in some mysterious reality,-the tomb of the Saviour is always open in His Church; so that at the very outset of our Christian career we are accounted to descend into it in and with Him, and to rise again out of it in Him, and so are accounted to have sacramentally suffered death, the penalty of sin, in Him, and to have been made partakers of the very life by which He was revived.

In this sense Baptism is a "death to sin," because it unites the baptized with Christ in His "death to sin" (" He died unto sin once"), and makes him partaker of Christ's risen life; but whether sin is actually mortified in the baptized man, so that he loathes it, and is delivered altogether from its power, is another matter. He is made a partaker of Christ's death 1 and resurrection, in order that he may walk in newness of life.

We have the same teaching respecting Baptism expressed in the same words in Col. ii. 12, and the same application of that teaching in Col. iii. 1-10.

1 The death to sin here cannot mean a death to sin in the sense of sin being annihilated, or rendered powerless in the person so dead, and for this reason, that a few verses further on St. Paul writes to these very persons who were thus asserted to be "dead to sin" in Baptism, to exhort them not to "let sin reign in their mortal bodies, that they should obey it in the lusts thereof." If sin were dead in them, or if they had died to sin in the sense of being effectually delivered from its power and presence, there would be no sense in writing to them to bid them not to allow sin to reign in them, for in such a case sin, so far from reigning, would scarcely be felt in them. The whole context of the passage shows that the persons thus addressed as “dead,” were dead sacramentally only [in Baptism,] and not dead to sin in heart and affection, or they would have needed no exhortations of the sort contained in this chapter. Their sacramental death was a step to the mortification of sin, and a reason why they should mortify sin, not the complete mortification of sin. They were to reckon themselves dead to sin (verse 11) in order that sin might not reign in them (verse 12).

In Col. ii. 11, 12, the whole Colossian Church is assumed to have been buried with Christ in Baptism, and in Col. iii. these same persons are all assumed to have risen with Christ, and (ver. 3) to have a hidden life treasured up for them in their risen and exalted Head, and yet (ver. 5) they are bid to mortify their members which are upon the earth-fornication, evil concupiscence, and covetousness.

The very same assumption of a sacramental death is required to reconcile the third and fifth verses in this chapter with one another, which is required to make several expressions in Rom. vi. consistent with one another, for in the third verse the Colossian Christians are all assumed to be dead (or to have died), and in the fifth they are bid to mortify fornication, uncleanness, and covetousness.

(6.) In 1 Cor. x. 1—10, it is assumed that all baptized Christians have in Baptism experienced a deliverance analogous to that of the Israelites at the passage of the Red Sea. The greatest deliverance of the ancient Church is thus made to symbolize one supposed to take place in Baptism.

If there be any analogy between these two deliverances, then the one in Baptism must be participated in by the whole body of the baptized, for the salvation at the Red Sea, which was a type of it, was participated in by the whole Israelite Church; and the Apostle fastens attention on this very feature of the type, when he says to the Corinthians, "I would not that ye should be ignorant how that ALL our fathers were under the cloud, and ALL passed through the sea; and were ALL baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea." And St. Jude, in drawing precisely the same lesson from the same chapter of Old Testament history, notices that God saved the people of Israel, but afterwards destroyed them that

it shall be imputed if we believe on Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification." (Rom. iv. 23-25.)

Let the reader mark these words. The Apostle here asserts that righteousness is imputed to a man, not when he believes that his sins are forgiven-not when he believes that he is personally justified and accepted—not when he realizes that Christ died for him in particular, -but when he believes that God the Father raised up God the Son from the dead. So at least asserts the Apostle. Whether circumstances require that the strict meaning of his words should be modified I do not stop to inquire.

Again, we find similar words in the tenth chapter of this Epistle: "The word of faith which we preach, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." (Rom. x. 9.)

Similarly St. Peter says, "You, who by Him do believe in God that raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God." (1 Pet. i. 21.)

Again, when St. John would fill his converts with fulness of joy he writes to them, not God's secret election, not individual assurance, but his own personal witness to the truth of the FACT of the Incarnation. "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of Life . . . that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ, and these things write we unto you that your joy may be full." (1 John i. 1-4.)

In accordance with all this, St. Paul, in declaring to the Corinthians the Gospel which he preached, and in which his converts stood, sets forth to them first of all that which also he had received, how that "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures." (1 Cor. xv. 1-4.)

Such is the aspect under which the Gospel is presented to us in the Scriptures.

What provision does the Church make that this Gospel of the kingdom should be set before her children under the form in which it always appears in Scripture? What means does she employ that it should Occupy the same prominent place in her system which it undoubtedly possesses in the Bible?

Very remarkable indeed is the provision which the Church makes for this, for it is by far the most prominent and noticeable thing in her service book. She provides for the setting forth of the Gospel under this its one Scripture aspect by the arrangement of her yearly round of fast and festival. She commemorates the great facts of Redemption on her great days of religious observance.

On these days she sets forth the great features of the Gospel rather as events or facts than as doctrines. She makes these days great days, and she does her best to invest them with a sanctity above that of other days, and this according to their relative importance.

Unquestionably, the Resurrection of Jesus as the seal of His Messiahship and God's own assurance of the full efficacy of His Son's death is the first event in the New Testament, and so Easter is the Queen of Days in the Church's year.

Next to it are Christmas, Good Friday, Ascension Day, and Whit Sunday, as setting forth the Incarnation and

believed not.

But this benefit, though betokening such present love on God's part, could be received, and was received, in vain. The great bulk of those who were saved effectually at the passage of the Red Sea were lost in the wilderness. They who were brought out of Egypt in order that they might possess the Promised Land, were hindered by their own sin from entering into possession. And the Apostle brings the example of their first deliverance and final doom as a type of God's dealings with Christians in order to keep them from sin.

But the reference to the Israelitish baptism and the deliverance therein loses all its point if there be no corresponding blessing in Christian Baptism.

(7.) In 1 Cor. xii. 12, the Fathers and the Divines of the time of the Reformation, without exception, find a reference to water baptism as the outward and formal means by which the Holy Spirit grafts men into the mystical body of Christ. This text can only mean this, for St. Paul, as the whole context shows, is evidently speaking of a something which pertains to the whole Corinthian Church and to every individual member of it.

But the moral state of this Church was such that they could not be said to have all been baptized into one body, if this Baptism was a work of the Spirit which had made each one, so baptized, spiritually religious; for the whole Epistle shows that very many among them were not this.

(8.) In Gal. iii. 26, 27, the Apostle asserts that all those who had been baptized into Christ had put on, or been clothed with, Christ, and so were God's children by faith: "Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus; for as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ."

(9.) In Eph. v. 26, Christ is said to cleanse the Church in Baptism; for "He gave Himself for it, that He might