other people had any right to the blessings of the Messiah, or that it was their duty to instruct the world concerning Him. They drew a hard line between the sons of Abraham and the dogs of Greeks. They erected a middle wall of partition, thrusting out the Gentile into the outer court. Christ has broken down the barrier. On the area thus cleared He has erected a larger, loftier, holier temple, a universal brotherhood which acknowledges no preferences and knows no distinctions. In Christ Jesus now there is neither Jew nor Greek, but Christ is all and in all--a vivid contrast to the Christlessness of a former age.

+III. Hopeless.+--"Being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope" (ver. 12). Where there is no promise there is no hope. Cut off from any knowledge of the promises revealed to the Jews, the Gentiles were sinking into despair.

+IV. Godless.+--"Without God in the world." With numberless deities the Gentiles had no God. They had everything else, but this one thing they lacked--knowledge of God their Father; and without this all their magnificent gifts could not satisfy, could not save, them. Culture and civilisation, arts and commerce, institutions and laws, no nation can afford to undervalue these; but not only do all these things soon fade, but the people themselves fall into corruption and decay, if the Breath of Life is wanting. As with nations, so is it with individuals. Man cannot with impunity ignore or deny the Father of earth and heaven.

+Lessons.+--1. _Man left to himself inevitably degenerates._ 2. _When man abandons God his case is desperate._ 3. _The rescue of man from utter ruin is an act of Divine mercy._

_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._

Vers. 11, 12. _The Condition of the Ephesians before their Conversion descriptive of the State of Sinners under the Gospel._

+I. They were in time past Gentiles in the flesh.+--He admonishes them not to forget the dismal state of heathenism out of which they had been called, and often to reflect upon it, that they might ever maintain a sense of their unworthiness and awaken thankful and admiring apprehensions of that grace which had wrought in them so glorious a change.

+II. Reminds them of the contempt with which they had been treated by the Jews.+--The Jews, instead of improving the distinction of their circumcision to gratitude and obedience, perverted it to pride, self-confidence, and contempt of mankind. They not only excluded other nations from the benefit of religious communion, but even denied them the common offices of humanity. One of their greatest objections to the Gospel was that it offered salvation to the Gentiles.

+III. They were without Christ.+--To the Jews were chiefly confined the discoveries which God made of a Saviour to come. From them in their captivities and dispersions the Gentiles obtained the knowledge they had of this glorious Person. This knowledge was imperfect, mixed with error and uncertainty, and at best extended only to a few. The Gentiles, contemplating the Messiah as a temporal prince, regarded His appearing as a calamity rather than a blessing.

+IV. They were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel.+--To the forms of worship instituted in the Mosaic law none was admitted but Jews and such as were proselyted to the Jewish religion. All uncircumcised heathens were excluded as aliens.

+V. They were strangers from the covenants of promise.+--The discovery of the covenants of promise until the Saviour came was almost wholly confined to the Jews. How unhappy was the condition of the Gentile world in the dark, benighted ages which preceded the Gospel!

+VI. They had no clear hope of a future existence.+--Many of them scarcely believed or thought of a life beyond this. They had no apprehension, hardly the idea of a restoration of the body. Those who believed in a future state had but obscure and some of them very absurd conceptions of it. Still more ignorant were they of the qualifications necessary for happiness after death.

+VII. They were atheists in a world in which God was manifest.+--The heathens generally had some apprehension of a Deity; but they were without a knowledge of the one true God and without a just idea of His character. There are more atheists in the world than profess themselves such. Many who profess to know God in works deny Him.--_Lathrop._

Ver. 12. _Hopeless and Godless._--The soul that has no God has no hope. The character of the God we love and worship will determine the character of our hope. 1. The heathen religion was the _seeking_ religion. Their search arose out of a deeply felt want. They felt the need of something they did not possess; and the finest intellects the world has ever known bravely and anxiously devoted all their colossal powers to the task of fathoming the mysteries of life. The hope of discovery buoyed them up and urged them onwards; but their united endeavours brought them only to the borderland of the unseen and the unknown, where they caught but glimmerings of a truth that ever receded into the great beyond. "The world by wisdom knew not God," and therefore had no hope. 2. The Hebrew religion was the _hoping_ religion. Favoured with a revelation of the only true God, their hope expanded with every advancing step of the progressive revelation. Their hope was based on _faith,_ as all true hope must be--faith in the promises of God. They had the promise of a _Deliverer_ whose wisdom should excel that of Moses and Solomon, and whose power should surpass that of Joshua and of his heroic successors in the most brilliant period of their military career; and, through the centuries of prosperity and decline, of scattering and captivity, and amid unparalleled sufferings which would have extinguished any other nation, hope fastened and fed upon the promises till the true Messiah came, whom St. Paul justly described as "the Hope of Israel, the Hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers." 3. The _Christian_ religion is the _complement_ and _perfection_ of all previously existing systems; it is the grand realisation of what the heathen sought, and the Hebrew hoped for. It is in Jesus we have the clearest, fullest, and most authoritative revelation of God, and it is in Him, and in Him alone, that the loftiest hope of man finds its restful and all-sufficient realisation. The apostle Paul refers to Jesus specifically as our Hope--"Our Lord Jesus Christ, which is our Hope" (1 Tim. i. 1). 4. In the light of this great and indubitable truth the words of our text may be clearly and unmistakably interpreted, and they assume a terrible significance. _To be without Christ is to be without God and without hope._ (1) Hope is not simply _expectation._ We expect many things we do not hope for. In the natural course of things we expect difficulties, we expect opposition and misrepresentation--"black wounding calumny the whitest virtue strikes"--we expect infirmities and disabilities of age; but we are none of us so fond of trouble for trouble's sake as to hope for any of these things. (2) Hope is not simply _desire._ Our desires are as thick and plentiful as apple blossoms, few of which ever ripen into the fruit they promise. We desire uninterrupted health, we desire wealth--the most dangerous and disappointing of all human wishes--we desire pleasure, success in life, and the realisation of the most ambitious dreams; but we have no reasonable ground for hoping that all our desires will ever be attained. (3) Hope is the _expectation of the desirable,_ and it must have a foundation on which the expectation rests and an object to which the desire can rise. The foundation of hope is Christ, and the object of hope is to live with Him in eternal glory. To be without hope and without God does not mean that hope and God do not exist. The world is full of both; they are among you, they surround you, the very air vibrates with the ever-active presence of these grand realities; but they are as though they did not exist for you unless you know and feel they do exist within you. (4) Hope _presupposes faith_; they cannot exist apart. Faith discovers "the only foundation which is laid, which is Christ Jesus," fastens the soul to and settles it on this foundation, and faith and hope rouse all the activities of the soul to build on this foundation a superstructure which shall grow in solidity, in symmetry, and in beauty, until it becomes a perfect marvel of moral architecture, richly ornamented with the most delicate tracery and shimmering and flashing with the resplendent glory of God. (5) _Hope is the balloon of the soul,_ soaring majestically into the heavens, scanning scenes of beauty and grandeur never beheld by our earth-bound senses, and faithfully reporting to the soul the state of affairs in the skies; but it is a _captive balloon,_ and the connecting cords are firmly held in the hand of faith. The loftiest flights and the swing of what might seem the most eccentric gyrations of hope are held in check by the friendly, the sympathetic, but unswerving grasp of faith. "My dear Hope," Faith says, "it is very nice for you to be up there, basking in the cloudless sunshine and drinking in the melody of the ascending lark as it ripples up the heights; and I like you to be there. I could never get there myself; and you tell me of things I should never otherwise know, and they do me good. But, remember, I cannot let you go. We are linked together in the sacred bonds of a holy wedlock. We are necessary to each other and cannot do without each other. If you were to break away from me, you would vanish like vapour into space, and I should be left forlorn and powerless." And Hope replies: "I know it, my dear Faith. Divorce would be fatal to us both, and our union is too sweet and precious ever to dream of separation. I live in these upper regions purely for your sake. You know I have cheered you up many a time and will do so again. My joy is to brighten your life of toil and conflict down there. When the soul has done with you it will have done with me, and when my work is finished I shall be content to die." Thus, faith and hope are essentially united, and both are wedded together by the soul's living union with Christ. (6) A false hope is really _no hope._ It rests on no solid foundation; it is not justified by sound reason. It is but the blue light of a frantic conjecture generated amid the restless tumults of a soul in the last stages of despair. At the best a false hope is but a beautiful dream spun from the gossamer threads of a busy and excited fancy, a dream _of what we wish might be,_ and, like all other dreams having no substantial basis, it dissolves into space under the first touch of reality. A false hope lures its victims on to destruction, as the flickering lights of the marsh gases seduce the belated traveller into the dismal swamps from which there is no release.

_A State of Sin a State of Ungodliness._--1. Men do not recognise the existence of God. 2. They do not acknowledge His moral government. 3. They do not seek His favour as their chief good. 4. They do not delight in His communion. 5. They do not anticipate their final reckoning with Him. 6. They do not accept His own disclosures concerning the attributes of His nature and the principles of His administration.--_G. Brooks._

_Man without God._--He is like a ship tossed about on a stormy sea without chart or compass. The ship drifts as the waves carry it. The night is dark. The pilot knows not which way to steer. He may be close to rocks and quicksands. Perhaps a flash of lightning falls on a rock, or he hears the waves breaking over it. But how shall he escape, or how prepare to meet the danger? Shall he trust in providence? What providence has he to trust in? Poor man! He is without God. Shall he throw out an anchor? But he has no anchor. He wants the best and only safe anchor, hope--the anchor of the soul. Such is the state of man when he is far off, without a God to trust in, without hope to comfort and support him. But give the man a true and lively faith in Christ, tell him of a merciful and loving Father who careth for us and would have us cast all our care upon Him, show him that hope which is firm to the end, and straightway you make a happy man of him. You give him a course to steer, a chart and compass to guide him, an anchor which will enable him to withstand the buffeting of every storm. You insure him against shipwreck, and you assure him of a blessed haven where at length he will arrive and be at rest.--_A. W. Hare._

_Practical Atheism._--If it had been without friends, without shelter, without food, that would have made a gloomy sound; but without God! That there should be men who can survey the creation with a scientific enlargement of intelligence and then say there is no God is one of the most hideous phenomena in the world.

+I. The text is applicable to those who have no solemn recognition of God's all-disposing government and providence+--who have no thought of the course of things but just as going on, going on some way or other, just as it can be; to whom it appears abandoned to a strife and competition of various mortal powers, or surrendered to something they call general laws, and these blended with chance.

+II. Is a description of all those who are forming or pursuing their scheme of life and happiness independent of Him.+--They do not consult His counsel or will as to what that scheme should be in its ends or means. His favour, His blessing are not absolutely indispensable. We can be happy leaving Him out of the account.

+III. Is a description of those who have but a slight sense of universal accountableness to God as the supreme authority+--who have not a conscience constantly looking and listening to Him and testifying for Him. This insensibility of accountableness exists almost entire--a stupefaction of conscience--in very many minds. In others there is a disturbed yet inefficacious feeling. To be thus with God is in the most emphatical sense to be without Him--without Him as a friend, approver, and patron. Each thought of Him tells the soul who it is that it is without, and who it is that in a very fearful sense it never can be without.

+IV. The description belongs to that state of mind in which there is no communion with Him+ maintained or even sought with cordial aspiration. How lamentable to be thus without God! Consider it in one single view only, that of the _loneliness_ of a human soul in this destitution.

+V. A description of the state of mind in which there is no habitual anticipation of the great event of going at length into the presence of God;+ in which there is an absence of the thought of being with Him in another world, of being with Him in judgment, and whether to be with Him for ever.

+VI. A description of those who, professing to retain God in their thoughts, frame the religion in which they are to acknowledge Him according to their own speculation and fancy.+--Will the Almighty acknowledge your feigned God for Himself, and admit your religion as equivalent to that which He has declared and defined? If He should not, you are without God in the world. Let us implore Him not to permit our spirits to be detached from Him, abandoned, exposed, and lost; not to let them be trying to feed their immortal fires on transitory sustenance, but to attract them, exalt them, and hold them in His communion for ever.--_John Foster._

_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 13-18.

_Christ the Great Peacemaker._