ALL the inspired writers write from their own personal experience, to which they often allude. They do not take up some point of trine or order as a subject, and discuss it, but they write out of own hearts. They tell what they have seen and felt, by the working of the Spirit of Christ within them "testifying," whether before or afterward, "Of the Sufferings of Christ, and the glory that follow." So as the living soul reads the Scriptures, he reads in its variety, only various expressions of his own experience. there is a feeling of self-loathing, on account of sin, there is in same heart a sweet feeling of love to God, and of hunger and after his righteousness. Wherever there is a downcast and aged feeling because of a felt depravity in our nature, and of sin and transgression in heart and life, there is also somewhere in the mysterious recesses of the same heart, a holy assurance of God's love salvation. If we cannot realize this at the time, yet the Scriptures present it. Look at the fortieth Psalm, and see how all the variety of experience is there, from the highest joy, and fullest assurance, the lowest depths of sorrow and heart failure. The same one who cares that God has delivered him from the horrible pit, and hath put a new song in his mouth, and that the law of God is in his heart, and that he has preached righteousness in the great congregation, also says immediately afterward, "Mine iniquities have taken hold me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs my head; therefore my heart faileth me." Thus he is with his in all their trouble on account of sin, as well as in their wonderful in the hope of salvation. Then he declares in the form of a command that all who seek the Lord shall rejoice and be glad in him, and that love his salvation shall say continually, "The Lord be magnified;" and closes this wonderful psalm by expressing what every trembling child of God feels while here in this world of sin and "But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me: thou my help and my deliverer; make no tarrying, 0 my God." Thus Jesus, whose spirit spake through the psalmist of his own sufferings and his glory, tens the feelings of his children, and interprets them. We find this and many another Psalm to be just like a glass, in which we see our own hearts presented before us. All that we know of Christ is what we feel of the fellowship of his sufferings, and of his joy; and all that we understand of our own experience is by the witness of the Spirit of Christ through his word in this way.

Observe also the forty-second Psalm. The same one who says, "O my God, my soul is cast down within me," and "All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me," also says immediately, "Yet the Lord will command his loving-kindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life." We may hide a sin from the eyes of men, and even from our own eyes; or if not hidden, we may excuse it both it ourselves and others. But when the Lord comes to deal with us, the wrong, however slight it may have appeared to us, can neither be hidden nor excused. It will interpose itself between us and him, and remain an immovable barrier to his felt love and favor, until it has been fully and humbly confessed, repented of and forgiven. As it was said to ancient Israel, "Your sins have separated between you and your God," so it must be said to his people yet, and through all time. Sin is a separating power. No one can hold a wrongly acquired gain in one hand, and the felt favor of God in the other. One must be given up. The one who wrongs a brother is far more to be pitied than the one who is wronged.

If we should see a man in the street proclaiming that with his lamps, candles and various kinds of lights he would show the sun to all who would come and submit themselves to his instruction, would we not regard that man as lacking in his mind P What are we to think of him who proclaims that with the lights of human reason he win show the Sun of Righteousness to all who will attend to his instruction P Can any one find the Sun at midnight P If one should be sent out at night to find the sun, who had never seen him, he would be likely to stop at any great earthly light and say, "I have found the sun." So if one is sent to seek the Lord, he is likely to make just such radical mistakes. The sun win never be found till he rises upon us, and he win never be seen by the aid of any light but his own. So the Sun of Righteousness will never be found by any one until he rises upon that one "with healing in his wings. The sun can never be seen except in his own light; so the psalmist says to the Lord, "In thy light shah we see light."

November, 1897.