God, "for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ," that the designs of mercy, grace, and love, may go on and be accomplished. And I would have you ask whether you are amongst the good, separate from the world, distinguished as God's own, and placed amongst the followers of the Lamb. Then I would ask what gifts He has bestowed upon you. Has He bestowed on one the gift of prayer, on another of praise, on another of love, on another of imparting to the necessities of his brethren, on another of teaching, on another of an evangelist, and the like, as well as the gift of the pastoral office? All these are His own gifts, and thus far is His Church furnished. But bear with me while I name the more important part of the furniture of the house.

There may be some now assembled who pass for good men; and they may be gifted men also, to a great extent; but if they have not the other part of the furniture I have mentioned, they are spiritually dead-the graces of the Holy Spirit, faith, love, hope, humility, meekness, zeal, and patience. How blessedly is that Church furnished where God condescends to dwell amidst all these goods, gifts, and graces! And if you can find no more to do concerning this matter, do beg of Him to grant that every one of the members of this Church may, to use the apostle's expression, be thus thoroughly furnished unto every good work." Then this earthly Jerusalem of our proving may be singled out and individualized; that every one of them, separately and distinctly, is declared by the apostle, or rather by the Holy Ghost with the pen of the apostle, to be "an habitation of God through the Spirit." Now bring these matters home to yourselves. Are your souls really and positively the habitations of God? Does He dwell in you, and walk in you? Has He furnished you with all good things? Then you will understand that passage of Scripture, "A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, shall bring forth good things." Then what shall we say of the goods? Perhaps you have not found them yet; perhaps you have not allowed them to be called out into exercise. 66 I cannot speak;" open your mouths. "I cannot pray;" try, then we will believe you. I promise you we will not be hard task-masters. "I cannot preach;" probably God hath not called all to, or gifted all for, it. "I cannot relieve the necessitous circumstances of my brethren; I have no means;" but perhaps a little saving might put them in your possession. Look at these questions. How is the house furnished? If God has put you in possession of His habitation, see that it is not a useless one, much less a dirty one, much less a despised and a neglected one. Moreover, what of the graces? Are they all implanted in you? Has the Holy Ghost constituted you His temple, with all His graces set up there, to be called into exercise for the glory of God? Verily, if you would know where God dwells, it is not only in the Jerusalem above; it is in the Jerusalem of His Church, His spiritual, living Church upon earth, and in the Jerusalem of every regenerated living soul.

not.

Pass on a step further. Our precious, glorious, covenant God, reveals Himself in His habitation; manifests His glories in the heavens; and, when in the temple of Jerusalem He had ordered all the furniture to be put in according to His own mind and will, He said, "Here I will meet with you, and manifest myself unto you; and here I will commune with you." I am sure I should not like my

habitation if God did not manifest Himself unto me there. I mean it literally. When I look back over the years in which the Lord has revealed Himself unto me in my habitation, especially in the little consecrated part of it, my study, I feel as if I could not bear a thing to be touched or altered, because it is the sacred place where He has so revealed Himself to me. And when I am asked how God reveals Himself in His visible Church on earth, I answer that He reveals Himself at His altar, He reveals Himself at His ark, and He reveals Himself by the Divine afflatus poured out and communicated to His dear saints.

He reveals Himself at His altar. "Altar!" say you, "I thought you did not believe in an altar, and accounted it Popish." So I do, altars made with hands. I despise the very name of them, I must confess. The "Communion-table," if you please. They are Papists and Puseyites who have their altars, and who set candles on them. God Almighty pity them, and open their eyes, and then they will stand in the sunlight instead of the candle-light. "What do you mean, then, by the altar?" I mean the person of Christ. That is the altar where God reveals Himself. I mean the precious, glorious Lamb of God, upon the altar of whose Divine nature His human nature was sacrificed on purpose for the salvation of the whole Church of God. There, in the atonement, in the perfect work of Christ, in the finished salvation of Christ, and in the fulness of the merit of Christ, the Father reveals Himself in His habitation.

Moreover, I said, He reveals Himself at His ark. You will remember that, when the ark, made of Shittim wood, was placed in the tabernacle, and afterwards in the temple at Jerusalem, according to God's command and direction, He gave this precious promise, “Here will I meet with you; here will I commune with you from off the mercy-seat over the ark of the covenant, from between the cherubim; and here will I bless you." Now, in the present dispensation, and in the present degenerate age, what they have done with the ark it is not for me to determine. Whether it is gone to the house Obed-edom, or to Kirjath-jearim, or whether they are looking for it at Ephratha, is not for me to decide. One thing I am sure of: it is not to be found in three-fourths of the congregations. But I do not wonder there is no ark. The covenant is wanting-covenant truth, covenant love, covenant blood, covenant grace for a covenant people, with a covenant sacrifice. That is what constitutes the ark, and there God manifests Himself, and reveals His glory to His people. What does that revelation itself consist in? Where Jesus is the altar, sacrifice, and meeting-place for God and His people-where atoning blood is relied on, and accepted of God—and where the ark of the covenant, containing all Jehovah's mind and will, is owned, claimed, received, and exhibited continually-God reveals Himself. But how? I have called it a Divine afflatus, a holy communication, a heavenly breathing, a Divine unctuous anointing, a holy fire from above, the voice of God speaking to the hearts and consciences of His people. Do you know anything of this in your habitation? Does God speak to you? Is the promise fulfilled, "that you shall hear the voice of the Son of God," and "feel the lighting down of His arm?" Does He thus manifest His power, and reveal Himself unto you as a conquering God, a quickening God, a transforming God, a pardoning God, a justifying God, a sanctifying God, and a God in covenant? And have you faith

in strong and lively exercise, to say, "This is our God for ever and ever, and will be our guide even unto death." Oh, the blessedness of knowing his habitation! In some cases, when persons know the habitation of a dear friend, they will go to it as often as they can; and, if they cannot enter it, they will pass by even to look at it; and, if they cannot do that, they will sometimes send a letter or a thought to it. Do you act thus with God's habitation? Do you go to it as often as you can? Do not let us have any squeamishness or reluctance when He is always inviting you, and keeps open house where He dwells. I love His house of prayer, and my soul is never happier than when it can get there. Why? Because I meet with God, who says, "Here will I meet with thee and commune with thee." It is His habitation, and it shall be mine. Yea, He Himself shall be mine. "Be thou my strong habitation, unto which I may continually resort."

I do not think that the people of God are sufficiently alive to the privilege of the public means of grace, of which Jehovah says, "He loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob;" if they were, there would not be so many snugging themselves in their own dwellings, encrusted in fleshly ease, when they ought to be in "the place where Jehovah's honour dwelleth;" nor should we hear the paltry and sinful excuses of, "Oh, it is so cold, I cannot go;" "Oh, it is so hot, I cannot go;" "Oh, it is so wet, I cannot go." No, indeed, if the soul were alive to God, and lively in the things of God, the little inconveniences of the body would not be magnified to mountains, nor the flesh indulged to the starving of the soul; but the vow of the Psalmist would be performed, "Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem;" even if there were no convenience to sit down, or scientific apparatus to gratify pride and facilitate slumbering. The glory of God and soul profit are all-absorbing things.

Once more. When God manifests and reveals Himself in His holy habitation, it is in visitings, comfortings, sometimes in reproofs, often in lessons of instruction, and in acting the part of the Father. And this leads me to the last particular of my discourse; and that is the exercise of His own prerogative there, as every man should do in his own house. I like the old law, that every man should bear rule in his own household. If he is not capable of doing that, he is not fit to have a house. At all events, God will bear rule in His house. Now, in bearing rule in one's own house, one likes to adjust every child in his proper place, every servant to his or her proper employment, every apartment to its proper use, every vessel properly engaged. So with God in His house. He uses His own prerogative, and that in absolute sovereignty, with positive direction, with unalterable precision. The house is His own, and every vessel therein; and those "vessels that are to honour" are sanctified, and made meet-mark that-" made meet for the Master's use." Oh, I would that every person in my house, and every article of furniture in my house, should have a kind of consecration about it unto my Father's use! I should not like an Infidel or a Papist to enter, and sit down upon one of my chairs. If he did, I should think it ought to be broken up and burnt immediately, as no longer fit for my use, much less for the use of the Master. Examine this point a little closely. What say you of it, and of those whom you have under your control in your house? Are they consecrated unto the Lord? Is Jehovah asserting His Divine prerogative,

and occupying each heart, and that heart taking this property, and this interest, and that talent which He has bestowed upon you, and using it for the advancement of His glory and the extension of His kingdom upon earth. Oh! what a blessed prospect lies before us, that when all our vessels are filled with grace, and consequently prepared for glory-for that is the consummation of grace-He will just do with thee as Elijah told the widow to do, when the cruise of oil was running and flowing until it filled all the empty vessels she could obtain; as each one was filled, he set it aside, and said, "Bring another;" he filled it, and she brought another; and the oil kept flowing until it was said, "There is not another vessel left." Just such is the perpetual flowing and outpouring of the oil of grace, and the fulness of Christ into the empty vessels elect of God. The minister of the gospel, like the prophet of old, is to bring them to be filled, and when they are filled, God says, "Set them aside, and bring others." Now several have been filled and set aside during the past week; and when you and I are filled with all the fulness of God, the fulness of Christ, and the fulness of grace, He says, "Do not let them stay longer on earth; set them aside; here are mansions prepared for them for all eternity; take them away from this dirty, polluted wilderness, that they may dwell for ever with God in glory." The Lord enable you and me to live perpetually in the habitation of God, and rejoice in Him as our everlasting portion, and His name shall have all the glory. Amen.

HYMN No. 136 OF GROVE CHAPEL HYMNS.

What condescending love!

Jehovah dwells with man;
Reveals His glories from above,
And shows His gospel plan.

His tabernacle stands

A witness for His name;

Here praying souls lift up their hands,
And Jesus' love proclaim.

Here will Jehovah dwell,

To manifest His grace;

Here will He rescue souls from hell,

And they shall see His face.

The altar, and the priest,

The off ring, and the fire;

The Paschal Lamb, the gospel feast,

What more can we desire?

Here, then, may I abide,

And meet Jehovah here;

Gaze on my Saviour's wounded side,

Adore, and love, and fear.

Delivered in Grove Chapel, Camberwell, Sunday Morning, Jan. 28, 1849. BY THE REV. JOSEPH IRONS.

"And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at His feet behind Him weeping, and began to wash His feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed His feet, and anointed them with the ointment" (Luke vii. 37, 38). On the first reading of these two verses the question occurred to me, which our beloved Lord put relative to the eighteen persons upon whom the tower of Siloam fell, "Think you that these were sinners above all the dwellers at Jerusalem, because they suffered those things?" So we put the question concerning the woman of whom this celebrated transaction is recorded, and ask, "Thinkest thou that she was a sinner above all them that dwelt in the city?" One of the first impressions that would strike the mind upon reading this narrative is, that she was one who knew that she was a sinner, and mourned for sin, and that brought her to the feet of Jesus. Doubtless there were sinners in the city quite her equal in vice, however far she might have gone. But she is singled out by an act of sovereign grace, and brought to Jesu's feet. And see the unlikely place in which she found Him-"in the Pharisee's house"-the most unlikely place in the world to look for Jesus. Pharisees are generally so filled with self-conceit, and superstition, and creature doings, and human merit, that they have not a room or a vacant chair for Jesus Christ. The present was, however, a solitary instance in which the Lord would make manifest the difference between a proud, self-righteous Pharisee, and a humble, broken-hearted sinner. It is not unusual among the proud Pharisees of our day, to cast just the reverse reproach upon the sent-servants of God, that the Pharisees of old cast upon the Saviour. They reproached Him because He preached to, and associated with, sinners; and these Published in Weekly Numbers, Id., and Monthly Parts, price 5d.

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