or weekly received, not by the few, but by the many. Everything then contributed to the growth of the regenerate life. Because that by persecution men felt that from day to day their lives were in their hands, and their property ever liable to confiscation, they realized habitually that they had no continuing city here; and so it was more natural for such to live as strangers and pilgrims, looking by faith to Him Who is invisible. Then were they constant at religious assemblies in which the word of God was read and expounded, and men encouraged one another by united prayers and thanksgivings; and universally did they regard the Eucharist as a mystical communion with their Saviour, and habitually did they partake of it.

If the fruits, then so universal, are now more stinted, is it not because of prosperity, of riches, of security, the natural tendency of which things is to deaden men to the realities of the unseen? or because of the withholding or perversion of God's word, or because men habitually neglect, or have no faith that they truly partake of Christ in, the nourishing and sustaining Sacrament?

II. But we must now consider, in the last place, the practical effects of holding the truth of our having been regenerate in Baptism.

It is, as I said, manifestly one thing to have had, through God's grace, a benefit conferred by such a rite as Baptism, and quite another thing to hold and realize the doctrinal truth that Baptism is the channel of this grace.

A man may have received this gift, and yet, through defective religious teaching, be all his life seeking an interest in Christ when he has one already.

A man, too, may bring his child to the laver of Regeneration, and regard the Saviour's Sacrament merely as an edifying ceremony, and so receive it back in positive unbelief of any benefit having been conferred. Now we have already, in former parts of this tract, necessarily anticipated much that would come under the head of practical

application; for so exceedingly practical is the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, that in some of the leading passages bearing on it, such as Rom. vi., Coloss. ii., iii., we deduce the doctrine from the application to the heart and life.

Still it may be well, though at the risk of repetition, to advert separately to some of the motives to trust in God and holiness of life, furnished by Baptismal doctrine.

The first and most important result of believing sincerely what God has revealed respecting this Sacrament, will be to realize to every baptized man that all the precepts of Scripture are addressed to him; and, if he has turned or is turning to God through Christ, that all the promises of Scripture belong to him.

From the beginning to the end of the Bible, it is taken for granted that those to whom it is addressed are, by an initial rite, in covenant relationship with God, and in a state of grace; and those who are thus addressed are not to doubt this, or to wait for something further, but at once to begin in earnest, or to continue in earnest, the working out of their salvation.

The Bible is not addressed to, nor intended for, the heathen. The first part of it was inspired for the circumcised Jew; the whole for the baptized Christian. In both cases, God first gathers out a family, and then He gives this family His word to be their guide.

First, He takes one nation in Abraham, as His family; then, from the first, He gives them circumcision that they (individually) might know that they were in His family; then He gave them His word, addressed to them as circumcised.

Then, afterwards, He enlarged this family; He gathered together into it His children scattered abroad; and when He did this, He added to his word, for He gave the New Testament, containing far richer promises and far more heart-searching precepts. But before giving the New Testament with its far deeper principles to his Church, He had taken care to give another covenant initial rite,

whereby they who had these higher precepts might know that they were addressed to them, and that they had received grace, the grace of the New Covenant, to fulfil them. The precepts of the New Testament are universally addressed to those in some degree partakers of Christ the Second Adam. It is taken for granted that they have all been made so in Baptism. He then who realizes this will, in reading his Bible, take everything as said to himself.

When, for instance, in the Book of Proverbs, he reads, "My son, give me thine heart," he will not hesitate, and put such words from him, and say, "This does not yet belong to me; I must have more evidence that I am God's child." He will rather reverently say to God, "Take my heart; make my heart right with Thee. Thou hast given to me the adoption; give me the love of Thy true sons."

And again, when he reads in the Prophets all the promises of God to His people-all the denunciations of God's wrath against the backslidings of His people-all the precepts or threatenings to Israel, to Judah, to Zion, to God's elect, His chosen, he will realize that all these belong, in a far deeper and more extended sense, to the Church of Jesus Christ. He will be assured that if Circumcision had enrolled the Jew into a company of men of whom, and to whom, such things could be said, Baptism (unless God's purposes of grace are narrower than they were) has brought him into a body to which pertain benefits of which the Jewish were but the shadow. Every promise, then, to Zion, every threat against the backsliding of God's people, he will feel that he has a part in. He will be ceaselessly asking himself, not merely am I saving my soul? but am I fulfilling my position in the present Zion of God?

And if such will be his personal application to himself of the Old, how much more of the New Testament !—more especially the Apostolical Epistles-those parts of it so

peculiarly addressed to the Church, as the elect of God, the body of Christ?

Whenever, then, he reads that Christians are, as members of Christ's body, to be holy, to keep their bodies under subjection, to yield themselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, to bear one another's burdens, to be at peace with one another, as called in one body; whenever, I say, the man who realizes the grace of the Christian covenant finds such precepts as these, he will take them as said directly to himself, because that in Baptism he was brought into this fellowship.

But, it may be said, can a baptized man do this without further light and help from God?

Assuredly not. It requires the special aid of God's Spirit truly to take to ourselves, and savingly to profit by, the least of Christ's words, much more such wondrous words as those in which He has embodied sacramental truth. If a man be under the influence of teaching which makes him deem it superstitious or unspiritual to take some words of God in their plain acceptation, he will, of course, refuse to contemplate them-he will be doubleminded in his secret prayers to God to reveal them to him in their integrity.

If the doctrine of Baptism be, as St. Paul asserts it to be, one of the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, assuredly it cannot be esteemed a secondary matter without the soul suffering grievous loss.

We find, for instance, men who have lived in the faithful recognition of much evangelical and moral truth, but in the tacit unbelief of the grace Christ conveys through sacraments, actually praying to God, almost at the end of their Christian career, that He would give them an interest in Christ.

The true belief in the "one Baptism," I need not say, must have the effect of at once doing away with all those doubts destructive of a Christian's peace, as to whether he has an interest in Christ.

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To the man who realizes the Church truth on this subject, the great matter of anxiety will be, not whether he has a place in Christ's love, but whether Christ has His true place in his.

I would now, in conclusion, call the reader's attention to some most important practical instruction that he will find in God's word, which by its very nature is such that it can only be effectively, or with any sincerity, applied to men's hearts and consciences by those who hold the Baptismal engrafting into Christ of all in the Church.

In the Apostolical Epistles we find certain holy dispositions inculcated upon Christians, as those to which they were pledged as being members of Christ.

They are bid to cultivate certain graces, not because these graces adorn a profession of religion, but because God has brought them into a state of grace, viz. membership with Christ, in order that they may, through this grace, produce these holy fruits.

Again; men are bid to crucify and abhor certain sins, not because these sins disgrace the Christian character, but because, by the commission of these sins, they rend asunder, or defile, or cut themselves off from, Christ's mystical body.

To give instances. In Romans xii. 3, 4, 5, we have the Apostle exhorting the Roman Christians to humility. "I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, (let the reader remark how he addresses all,) not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith." And on what grounds does the Apostle urge this grace on these converts? Not because of the intrinsic beauty and worth of this first Christian virtue, nor because of the eternal honour and glory that will follow it, if it be a genuine fruit of the Spirit, though these would certainly be legitimate grounds on which to urge men to cultivate it :-and in other places they are urged; but the reason he assigns is, that all they