required of stewards that they be found faithful." Who of us can lift up his face without spot of guilt? Has our service been loving? An old officer said to me this morning, speaking of past military service, "I loved the service." Do we as much love our King's service as true soldiers love the Queen's service? Has our service been true? Has it been honest? I believe if our gracious Master dealt with us as we deal with our servants -for we expect good service, and very soon terminate an engagement if we do not receive it-if He so dealt with us, would He not have cast us out of His service long ago? I could not stay there; and none of us, I believe, could, were it not for His gracious mercy. How little faithful, loving service has been rendered to God in the past; yet in His manifold mercy He has not forsaken us. He has given His Spirit to instruct us; He has not withheld His manna from the earth, but has sent, day by day, His bread from heaven; He has satisfied us with the finest of wheat, and water from the rock. We should have put our children or servants long ago on bread and water if they had dealt with us as we have dealt with Him. But He has not dealt so with us; and although we have not rightly used His mercy, He has shown us a pillar of fire by night, and a pillar of cloud by day, to guide and lead us the way we should go. Surely unfeigned thankfulness should be ours, which will lead us to "show forth His praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to His service, and by walking before Him in holiness and righteousness all our days."

God grant us that spirit! Suffer these few words of exhortation at the opening of the Conference. Others will speak to us to greater profit on the subject proposed for conference. May we all seek to realize afresh the precious cleansing power of that blood which, as from our sins, so also from our failures in service, "cleanseth us from all sin!

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Prayer was presented by Mr. FRANK H. WHITE, and hymn No. 7 was sung—

"How shall we praise Thy name,
Jesus! Thou Lord of light!"

The following address was then given by the

Rev. ADOLPH SAPHIR, D.D.

The subject on which it is my privilege to speak to you this morning is not service, but the things which precede service.

In other words, I am to speak of what God has done for us. That also includes what God has done in us. For we are not able to do anything for God until first we receive the things which God has done for us, and until first we experience the power of His Holy Spirit in our souls. Christ is Alpha; and

before Alpha there is nothing. Christ is the Door, Christ is the Way, and Christ is the End of the way; and, oh! what a blessing and a consolation it is to us that, on whatever points of the path it may please God to call us to Himself, either by death, or by the coming of the Lord Jesus, we have reached the end. For, if we have entered at the strait gate, we are already possessors of eternal life. The thief who took hold of Jesus during the last moments of his earthly existence had only a few steps, and he entered into the paradise of rest. apostle beholds the end as it were in the past, "Whom He justified them He also glorified." What a wonderful path is this, that any part and every part of the path is already the end of the path.

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There is another remarkable peculiarity of this spiritual path. On every other path, as we draw near to the goal, the startingpoint recedes into the background. But it is different on this path. It is true as the apostle says, "Now is your salvation nearer than when ye believed;" but not merely is the end nearer to us than when we believed, but the beginning also. The day is approaching when Jesus will come in glory, and as the believer continues on his way, that day becomes brighter and clearer to him. But just as the goal comes nearer, the startingpoint comes nearer, and our conversion is nearer, and clearer, and dearer to us at the end of the journey than it was at the beginning. We find, when the apostle has finished his course, when the hour of his departure has come, and when he sees before him the crown which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to all that love His appearing, there is one experience of his past life that stands out with transcendent brightness-when mercy was shown unto him, and when Jesus Christ made Himself known unto his heart.

For this true Alpha, Jesus Christ, is the magnet that is continually attracting us. And here is another paradox. Christ is the foundation. We are built on Him as the foundation; but the more we build on this foundation we do not get further away from it, but we get nearer to it. Not merely do we get nearer to it, but we get nearer into it. For Christ is the stone

upon whom we build; He is the living stone, and so are we not merely founded on Him, but we are rooted in Him.

He is the Alpha. All things are of God. When we were brought unto the Lord we had nothing, and we had less than nothing. You remember that it is with those who have broken the first covenant that the new covenant is made in the blood of Christ, in which there is granted unto us forgiveness of sins, and in which our souls are born again by the power of the Holy Ghost. Redemption comes to us when we are in Egypt, when we are in the house of bondage, enslaved by Satan, and under the curse of the law. Life comes unto us when we are dead in trespasses and sins. And not merely has God, as it were, to take us out of the evil in which we are, and in which we are helpless, but He has to start us with everything that we require for our new life. Tell me whence are all the energies, whence are all the weapons that we need, from the day of our conversion until the moment that we enter into glory, the best robe, the ring on the finger, the shoes of obedience, the feast of joy? Were they brought unto the returning prodigal out of the region which he had forsaken? Were they partly his and partly the Father's? Did they not all come out of that heavenly region, out of the spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus? "All things are of God."

Not merely this, but we ourselves are "His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus." The new birth, that turning from darkness unto light, that exercise of faith in Jesus-who died for the ungodly—it is not our own work. It is the work of God's grace and of God's power. "Of His own will begat He us by the Word of truth." "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined into our hearts, and given unto us the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus." "We all like sheep have gone astray," but He "turned us back unto the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls." "All things are of God."*

To impress this still more upon your minds, let me remind you of a very solemn truth. Throughout all eternity God cannot again bestow upon you as great a gift as He hath bestowed upon you already-the gift of His only begotten and wellbeloved Son. Throughout all eternity there cannot be a greater manifestation of the love of God than has taken place already, when God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. * James i. 15; 2 Cor. iv. 6; 1 Peter ii. 25., orig.

Throughout all eternity there cannot be a greater work of the Divine grace within you than there has been already, if so be that you are the Lord's believing people. For the step from grace to glory is not so great as the step from nature to grace. The angels are not so much astonished when they take the most suffering believer, though he be like Lazarus, and convey him into the realms of blessedness and of light, as when they see a poor unbelieving, worldly, sin-bound man touched by the grace of God. 66 Then do they rejoice; for this man was dead and is alive again he was lost and is found."

And now, as I have brought before you, without the slightest fear of there being any difference of feeling or of opinion on this point, the wonderful, all-sufficient, sovereign grace of God, that Jehovah is the first, that Christ is the Alpha, that the Holy Ghost is the beginning of even the slightest beginning, in our souls Godward, I can with the greater liberty speak to you of the great purpose which God has in all this; viz., that we should serve Him. We are not merely forgiven; we are beloved. We are not merely acquitted; we are accepted. We stood before the Judge, and there came One and pleaded our case "Jesus Christ the righteous." He was our Advocate; and, now that we believe that "Jesus Christ died for the ungodly," we are acquitted. But, not as in an earthly court does the acquitted one go away; our accusers go away; our guilt goes away; our old man is, as it were, put to death; but we remain. The Judge is now the Father, and we are to continue in the presence of the Father, and in union with the Lord Jesus Christ, to serve Him. We have been redeemed, not with gold or with silver, but with the precious blood of Christ, as the Lamb of God, from the power of Satan, from the sting of death, from the terrors of everlasting destruction. We are redeemed also from our old and vain conversation, redeemed also from that connection which formerly subsisted between sin and us, so that sin shall no longer have dominion over us. Therefore it is that in the apostolic Epistles we are not exhorted to form, as it were, a resolution that, since God has shown unto us such great love, and Christ has died for us on the cross, we will make a great effort and give up sin. This is rather the teaching of these Epistles, that God has taken us away out of the region of sin; that He has transplanted us out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of His dear Son; that our old man was crucified when Christ died upon the cross; that the whole

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system of sin, the whole body of sin, should be put to death, that we might live unto God.

Not merely forgiveness, and not merely redemption, points unto the service of God. If we rise still higher-if we rise unto the highest point that is given unto us in the Word of God, the point of sonship, our adoption in Christ Jesus brings before us prominently the same subject of service. Because we are the sons of God, God hath sent into our hearts the spirit of sonship—that is, the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is a contrast between the servant and the son, but here there is no contrast. The very Son of God Himself, before the foundations of the world were laid, became a servant in spirit, in that covenant of mercy to which we all owe our salvation. His obedience here upon earth was merely the manifestation in time of that which happened in that eternity which we cannot fathom, when He who was in the form of God said unto the Father, "Lo, I come to do Thy will." When He, having by His death delivered us from everything that made it impossible for us to draw near unto God, rose again from the dead, our regeneration, our position as the sons and daughters of God, commenced. By this resurrection are we united to Jesus, who calls God His God and our God, His Father and our Father. Do we possess, then, the spirit of children? There is no contradiction between the spirit of sonship and the spirit of obedience. Look at our blessed Saviour; when He was here upon earth, He looked upon everything in the light of obedience. He laid down His life, and He took it up again, because He received the commandment from the Father; and when He approaches the Father, with what reverence does He approach Him? "Holy Father," "Righteous Father," "Lord of heaven and earth." (John xvii. 11, 25; Matt. xi. 25.) Even now when He is seated upon the throne in glory, in the Epistle He sent to the Church of Philadelphia, as recorded in the book of Revelation, Jesus speaks of God with reverence, and calls Him "My God;" and yet what wonderful simplicity of trust, of love, and of delight is in that word "Father!"

If Christ has given unto us His Spirit, so that we are one with Him, then service is that which must characterize our whole life. How beautifully our blessed Saviour shows unto us that there is no contrast between love and obedience-"As

the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you." He commands us to continue in His love, and lest we think that we