only adequate answer in the saints to that death and resurrection. (See Matt. xxviii. 19.)
How comes this to pass? On what is so mighty a change founded? Upon the cross. It brings out the worthlessness of man, and most of all, the worthlessness of favoured, privileged, religious man—of man under God’s law. For if man under God’s law failed, what other law could avail? The law of God was the wisest, the best, the holiest, and the justest dealing that it was possible to bring to bear upon man’s natural state. And here was the total failure of man: not as if God did not know it from the first, for He took care that in the earliest book of Scripture, and all through, embedded in the very law itself, there should be plain words as well as shadows, showing that man would sin, and that only Christ, by His blood-shedding, by His death, could avail. The very first revelation of the garden of Eden is a witness of both. Faith had no other expectation. But nevertheless there was a full, patient, long-suffering trial whether it was possible to get any good out of man, in the dealings of the only wise God with man. And now it was demonstrated in the cross that all was ruined in man, and that the highest advantages, short of the cross of Christ, brought out the ruin most distinctly. Now there was room for God to work; and, beloved friends, it is upon this that it is my joy to speak a little tonight.
We have come down the stream; we have seen what man was when it was a question of his work-
