because the work of the Holy Spirit is a progressive one; but we cannot be imperfectly justified. We either are clothed in the righteousness of the Lamb that has been slain; and because of that righteousness, Omniscience cannot see a flaw in us; or we are so completely strangers to that righteousness, so destitute of it, that we have no title to heaven whatever in the sight of God. Justification is the same to the believer who yesterday was forgiven, as it is to the saint who stands upon the verge of glory, and has been justified for fifty years. We are perfectly justified, or not justified at all. We cannot, therefore, hope for increase of justification in the sight of God.

Nor can we hope for increase of the love of God. God's love to us is not increased with the increase of our faith. He loved us from everlasting, just as he loves us now, and in either case so intensely, that the exponent of that love is the gift of his only begotten Son the Lord Jesus Christ. We may enjoy more of that love by having the inner eye more open to its reception; but to increase that love is impossible. We cannot increase the infinite. The breath of the babe cannot add to the impetus of the hurricane. The tear of the orphan cannot add to the immensity of the waters of the unsounded sea. The finite cannot increase the infinite. God's love, infinite in its existence, unchangeable in its application, must be "the same yesterday, today, and for ever; we cannot expect an increase of it. What, then, are we warranted to hope for? What hope should we build upon the increase of our faith? The great hope constantly held out in the New Testament is the promised return of the Lord Jesus Christ; that return which Enoch prophesied: "I will come again, and receive you to myself." To them that look for him, he will come a second time, without sin to salvation. Looking for," says the apostle, "that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of

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Jesus Christ, our God and Saviour." In other words, we do not believe, for our salvation, in justification by faith, but in Christ; so we do not hope for a millennium, but for Christ. The faith of the Christian rests upon a personal Being Christ; the hope of the Christian stretches to a personal Being-Christ. We believe upon him for the forgiveness of our sins; we hope in him for the perfection of our glory, and happiness for ever. The faith of the Christian believes in the truth of the promise; the hope of the Christian feeds upon the goodness of the promise. Faith takes the cup in its hand that God freely offers; hope tastes the wine that is in the cup, and is gladdened and exhilarated thereby.

A Christian may also hope for that blessed inheritance that God has promised. He has reserved for us an entrance into blessedness an inheritance shall be administered unto us, real though unseen, the subject of promise, the revelation of truth. Now, faith is the basis on which the truth stands, and hope approaches the truth, and takes from it the blessing which it embodies.

Another object of the Christian's hope is the resurrection of the body. "The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of condemnation;" or, as the whole magnificent scene is depicted in that beautiful chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Thessalonians, "I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again," here is

faith,

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even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him," here is hope faith believing, hope expecting. "For this we say unto you by the word of the

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Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first." Whatever good promise God has made in the Bible, faith believes as a truth, and hope looks forward to its fulfilment and realization as the good that is contained in it. In other words, faith is the foundation laid deep and strong in the Rock of ages; hope is the beautiful and tapering spire that rises upon that foundation, penetrates the sky, and is illuminated by the first beams of the rising, and by the last rays of departing suns. Faith is the basis, the substance; hope is that which leans and depends upon it. Faith accepts the bank-note as a true, genuine document; and hope makes use of it as a marketable thing, and transfers it for things that are good and useful. Faith makes invisible things visible; hope makes future things present. Faith brings down into the present, things that are invisible; hope brings back into the present, things that are future. Thus hope rests upon faith. That which we hope for, has for its basis that which we believe.

Faith is not only "the substance of things hoped for," without which we could not hope for any thing; but it is "the evidence of things not seen." In other words, a Christian has another sense. As truly as the natural eye sees the panorama, the landscape, the rock, the flowers, the trees; so truly an inner eye, which is the gift of God, and the possession of every Christian, sees things that are unseen and eternal. The things that are unseen by the natural eye are as real to the inner eye of a child of God, as the things that are seen by the natural eye are to the natural man. No natural light, bude light, electric light, or other, can enable a blind man to see. No reasoning, no

philosophy, no science, no eloquence, can enable an unregenerate man who has not this inner eye that God gives, to see the things of glory, of eternity, and of happiness to

come.

To a Christian, faith in God's word is surer than geometry to a geometrician, or mathematics to a man of science. He believes in virtue of a sense that a natural man has not. In other words, faith, while it has an analogous thing in the natural man in the shape of confidence in human things, is nevertheless a gift of God; as the apostle says, “To you it is given to believe;" and only in the exercise of this inspired faith we see things that are unseen.

Let us ascertain some of the things unseen, that faith sees. A natural man, that is, a man that is unregenerate, may come to a conclusion that a God exists. Justly he may say, I trace his foot prints on every acre of the earth, and I can see his smiles in the morning light, I can hear his voice in the thunder, and in the chimes of the sea, and there are so many and so marked exhibitions of system, of goodness, and of design in the visible framework of this visible world, that I come to this conclusion, that there is a God. But a Christian, while he comes to the same conviction, on the same premises, has, in addition to this, faith which is "the evidence of things not seen." In other words, a Christian believes that there is a God upon an additional ground, and that additional ground is, Thus saith the Lord: God's enunciation of himself is the everlasting ground on which a Christian believes that there is a God.

Another thing unseen which the Christian believes, and Adam foresaw and Abel looked for, is the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ- a cardinal and vital truth in the gospel. "Great is the mystery of godliness." No man can comprehend it; but the Bible asserts it, and therefore the Christian believes it. And this incarnation of Jesus is not a dreamy

abstraction, an artistic representation, but a Divine person. Jesus is not the Godlike in the human nature, he is not latent divinity in man, nor divine biography in man, as the Pantheists call him; but he is "God," the personal God, "manifest in the flesh." A Christian, although he does not see Christ, yet believes in Christ; and the faith by which he thus believes, is to him "the evidence of things not seen."

So, in the same manner, we accept the work of the Holy Spirit of God. The world laughs at it; the natural man, and very gifted men, call it fanaticism; and yet it is just as much a fact as any of the phenomena in the natural world, that one has undergone a change that has cast a new light upon the universe, and made all things become new; and that another has not undergone that change, but is sensuous, carnal, of the earth, earthy. A Christian sees the Holy Spirit's work within him, because he believes the Holy Spirit's word without him. He does not see the Spirit's work, and yet he believes its reality, because faith is to him "the evidence of things not seen." Some of the most potent agencies in the outer world are unseen. The most powerful element in nature is invisible. "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound. thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth, so is every one that is born of the Spirit of God."

A man that has this faith, the faith of a Christian, believes also in the immortality of the soul, and its emergence at death from its earthly tabernacle. We may conclude, from manifold presumptions, that the soul survives the body; but we cannot irrefragably prove it. But the Christian hears God pronouncing its immortality, and that faith which accepts whatever God has written, is to him the basis of the thing that is told him, and the evidence of the things that the natural eye cannot see.