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natural world. But there was also an equilibrium introduced into the heavens themselves; and this is what is especially meant by the sublime imagery of the Lord weighing the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance.

But on this subject we cannot do better than quote from the Writings themselves. The statement respecting the weighing and measuring of all material things follows the prediction that Jehovah shall come with strong hand, and His arm shall rule for Him. The arm of Jehovah is His Omnipotence, especially as operating by His Humanity, thus as effecting redemption and salvation :

"His arm which shall rule is His Divine power; the arrangement thence of all things in heaven by Divine Truth is signified by His measuring the waters in the hollow of His hand, meting out the heavens with a span, and comprehending the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighing the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance. By measuring the waters is signified to designate Divine truths; by meting out the heavens with a span is signified thence to set in order or arrange the heavens; by comprehending the dust of the earth in a measure is denoted the same with respect to inferior things; by the hollow of the hand, the span, and the measure, are signified the same as the measures and the hand, namely, the quality of a thing, and His own or proper power; by weighing the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance, is meant to bring all things into subordination and equilibrium—the scales and balance denoting just equilibrium, and the mountains and hills the superior heavens: mountains, those which are principled in love to the Lord, and the hills, those which are principled in charity towards the neighbour." (See A. E. 629.)

All this the Lord effected, by the assumption and glorification of Humanity, from which all these grand effects were the outbirths and the images.

The work of general redemption laid the foundation for individual redemption and salvation; the individual work arises out of the general work, and is, so to speak, an epitome of it. An unregenerate man is in a state of disorder and ruin, similar to that in which the spiritual and natural worlds were when the Lord appeared as the Redeemer. Evil has the ascendancy over good, and hell over heaven; and though he is now in the possession of the liberty of choice, he is the voluntary bondman of Satan, or the spirits of darkness, who lead him captive at their will. "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin, and the servant abideth not in the house for ever; but the son abideth ever. If, therefore, the son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." This state of spiritual and heavenly freedom is acquired by being delivered from the bondage of Satan and the servitude of sin; and this is individual redemption.

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SUITED TO THE CHARACTER OF THE SUBJECT.

461

Every human being is a little heaven and a little world in himself. His spiritual mind is an image of heaven, and his natural mind is an image of the world. Evil has its abode in the natural mind; and when it is possessed and governed by evil, that mind is no longer a little world, the basis of heaven, but a little hell, the opposite of heaven. When evil rules in the natural mind, that mind is in direct opposition to the spiritual mind; and every good thought and affection that may enter into it through the spiritual mind from the Lord is stifled or resisted. In such a mind the power of hell preponderates over the power of heaven, and the power of evil over the power of good. Individual regeneration consists in the deliverance of good from the bondage of evil; the admission of divine truth from the Lord, and obedience to that truth, gives this deliverance :-" If ye know the truth, the truth shall make you free." The Lord Himself is present in that truth, and resists and subdues evil by it.

As evil is subdued, good descends and acquires its rightful dominion, not only in the thoughts and intentions of the heart, but in the words and acts of the life, and the order of heaven, with its harmony and peace, is introduced into the mind.

The individual mind is the subject of Divine weighing and measuring, as well as the general church and kingdom of the Lord. For what are reformation and regeneration but the subordinating of the natural to the spiritual, and the harmonious arrangement of all the principles of good and truth in each? The loves of self and the world must be brought under subjection and subordination to the loves of the Lord and the neighbour; and these loves must be brought into. their true order in relation to each other-love to the Lord having the ascendency, and love to the neighbour taking the second place. Under these, as their subordinates and ministers, must be ranged all the natural affections, parental, social, and national. These, and all others occupying the same sphere, are to be ordinated among themselves, as well as subordinated to higher, that is, to spiritual and eternal principles. For it is by the arrangement of these according to Divine order, which is, that each should occupy its own place, and perform its destined use, the lower serving the higher, and all serving the Lord, that the mind— nay the man himself becomes a subject of that equilibrium which is spiritual harmony, constituting in the highest degree a well-balanced mind, which gives a feeling of tranquility and peace, and makes life one of holy and consistent usefulness.

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462

THE OFFENCE OF THE CROSS.

It was after Peter, in answer to the Lord's question-" Whom think ye that I the Son of Man am?" had made the memorable confession-"Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," that the Lord first began "to show to His disciples how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders, and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day." This was, however, an idea so new and at the same time so uncongenial to those who looked forward only to their Master's triumph and glory, that "Peter took Him and began to rebuke Him, saying, Be it far from Thee, Lord: this shall not be unto Thee. But the Lord turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art an offence unto me, for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men."

It had been predicted of the Lord by the prophet Isaiah, that the Saviour would be a stumbling stone and rock of offence to both houses of Israel; and when He appeared in the world, this prediction was but too fully verified. The Jews were by no means disposed to acknowledge as their Messiah, one who appeared in the lowly character which Jesus assumed; but to recognise their king in one who could either deserve, or suffer himself to be crucified, was inconsistent with all their notions and desires, on the subject of the restoration of Israel. They considered the Lord's crucifixion as a practical and triumphant refutation of His claim to the office of the Messiah; and therefore, both the multitude and the chief priests of the Jews demanded of Him, as a sign of His being indeed the Son of God, that He should "come down from the cross."

Infidels in all ages have, like the Jewish unbelievers, reviled the Lord upon the cross, unable to see in His "obedience to the death of the cross" anything more than a sign of His being destitute of the power to deliver Himself from it. We need not be surprised at the offence, taken both by Jews and infidels, at the cross of the Redeemer, when His disciples themselves could not hear of it from His own lips without astonishment and dismay.

The cause of the Lord's submitting to the death of the cross could not be seen by them, because the end for which He came into the world, and the nature of His work in the flesh, by which that end was to be accomplished, they entirely misunderstood. And as the apostles themselves were ignorant, until after the Lord's resurrection, of the real purpose of His coming, and of the means by which it was to be effected,

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they could not see the death of the Lord, especially His ignominious death inflicted by His enemies, to be among the things which are of God. Nor could this be seen by them until their understandings had been opened to understand the Scriptures, and they had come to know Christ, not after the flesh but after the spirit.

Their blindness to the distinct predictions of these things by the prophets, shows how liable men are to pass over the testimony of Scripture when it teaches that which they do not desire to know. But what shall we say of the ignorance and unbelief of the disciples on this subject, when we call to mind the Lord's own explicit declaration to them-that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be killed, and rise again the third day? We are told that they understood none of these things, for they were hid from them, that they should not know them. Nor did the events themselves bring these predictions of the Lord to their remembrance. Nay, when the women returned from the sepulchre, and assured the disciples that they found not the body of Jesus, but that they had seen in a vision angels, who told them that He was not there, but was risen, as He said, their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not. Well might the risen Saviour say to the two disciples whom He overtook and joined on their journey to Emmaus, when they communed with each other, and were sad,— sad at the Lord's death, as the bitter disappointment of their hopes,— "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?" This was not the subject of but a few scattered predictions; for the Lord, "beginning at Moses and all the prophets, expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." The Word is full of this subject. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy; and that testimony includes the sufferings of Jesus, as the very means by which He was to enter into His glory-His humiliation as necessary to His glorification.

When we consider that the disciples possessed the Scriptures, and heard more than once the most explicit testimony of the Lord Himself upon the subject, we can hardly imagine it possible that they should have remained in ignorance so complete or in unbelief so obstinate, even after the event had taken place, and the heavenly voice had proclaimed to them from the sepulchre that it was only what the Lord Himself had told them while He was yet with them. But we have only to pause here, and turn our thoughts inward upon ourselves, to discover the startling and humiliating truth, that in judging the disciples we judge ourselves; for we, indeed, do the same things.

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Yes, the Offence of the Cross is not a thing only of the past, exhibited by those who knew not as yet what the cross meant in reference to Christ, or what part it was to occupy in the system of Christianity and in the experience of the Christian-by those who, as yet, knew not what Christianity and Christian experience meant. The Offence of the Cross is the repugnance which every untried and inexperienced mind feels to the painful means by which the happy end of the religious life is to be arrived at,—to the suffering through which Christ Himself was, and through which the Christian is to be, made perfect. These sufferings are the cross. The Offence of the Cross is not only felt by every natural man, as an unbeliever, but by the natural mind of every man who is a believer, but whose belief has not been tried and purified in the furnace of spiritual affliction. This offence may be considered under two divisions; first, as it is felt in relation to the Lord, and secondly, in relation to ourselves.

It is one of the first difficulties of the Christian disciple to reconcile his mind to the cross, in regard to the Lord Himself. His unspeakable sufferings, His humiliation before the Father, His degradation in the eyes of the world; why were they necessary? how did they operate to work out a positive result? So much has all this been felt to be a difficulty, that Christians, even with the oracles of God to guide them, have been unable to find any other solution than this, that the Lord's sufferings were inflictions of infinite justice as the penalty of man's transgressions, and that their immediate object was to enable God to forgive sinners without destroying the authority of His law! The disciple of the Truth, who only is a true disciple of Him who is the Truth, does not adopt this easy but unsatisfactory and unprofitable way of finding intellectual rest. But still he has some difficulty in seeing how He who came to be a healer should yet be a sufferer; a conqueror, yet seem to be overcome; the giver of life, yet be put to death. disciple has, indeed, like those who followed the Lord, heard the necessity for all this declared; but, like them, he understands none of these things. He has ears, but he hears not; the avenues to his interior understanding and heart have not yet been opened, by a loving and living obedience, to the perception of the truths that disclose the great work of salvation. As his mind comes to be opened, he sees more and more clearly how Christ must suffer these things and enter into his glory. He sees that the Lord could only become a Saviour by being a sufferer. To deliver us from sin, He took upon Himself that nature which had sinned. In that nature He passed through all the experience of sinful man, excepting that of sinning. Man had become lost by

The