body of Christ, when on Mount Tabor " his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light." To the children of this kingdom, says its Almighty King, "When they bring you be fore magistrates and powers, take no thought how what shall answer, or what shall ye them, for the Holy Ghost shall

or

ye

say

unto

teach you in that

same hour what ye ought to say. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.

"

No higher or other thing is here said, than in these other words: "Take no thought what ye shall eat or drink, or wherewithal ye shall be cloathed, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.' This is the truth of the kingdom of God come unto men, and this is the birth-right privilege of all that are living members of it, to be delivered from their own natural spirit which they had from Adam, from the spirit and wisdom of this world, and through the whole course of their lives only to say, and do, and be, that which the Spirit of their Father worketh in them.

But now, is not this kingdom gone away from us, are we not left comfortless, if, instead of this Spirit of our Father speaking, doing, and working every thing in us and for us, we are left again to

our own natural powers, to run to every

❝lo here,"

and "lo there," to find a share in that kingdom of

God, which once was, and ever can be, any thing else but God, the wisdom and power of God manifested in our flesh? Had it not been as well, nay, better for us, to have been still under types and figures, sacrificing bulls and goats by divine appointment, than to be brought under a religion that must be spirit and life, and then left to the jarring interests of the wisdom of the Greek, and the carnality of the Jew, how to be living members of it! For where the Spirit of God is not the continual immediate governor of spiritual things, nothing better can come of it. For the truth and full proof of this, no more need be appealed to than all the libraries and churches of Christendom, for many ages, to this day.

What is the difference between man's own righteousness, and man's own light in religion? They are strictly the same thing, do one and the same thing, namely, keep up and strengthen every evil, vanity, and corruption of fallen nature. Nothing saves a man from his own righteousness, but that which saves and delivers him from his own light. The Jew that was most of all set against the gospel, and unable to receive it, was he that trusted in his own righteousness; this was the rich man, to whom it was as hard to enter into the kingdom of heaven, as for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. But the Christian that trusts in his own light, is the very Jew that trusted in his own right

K

eousness; and all that he gets by the gospel, is only that which the Pharisee got by the law, namely, to be further from entering into the kingdom of God than publicans and harlots. How comes it, that a beast, a scarlet whore, a horned dragon, and other the most horrible descriptions of diabolical power, have been, by the Spirit of God, made descriptions of the Christian church? How comes it, that the Spirit describes the gospel church as driven into a wilderness; the two faithful witnesses, Moses and Jesus, as prophesying so many ages in sackloth, and slain in the streets of spiritual Sodom and Egypt? It is because man's own natural light, man's own conceited righteousness, his serpentine subtilty, his self-love, his sensual spirit, and worldly power, have seized the mysteries of salvation that came down from heaven, and built them up into a kingdom of envious strife and contention for learned glory, spiritual merchandise, and worldly power. This is the beast, the whore, and dragon, that has governed, and will govern, in every private Christian and public church, till, dead to all that is self, they turn to God; not to a god that they have only heard of with their ears, and their fathers have told them, but to a God of life, light, and power, found "living and working within them," as the essential life, light, and power of their own lives. For God is only our God, by a birth of his own divine nature within us. This,

and nothing but this, is our whole relation to, our only fellowship with him, our whole knowledge of him, our whole power of having any part in the mysteries of gospel salvation. Nothing can seek the kingdom of God, or hunger and thirst after his righteousness; nothing can cry " Abba, Fa ther;" nothing can pray, "Thy kingdom come;" nothing can say of Christ, "My Lord, and my God," but that which is born of God, and is the divine nature itself become creaturely in us. Nothing but God in man can be a godly life in man. Hence is that of the apostle, "The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life." But you will say, can this be true of the spiritual divine letter of the gospel? Can it kill, or give death? Yes, it kills, when it is rested in ; when it is taken for divine power, and supposed to have goodness in itself; for then it kills the Spirit of God in man, quenches his holy fire within us, and is set up instead of it. 'It gives death, when it is built into systems of strife and contention about words, notions, and opinions, and makes the kingdom of God to consist, not in power, but in words. When it is thus used, then of necessity it kills, because it keeps from that which alone is life, and can give life. This, then, is the whole of the matter; all the literal truths, and variety of doctrines and expressions of the written word, have but one nature, one end, and one errand, they all say nothing else to man but that

"

66

one thing which Christ said, in these words: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you;" just the same as when it is said, "Jesus Christ, who is of God made unto us wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification;" this is the only refreshment from Christ. Again, "But ye are washed, but ye are cleansed in the name of our Lord Jesus;" just the same as when it is said, Except ye abide in me, and I in you, ye have no life in you. Again, "By grace ye are saved," "by faith ye are saved," say neither more nor less than this, "He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life;" the same as when Christ says, "Without me ye can do nothing;" the same as the apostle says, "Yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me;" the same as "Christ in us the hope of glory; if Christ be not in you, ye are reprobates." Therefore, to come to Christ, to have our heavy laden fallen nature refreshed by him, to be born Spirit of his Spirit, to have his heavenly flesh and heavenly blood made living in us, before we put off the bestial body and blood of death which we have from Adam, is the one only thing taught and meant by all that is so variously said in the Scriptures, of the merits and benefits of Christ to us. It is the SPIRIT, the BODY, the BLOOD of Christ within us that is our whole peace with God, our whole adoption, our whole redemption, our whole justification, our whole glorification; and this is the one thing said,