submission that the righteousness of God demanded their death, and that they refused not to acknowledge it. Thus they justified God and His righteousness, but the Pharisees and the lawyers "rejected the counsel of God against themselves" (or, according to the Greek, the purpose of God towards themselves, that is, their salvation through submission to His righteousness, Rom. x. 2, 3) "not having been baptized with the baptism of John." (Luke vii. 29, 30.) Yet in their ignorance and wilfulness, having substituted, the doctrines of men for the commandments of God, they ever held fast their own peculiar baptism of vessels of brass, and pots, and beds, and such like unconscious objects, entirely confounding baptism with purification. (Mar. vii. 3 to 13. See Greek.) In passing, I may remark that the reader may now see that baptism is no purification, but the death in figure of that which can Le neither remedied nor purified. Utterly failing to see this, the mystic Babylon and all her daughters have rejected the baptism of believers according to God, yet they hold fast and teach their own "baptism" of unconscious infants! They have rejected the great Baptized One, and all the baptisms that testify of Him, and have received another Christ, a worldly Christ, another "baptism," a worldly "baptism ". Alas! that the true church of God becoming carnal and worldly should have allied herself with the Mother of Harlots and have adopted Satan's counterfeit, the sprinkling of infants! THE ON 1 PETER III. 19-22, to IV. 6. THE context of this passage helps to the understanding of it. The apostle has just before been teaching Christians to expect to suffer for righteousness sake, and not to be dismayed at it; and adds, in v. 18, that in this they are but like Christ, who when He suffered for sins "to bring us to God," suffered as a "just" one, even "to death" itself, as to the flesh, and all His quickening, and His life was by the Spirit, and in the Spirit: not in the flesh; thus making Him an altogether spiritual, and not a carnal Saviour; the whole end or fulfilment of our faith in Him being, as respects this life and this world, "the salvation of our souls," and not at all that of our bodies. Hence the word "souls" no less than five times in this epistle. See ch. i. 9; ii. 11-25; iii. 20, and iv. 19. Full of this most flesh-withering truth, the apostle's mind reverts to God's work in the world in past ages, even back to the antediluvian age, and not only teaches us that it was all of it by Christ, but also that Christ, in working it, was the same flesh-rebuking One then as now; and that all the salvation He testified of then, was for the spirit, and not for the flesh even as now. For it was "by the Spirit," says the apostle, that he went and preached "in the days of Noah "; also, this preaching of a pre-incarnate Christ-a Christ in the spirit was also addressed ro spirits, even as His present preaching is to men's spirits, to subdue and to instruct and bless them. And surely this was true of the preaching Christ in Noah's days. It offered nothing to the flesh; it ministered joy and rest to nothing but the souls of those who received it. The believing it led Noah, and those with him, to give up houses and lands, and all they possessed, and to shut themselves within the narrow limits of the "Gopher-wood" ark, trusting that God would care for him and them, when there was, as yet, not a sign of the coming deluge, which did not burst on the fair and attractive scene around till seven days after. See Gen. vii. 10. Surely this was "suffering in the flesh," even as it also was to Abraham, in after days, to leave his country and kindred, not knowing whither he went. A touching sight, indeed-Noah, the family man, of six hundred years old, quitting all he possessed for value ho put on God's word and God's favour, and thus voluntarily enclosing himself and those dear to him in the narrow vessel: and that spite of a six hundred years' connection with it all! No wonder "the spirits" of the antediluvians around him rejected this flesh-crucifying testimony, and "were disobedient" to it, and would not receive it though "the long-suffering of God waited" for them, through the days of Noah. It was too humbling-too much in the Spirit for them-and too much unlike all the prevailing sentiments and habits of the days they lived in. They were too much charmed with the scene around them of men who were "giants in those days," and "men of renown" (Gen. vi. 4), to allow of their yielding to so spiritual a testimony. But Peter skilfully reminds us, his Christian readers, in order to help us in our present time of endurance, that these proud and towering spirits of those days are now "in prison;" they have lost, not gained by their insubjection; as Jude also reminds us that the flesh indulging ones of Sodom and Gomorrah may, by faith, be even now seen as enduring the vengeance of eternal fire (Jude 7). Wickedness of the spirits of Christ-rejectors is Peter's point, as lusts of the flesh is Jude's. Esau-like they despised the spiritual boon because it was too pure and heavenly for them to value it. But they have lost, not gained. They despised God's well-provided ark, and would not enter it, which would have borne them upward above all doom and death to, as it were, a new earth and now they are imprisoned in chains of darkness for ever. They would not have the shuttingin of the ark, they must have the prison house of hell. : But there was a happy result from this testimony of Christ in Noah's days, as well as a solemn and condemning one. "A few, that is eight souls, were saved by water"; and in this the apostle sees a lively image of ourselves as Christians-the "little flock"-the saved ones of the present time. In the fewness of their number, in its being "souls' that were saved, and its being through water, the apostle perceives an analogy to ourselves, and especially in the last point of the three-viz., through water. The early Church had all been baptized as soon as they believed-they were a company that had come up out of water. They had seen in this command of Christ a spiritual truth; it was to them the outward result of the request (see Greek) in them of "a good conscience toward God, by the resurrection of Christ". But more than this, believers' baptism had proclaimed to them the judgment and coming doom of this busy and boasting world around them. As one says in a hymn upon believers' baptism : "Death to the world we here avow, Death to each fleshly lust; Our blessed Lord had said, in John xii. 31, in anticipation of His death-"Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the Prince of this World be cast out;" and here in this Epistle of Peter, His saved Churchthe little flock-are taught to see Christ, the Risen One in whom they have believed, as their ark, who has borne for them, from below and from above, the floods of death; and in whom they even now know themselves to be "more than conquerors" over a hostile world, that can indeed "kill the body, but after that has no more that it can do". Hence, the result of Christ's work now is similar to the result of it in the days of Noah-viz., a few (cómparatively) saved. And saved only in their souls, and by a character of salvation that dooms the world around them to a flood of judgment: a salvation, too, which convicts all who despise or neglect it of disobedience, and to faith shows all such to be, instantly on their death, "in prison"-or as Jude expresses it, "under chains of darkness "-even as, while on earth, in the days of their unbelief they had "the wrath of God abiding" on them (John iii. 36), and were "the lost," whose "minds the God of this world had blinded". (2 Cor. iv. 4.) In the beginning of chap. iv. Peter carries on this view of what Christians are in Christ." Suffering in the flesh" is still the subject, and is seen to be true in heaven of Christ, who once thus suffered for us; and that which is true of. Him being in God's sight, also true of us. Every Christian is therefore described as one "that hath suffered in the flesh," and has thereby "ceased from sin," just as Paul teaches in Rom. vi. 18. He became "free from sin " the moment he believed. To get this "mind," says Peter, is to get yourselves "armed " against any longer giving way to the "lusts of men," all your remaining days on earth, and will make you to be such as the men of the world think to be "strange," and "speak evil" of. But Christ, who is thus your truly spiritual Saviour, will soon be their Judge, both of the then "living" and of all "the dead" of similarly rebellious character in ages past. And in order to judge men in that day—even the unbelieving dead of all ages past-He will only have to point them to believers of the very gospel preached to them whom they well knew during their own day on earth, but whom they in their day thought to be "strange" people, and "spoke evil" of them. Thus will the Judge of the living and dead gather up the results of the gospel preaching of each generation of men, and will judge the guilty dead "according to men in the flesh," even those who were men of their own time; and this, says Peter (v. 6), was one reason why the gospel was preached to each generation of those now dead-namely, that they might, at a glance, see themselves to be without excuse, as they behold seated alongside of the Judge, in the day of the great white throne, "men in the flesh" of their own time, whose obedience of faith they refused to follow, and whose flesh-crucifying godliness of life they "thought strange," and "spoke evil of," and hated. How solemnly, for instance, will the sight of an Abel condemn a Cain!-that Cain to whom God had said, "If thou doest not well, sin (ie., the sin-offering) croucheth at the door "-thus pointing out to him the same way of coming acceptably to God as that by which his own brother, Abel, had come. How conclusively will the very appearance of Noah and his family among the blessed in that day silence all selfjustifying, or even self-excusing, in the raised antediluvians, when their re-quickened memories call back the days of the ark they saw him build, and for which they thought him "strange," and "spoke evil" of him. Thus, also, will Esau in that day be silenced by seeing Jacob-whose denying of himself the "mess of pottage," because of the value he had for "the birthright," which the huntsman of the field so mocked at. In that day; Eli's sons will hold themselves inexcusable for all their sinful handling of God's things, in the presence of that Samuel whose life was one continual testimony to them, and who could say—what they, with all their priestly office, could not say-"Behold, here I am: whose ox have I taken? or whose ass or of whose hand have I received any bribe" (1. Sam. xii. 3.) Thus, also, kingly Saul will stand condemned by the suffering patience of his son-in-law David; and all the prophets will confront the different generations of those to whom their lives testified, as well as their lips and their writings, and will silence them. And Peter teaches us that this was one object of the gospel testimony in all these different past generations -viz., that refusers of it "might be judged according to men in the flesh "—that is, that men in the flesh of their own day and time on earth, might, so to speak, be Christ's "line and plummet" by which he should condemn them, and sweep away their "refuges of lies". Oh, then, what manner of persons should we be all our days among men, in order that God, by our lives, may condemn the world. As Solomon says (Prov. xxvii. 11), "My son, be wise, and make my heart glad, that I may answer him that reproacheth me". But Peter adds another and a happier object of the preaching of the Gospel in every by-gone age as well as in the present age-viz., "that men by it might live according to God in the spirit," that is, that they might see God in us by beholding our joys "in the spirit," suffer whatever we may in the flesh, and thus be drawn to eternal life. As John says (1 John iv. 12)—" No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another" (and loving each other did in those days cost Christians something, even as it does now) "God 66 dwelleth in us," and men may thus know him. And again (John xiii. 35)-" By this shall all men know (whether they profit by knowing it or not) that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." Thus is it true that the Gospel has been preached in all ages past that men might live in the spirit by the display thus made to them in the lives of the godly, of what a God of grace and love our God is. Short, in every age, has been the sojourn of the righteous among the ungodly as a witness to them, it is true, and short, indeed, the Church's sojourn now will be; but long enough either to condemn them for unbelief, or to be a channel to them of divine life and of knowledge of God. But let it be remembered that the power of this testimony in the earth, either to quicken men or to condemn them, depends on its clearness far more than on the length of its continuance. Brief, indeed, were our blessed Master's " days of His flesh," but long enough for Him to be able to say "I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness," John xii. 46. And He could also say, John xv. 22—“ If I had not come and spoken unto them they had not had sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin." Such was the twofold bearing and the twofold result of our blessed Master's short visiting of men as a day-spring from on high and a "sufferer in the flesh". Let us be diligent and faithful, that the Church's short time of "visitation" of the Gentiles may in some goodly measures similarly tend towards leading them to "glorify God" in this their "day of visitation." See 1 Peter ii. 11, 12. THE HEAVENLY CALLING. NOTES OF AN ADDRESS BY MR. J. G. BELLET, IN MAY, 1851. γου remember at our last meditation we were tracing the history of the transfiguration; and observing that, in the principle of it, it was no novelty in the history of the world. The instances were common from the days of Enoch. The moment the earth had perfected its corruption, the Lord translated one of His people to Heaven; when the Cain world had corrupted itself before God, the saints in their calling became a Heavenly people. To me this is very plain. It is expressed by the translation of Enoch. And so at Babel. When they had perfected their apostasy, Abraham was called out to be a Heavenly stranger on the earth. And so, beloved, in the history of the Lord Jesus personally. If you trace Him from the days of the Bethlehemite-from the 2nd of Matthew-you will find Him resisted by the world in every form in which He was presented to them; and in the 16th chapter of that Gospel He retires to the most distant borders of the land, and there opens to the hearts of His disciples, not hopes about the earth, but the fact of His rejection here; and there, upon the holy hill, discloses the Heavenly glory. Now, I believe it is practically valuable that, in a day like this, we should have this laid up in the soul, with increased certainty of heart-that the calling of each of us is a Heavenly calling. I am sure I am speaking the principle of the mind of God. Your necessities link you with the world. You have to labour with sweat of brow, &c., for daily bread; nothing more godly than to be linked by my necessities to the drudgery of the earth. Nothing more ungodly than to be linked with it by my affections. My necessities ought to be waited upon. Nothing is more beautiful than to see the Lord's poor people drudging to get their daily bread; but while that is the case, we are to know this, that the call of the Church does not link her with the world, but separates her out of it. For the earth is now a judged scene; the execution of that judgment is stayed; but the world itself-the course of the world -is a judged scene; and the call of God is, separation out of it. This has been beautifully figured from the beginning; only the transfiguration on the holy hill gives us this additional thought (I do not see, if I read the 5th of Genesis, where Enoch went to; a Heavenly country waited him). But the transfiguration advances in this beautiful feature. It tells me that the Enoch family, that are to be carried to the Heavenly places, are to be arrayed with the glories of Jis-"Jesus in the mist, with Moses and Elias," ect. The transfiguration was told out in the story of Enoch before the flood, and in Abraham after the flood; and the transfiguration is told out now by the call of the Church; as we saw it was upon the holy hill, by the Lord shining with Moses and Elias. Now, the Heavenly calling has had its witness all down the line of the earth's history. It was so when the Cain world corrupted itself-when the Babel world corrupted itself it was done in the personal history of the Lord Jesus. When Israel, to whom He offered Himself again and again, refused Him, He retired to the distant borders of the land, and opened Heaven to the eyes of the elect. And now, the same is done in the call of the Church; and the Church is as much a Heavenly stranger as Abraham was, as Isaac--who dwelt in tents all their days-as the Lord Jesus, and Moses, and Elias were, when they were on the holy hill, transfigured, so that we ought to be handling truth that should be very familiar to our souls. And, beloved, now-a-days, when the world is putting forth some of its finest attractions, I am sure of this, it is not merely watching against its coming too near you; that is very good in its place; it is not merely judging the grosser characters of it; but I believe the soul of the saint, in travelling on now, should be armed with a very simple and direct answer to the world-whether it bring its "improvements" or defilements, we are strangers to it all. It is impossible to open half an eye to what is going on and not see that the world is multiplying its fascinations-how much it is "on the advance," as the saying is, and how the doings of this year give a great share of large expectations how much the world will be improved next year; and nothing will arm you to give this its answer but to be thoroughly assured in your souls that the call of God is-- SEPARATION FROM IT ALL. The saint is neither to regule it in its "improvements," nor to go with it in its defilements. Now, I want you to trace the earlic chapters of this book of the Acts in a very short way, to see how the Church is conducted in the way that the Gospel of Christ conducted Christ to the holy hill. And the analogy is this-the grace of God is exceedingly patient Is with Israel. Look when the glory leaves the temple, in the book of Ezekiel; see how it lingers again and again over the city; how at one moment it comes to the threshold of the house; and again to the wings of the cherubim. What is the meaning of all this? all this mere scenery? Not at all; but all this beautiful action of the glory when departing from the house at Jerusalem is the expression to the soul of this -how reluctant the God of love is to leave the place where once He dwelt! So in the ministry of the Lord Jesus. He proposed Himself as a babe at Bethlehem. He was rejected and travelled as a Nazarene; again at Zebulon and Naphthali, &c. He is rejected, and He goes to the holy hill with His Heavenly elect. Then, in the 21st of Matthew, He offers Himself as a king to the daughter of Zion. He is refused again, and then He leaves the city, and says "O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! how often would I have," &c. Now, you see how reluctant the glory is to depart! I should not do myself justice to read this as scenery; but as the expression of the heart of the love of God-that lingers over a loved object, reluctant to leave it. And when the Holy Ghost comes down, the spirit lingers over the city as the Son had lingered over it. As Jesus had lingered over Israel in the Gospel by Matthew, so when the Holy Ghost comes down, and fills the infant Church at Jerusalem, you find that the business of the indwelling spirit of the vessel was still Jerusalem. Ah, beloved, there is not only a mind in Scripture, but there is a heart in Scripture. That is what I want to get into contact with. I have to do with a loving God, as well as with a living God. In the first chapter of the Acts, the vessel is prepared. Judas by transgression fell; and the first thing to be done was to supply the vacant bishopric. Then, in the 2nd chapter, the "treasure" comes down, and fills the appointed vessel. Then the vessel begins to exercise itself; and in the course of this beautiful chapter, Peter, we find, is addressing Israel-"Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that saine Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." And then, when they cried out " What shall we do?" "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ," &c., " and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." Here we find the blessed Spirit employing this vessel in a beautiful way, testifying to the house Peter and John go into the temple. (3d chap.) They tell a lame man to look them. I that was! At the gate of their temple- at the gate of that very house that had proved itself unbelieving. The Holy Ghost now comes down, and waits, in the power of His elect vessel, at the very gate of this apostate house. Well, all are moved. And Peter said (iii. 12) "Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this?" &c. (13) The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified His Son Jesus," &c. Do mark this- God had never forgotten His ancient title. What does Peter go on to say, "Repent ye therefore, and be converted," &c. (19) "The Heavens must receive Him," &c. But till when ? "Until the time of restitution of all things," &c. (21). Now, in all this it is the glory lingering over the city. It is the patient grace of God still waiting to be gracious with the reluctant, unbelieving heart. It is the Holy Ghost doing the same business that Jesus was doing with Israel up to the 17th of Matthew, and further. Then, in the 4th chapter, the enmity begins against the vessel of the Holy Ghost, as it began against Jesus in the days of His flesh (I am not going to read it all). But the enmity works. You are just, in spirit, in the early chapters of Matthew's gospel, tracing the rejection of the Spirit's witness to Israel, as you trace the same rejection of the Son's testimony by the very same people. And in the 6th chapter all this enmity is wrought up to its full. We find Stephen "full of the Holy Ghost" contending with Israel about the faith of Christ. (8th ver.) "And Stephen, &c., did great wonders, &c., among the people." (9) Then there arose up certain of the Synagogue, called the Libertines, &c., disputing with Stephen. "They could not resist the wisdom by which he spake," &c.; but, as they treated Jesus, they treated Stephen. Now, there is the transfiguration of Stephen. There is first the 17th of Matthew, when Israel would not be pleaded with; and here, when they refused the testimony which the grace of God was proposing to |