What say you, reader; to which class do you belong? Take the first test. John, writing to the children of God, says, "I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake." (1 John ii. 12.) Have you this mark of the children? Do you know that your sins are forgiven for Christ's sake? The children of the kingdom know this. The children of the wicked one never know this-nay, often declare it cannot be known.

To begin with the most boasting in this country -the Church of Rome; of all the thousands of its priests, how many have the mark of sins forgiven for Christ's sake? Could you find one in a hundred? And who sowed all the tares? enemy that sowed them is the devil.”

"The

If this be true-and can we deny it ?-then what must be the state of the flocks? We pretend to no infallible knowledge; the Lord knoweth them that are His. But we have been muchyea, deeply-impressed with the remark of an intelligent christian clergyman of the Protestant Establishment to a friend of ours. After close observation, he had come to the conclusion, that there were great numbers even now of the clergy unconverted. The Lord knows; but is it possible that He sees thousands of tares-clergymen, professed ministers of Christ, some holding in their head, and some denying, the truths of the Reformation? And who sowed every one of them,

every unconverted clergyman in England? "The enemy that sowed them is the devil." Think of the spiritual condition of all these parishes. And is Presbyterianism, or any other -ism, any better? Lord, open our eyes, to see as Thou seest.

There are two marks of the wheat-very un mistakable ones. We have seen one: sins forgiven for Christ's sake-not for the sake of anything we have done, but for His sake who died for us, and was raised from the dead for our justification; and the other is-that the wheat is ready to be gathered into the garner; to be taken, at any moment, to the inheritance of the saints in light. Thus they are ready, and wait, "giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light," &c. (Col. i. 12.) Yes, they have eternal redemption through the blood of Christ, and are therefore ready, as the children of the kingdom, to be taken to the garner.

We beg of all our readers to apply at least these two tests: Have you the blessed certainty that your sins are forgiven you for Christ's sake? and can you give thanks that you are-yea, that the Father HATH made you-meet for the inheritance of the saints in light? If you cannot answer these two marks in the affirmative, whatever your profession, or position in the kingdom, you may be a tare. O God, search us by Thy truth.

We will look, in the next place, at the harvest.

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NOTES FOR YOUNG BELIEVERS ON THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.

XVI.

CHAPTER IX. It will be noticed, there is now a change in the epistle. The next three chapters form a parenthesis. The righteousness of God has now been fully revealed and explained in His dealings with, and bringing to Himself, both Jew and Gentile. Both alike guilty, and now both alike justified; so that there is no condemnation, and no separation from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. But if this be so, what becomes of all the special promises to Israel in the prophets? This is the subject taken up in these three chapters.

Had the apostle, who had so clearly brought out this truth of no difference now in God's dealings with both, ceased to love the nation of Israel? Nay, his love for them was so intense, that, like Moses of old, he had, as it were, been beside himself. He says, "I have great heaviness, and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." In some cases, that intense love carried him beyond the guidance of the Holy Ghost. (Acts xx. 22; xxi. 4, &c.) No doubt the Lord bore with His devoted servant, and overruled all for good-ours at least-though Paul suffered imprisonment and

death. How much this must have added to his grief of heart-to be hated and persecuted in every city by those he so deeply loved. How like his Lord, whom he so devotedly served.

Verse 4. He owns their full national privileges. "Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen."

What privileges!

The adopted nation, with whom God had dwelt in the tabernacle. These privileges were never given to any other nation. The eternal God had become incarnate, taking flesh from that nation. All this is fully allowed. He who is over all, God blessed for ever, as to the flesh, the body, He was born of Mary, of the seed royal of that nation.

But now another principle is brought out. God had, unquestionably, made a difference, even in the seed of Abraham. The seed of Abraham were not all the elect, adopted children of promise. "But in Isaac shall thy seed be called." "The children of the promise are counted for the seed." A multitude sprang from Abraham; but Ishmael was rejected, and in Isaac alone was the chosen seed.

There was the same purpose of God in the election of Jacob. It was said unto Sarah, The

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elder shall serve the younger." It was also written, though many hundreds of years after, by Malachi, "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." This matter of the free, sovereign favour of God is of great moment for Paul's explanation; and no one who believed the scriptures could doubt it, in the cases referred to above; and God had said to Moses: "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." Surely, then, God had a sovereign right to shew mercy to the Gentiles, the very thing that so offended the Jews. It is remarkable how all that say they are Jews now, or take Jewish ground, always dispute the sovereign grace of God.

Many learned men deny divine sovereignty, but God is wiser than men. We must not forget that man is proved by the cross to be at enmity with God. He has no desire, naturally, toward God.

Verse 16. "So, then, it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy." This is very humbling, but surely true.

Verse 17. Pharaoh is given as a sample of the wickedness of man, and God's just judgment upon him. How long God bore with his daring infidelity and rebellion, until, in the just government of God, he was given up, hardened, to his own destruction. Let every rebel against God beware, lest Pharaoh's doom be his own. Pha