Everything needed for the accomplishing of this salvation has come from God. I am a sinner; I have sinned. As such I am under the condemnation of God. But, then, the punishment due to me-am I to take it? Nay-I find it provided for on the Cross by God. So I find from out of God Himself salvation; God is my salvation; it comes of God. God provided the substitutionary victim. I am like another Isaac said God to Abraham, "Stay that knife on Isaac, I have provided a sacrifice;" and there was the ram in the thicket. God it was provided Christ for me.

Then I not only want this punishment to be taken for me I want atonement. God finds the one where He found the other. He finds it in His suffering, slain Son. Moreover, I want peace. Where do I get peace? I get my peace just where I get my condemnation; I get my peace just where I get the victim that took my condemnation, that took the punishment due to me. I, as a sinner, have no peace; I am unhappy, I am miserable, because I am a sinner against God. God comes down in the person of His Son, and says, the sinner is not at peace with me, but I want him to be so. Jesus dies the expiation and the atonement for me, pays the penalty, and then comes, as He did to the disciples, and says, "" I have made peace, I give this peace to you." He came as the substitute, as the representative of the sinner; and having died an atonement for sin, there is for the sinner, for the guiltiest here, on believing, peace. Says Jesus, "I give you that peace."

I want a third thing. I have my condemnation exhausted on the victim of God's providing, and I have peace; I now want righteousness which shall entitle me to be at rest and joy in the VERY PRESENCE OF GOD; a righteousness which shall make it consistent for God to have me there; nay, for Him to place me there in association with His own Son on the Throne on

which He Himself will sit, and to be with Him in the same glory. Oh, this is wonderful! He might have given me peace, but not the righteousness of God, which secures this also. "The righteousness of God" is of God's own providing, as the term intimates; I have it in Christ, and am as He is. Oh, what a height is this! higher than angels. An angel never had the peace the Son calls His own; He said, "My peace I give unto you"-the peace of the Son. An angel never stood in "the righteousness of God;" he stands in angelic righteousness-in his own righteousness. An angel never claimed association with the Son of God; he claims to be an angel; but the sinner redeemed will be in actual association with the Son of God, will sit down with Him on His own throne, associated with Him in all the riches and glory of His inheritance. An angel ranks high, but I could never say that he is a joint-heir with Christ.

Now for such a height, I want all these, and find them all in God; I see God providing all in the Cross of Jesus, and in the Gospel, putting them down at my feet. It is not that I am merely saved from the condemnation of a lost eternity, and brought back to the condition from which Adam fell; but, in virtue of the Son of God coming down and taking hold of my nature, I am taken up to the throne on which He will sit-far higher than the first Adam in paradise am I raised-I am raised to the height and glory of the second Adam. Oh! brethren, time and utterance would fail me to explicate this. Paul calls it so great salvation, and it is a great salvation. Oh, the greatness of its Author! the greatness of its gifts! the greatness of its treasures the greatness of its peace! the greatness of its righteousness! the greatness of its duration ! it is all great-as long as all eternity we shall be in glory, unsearchable and ineffable. We cannot now

explain; but the poorest saint will be in the very glory that encircles the Son of God Himself.

II. THE SUBJECTS OF SALVATION.-I will not dwell longer on the source; but will touch, in the second place, on the SUBJECTS of this salvation. Its subjects are sinners. Our brother, on last Lord's-day, was very explicit on the question of God's love to the sinner. He showed you that God loved the sinner, and that the most difficult thing for any man to believe was that God loved him. He remarked how impossible it was for a man to make himself love God. In any ordinary case, had a man aroused your dislike, nothing you could do would make you love him; you could not make yourself love him. There is only one thing which, without your forecast, could make you, viz., that you now have some new view of him which at once secured your love. That is what God does in His Gospel. He comes and puts the true knowledge of Himself before the sinner-puts Himself right before the sinner. The sinner is lost, God shows how, in love, He has provided a way to save him. The sinner is without peace, without rest; God shows him the methods He has taken, so that these are his. When once the sinner sees this, he sees what changes his mind about God; he sees that God is for him-that, in love, He gave His Son for him; that God has provided a way by which he may be brought nigh to Him; and he now, in all these, sees reasons for loving God. Hence," We love Him because He first loved us." And, beloved, never forget He loved us when we were dead, when we were lost, when we were sinners. Oh! if there be a sinner here this morning who never thought of it before, let him think of it now. For lo! it is not said, God loved angels, or God loved the elect (God does love them); but what is said is, "God so loved the world"-the poor sinner-the hell-deserving

sinner! Ah! sinner, He comes, and puts the Cross of Christ alongside your desert. Make yourself a very devil of a sinner, and say that what you deserve is to die. God gave the Son of His love to die; He was the provided Lamb; He did die, and you can, in Him, have immediate life. You can say, God has provided for me a Lamb, and has told me that if I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ I shall have life.

Before I come to the other point, that it is a present salvation, let each one of this multitude askeach unconverted one, conscious or unconscious of his lost condition-" Do I see this salvation? Am I a subject of this salvation ?" You will have to die some day, and if you do not see it soon, it will be too late, and you will die without hope. Oh! may God give you to see how now you may have salvation! May the thoughtful mind be given to very many of you now! God grant that the question may penetrate your hearts, Am I saved?-have I ever been quickened by His Spirit to see this salvation ?-have I received this salvation ?-am I experimentally a subject of it? If you can take the place of one who needs it, if you can take the place of a sinner deserving condemnation and hell, there is salvation for you, you may have salvation now; for

III. IT IS A PRESENT SALVATION.-When a young minister once came to me, I saw he was just hanging upon a hope-vaguely hoping that if he died he would be saved. He did believe, he said, in the Lord Jesus Christ, but did not know that he was saved. I am confident there are hundreds of people hanging on thus, half believing and half doubting, who are saved, though they do not intelligently know they are saved. I dare say many of you feel that if you were to die now, you would have little else than a mere hope; you hope you may not be lost;

and if saved, at death, your exclamation in heaven may be, "I hardly expected it!" When I spoke on the twenty-fourth verse of the fifth of John to that young minister, and inquired, You have heard the words of Jesus, have you not? and you believe in Him that sent Jesus?" he looked at me, and said, "I believe it, but I have no assurance."

"No," I said, "you do not believe, (for example, the word which says,) hath everlasting life;' you have not believed this, that, on believing, YOU HAVE everlasting life."

That was the very thing he had not believed. He afterwards said to me, "I could not sleep for joy, the words were ever ringing in my ears, He_that believeth hath everlasting life;' 'Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.' And again, He that hath the Son hath life." And now the power of that young minister is this: he takes God at His word; he believes God; God has assured him that, on believing, salvation is his-eternal life is his-that " He that believeth is saved."

See, then, this salvation is a present salvation. But it is not all in hand yet. Oh! I have got the field, but not the glorious harvests of ages on ages to come. I have got the crown, but not all the glistening gems that will gleam in that crown; I have got Jesus, but I do not yet know what He is to me and for me; I have companions, those blessed joint-heirs with me and Christ, but I do not know one millionth part of the abundant gladness and glory I shall yet have with them; I have rank, but I do not know what it is - heirs of God-joint-heirs with Christ! Ah! we know not yet what we have. But we shall know. Meanwhile, we have a present salvation, but, as Paul says, "Now is it nearer "-not nearer as to meetness," giving thanks unto the Father, who hath made us meet for the inheritance of the saints in light"-not nearer as

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