plenitude of His heavenly graces on your soul, even “as rain upon the mown grass, and showers that water the earth?” You cannot live without Him; there can be not one heavenly aspiration, not one breathing of love, not one upward glance of faith, without His gracious influences. Apart from him, there is no preciousness in the word, no blessing in ordinances, no permanent sanctifying results in affliction. As the angel directed Hagar to the hidden spring, this blessed agent, true to His name and office, directs His people to the waters of comfort, giving new glory to the promises, investing the Saviour’s character and work with new loveliness and beauty.

How precious is the title which this “Word of Jesus” gives Him—The Comforter! What a word for a sorrowing world! The Church militant has its tent pitched in a “valley of tears.” The name of the divine visitant who comes to her and ministers to her wants, is Comforter. Wide is the family of the afflicted, but He has a healing balm for all—the weak, the tempted, the sick, the sorrowing, the bereaved, the dying! How different from other “sons of consolation?” Human friends—a look may alienate; adversity may estrange; death must separate! The “Word of Jesus” speaks of One whose attribute and prerogative is to “abide with us for ever;” superior to all vicissitudes—surviving death itself!

And surely if anything else can endear His mission of love to His Church, it is that He comes direct from God, as the fruit and gift of Jesus’ intercession—“I will pray the Father.” This holy dove of peace and comfort is let out by the hand of Jesus from the ark of covenant mercy within the veil! Nor is the gift more glorious than it is free. Does the word, the look, of a suffering child get the eye and the heart of an earthly father? “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit unto them that ask Him?” It is He who makes these “words of Jesus” “winged words.”

“HE SHALL BRING ALL THINGS TO YOUR REMEMBRANCE, WHATSOEVER I HAVE SAID UNTO YOU.”

9th Day.

“Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said”—

“Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more.”—John viii. 11.

The Gracious Verdict.

How much more tender is Jesus than the tenderest of earthly friends? The Apostles, in a moment of irritation would have called down fire from heaven on obstinate sinners. Their Master rebuked the unkind suggestion. Peter, the trusted but treacherous disciple, expected nothing but harsh and merited reproof for faithlessness. He who knew well how that heart would be bowed with penitential sorrow, sends first the kindest of messages, and then the gentlest of rebukes, “Lovest thou me?” The watchmen in the Canticles smote the bride, tore off her veil, and loaded her with reproaches. When she found her lost Lord, there was not one word of upbraiding! “So slow is He to anger,” says an illustrious believer, “so ready to forgive, that when His prophets lost all patience with the people so as to make intercession against them, yet even then could He not be got to cast off this people whom He foreknew, for his great name’s sake.”

The guilty sinner to whom He speaks this comforting “word,” was frowned upon by her accusers. But, if others spurned her from their presence, “Neither do I condemn thee.” Well it is to fall into the hands of this blessed Saviour-God, for great are His mercies.

Are we to infer from this, that He winks at sin? Far from it. His blood, His work—Bethlehem, and Calvary, refute the thought! Ere the guilt even of one solitary soul could be washed out, He had to descend from His everlasting throne to agonise on the accursed tree. But this “word of Jesus” is a word of tender encouragement to every sincere, broken-hearted penitent, that crimson sins, and scarlet sins, are no barriers to a free, full, everlasting forgiveness. The Israelite of old, gasping in his agony in the sands of the wilderness, had but to “look and live;” and still does He say, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” Up-reared by the side of his own cross there was a monumental column for all Time, only second to itself in wonder. Over the head of the dying felon is the superscription written for despairing guilt and trembling penitence, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.” “He never yet,” says Charnock, “put out a dim candle that was lighted at the Sun of Righteousness.” “Whatever our guiltiness be,” says Rutherford, “yet when it falleth into the sea of God’s mercy, it is but like a drop of blood fallen into the great ocean.”

Reader, you may be the chief of sinners, or it may be the chief of backsliders; your soul may have started aside like a broken bow. As the bankrupt is afraid to look into his books, you may be afraid to look into your own heart. You are hovering on the verge of despair. Conscience, and the memory of unnumbered sins, is uttering the desponding verdict, “I condemn thee.” Jesus has a kinder word—a more cheering declaration—“I condemn thee not: go, and sin no more!”

“AND ALL WONDERED AT THE GRACIOUS WORDS THAT PROCEEDED OUT OF HIS MOUTH.”

10th Day.

“Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said”—

“Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.”—Matt. xii. 50.

The Wondrous Relationship.

As if no solitary earthly type were enough to image forth the love of Jesus, He assembles into one verse a group of the tenderest earthly relationships. Human affection has to focus its loveliest hues, but all is too little to afford an exponent of the depth and intensity of His. “As one whom his mother comforteth;” “my sister, my spouse.” He is “Son,” “Brother” “Friend”—all in one; “cleaving closer than any brother.”

And can we wonder at such language? Is it merely figurative, expressive of more than the reality?—He gave Himself for us; after that pledge of His affection we must cease to marvel at any expression of the interest He feels in us. Anything He can say or do is infinitely less than what He has done.

Believer! art thou solitary and desolate? Has bereavement severed earthly ties? Has the grave made forced estrangements,—sundered the closest links of earthly affection? In Jesus thou hast filial and fraternal love combined; He is the Friend of friends, whose presence and fellowship