For thus saith the prophet, " Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green ; and shall not be care- ful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit." (Jer. xvii. 7, 8.) It is in this grace that we " continue." (Acts xiii. 43.) It is in this grace that we " stand." (Rom. v. 2.) It is in this grace that we are to "be strong." (2 Tim. ii. 1.) It is this grace that we are to " holdfast." (Heb. xii. 28, margin.) It is this grace that is " sufficient for us." (2 Cor. xii. &.) It is this grace that we desire for others, saying, " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you." (Eph. vi. 24.) All is grace, from the beginning to the end, unmingled grace, in which no respect is had to aught of good done, felt, thought, spoken by us. So that the history of our life is wrapt up q 3
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in these blessed words, u Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." (Rom. v. 20.) We have found that the new sins of each hour, so far from closing the fountain of grace against us, opened new springs of grace for us — springs of grace which we should never otherwise have known, nor thought it possible to exist. Not as if sin were less vile on this account. David's horrid sins were the occasions of opening up new depths of grace, unimagined before ; yet his iniquity lost none of its hatefuluess thereby. So grace is ever gushing forth upon us to sweep away each new sin, yet in doing so it makes the sin thus swept away to ap- pear more hideous and inexcusable. The brighter the sun, the darker and sharper are the shadows ; so the fuller the grace, the viler the sin appears.
And as our personal history, as saved men, is the history of abounding sin met by more abounding grace, so is the history
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at large of all things in this fallen world. What is all Israel's history, every step of it, but the history of man's boundless sin drawing out the more boundless grace of God ? What is the church's history but the same, so that each of the chosen and called ones who make up its mighty multitude, can say with him of old, whose name was chief of sinners, " The grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus." (1 Tim. i. 14.) And what is even the history of this material creation, on which the curse has pressed so long and heavily, but the history of grace abounding over sin and rescuing from the devouring fire this polluted soil ?
All has been of grace hitherto. And all shall be of grace hereafter. In this respect there shall be no change.
Yet this is not the whole truth. For the brightest disclosures are yet to come. The first coming of the Lord opened up to ms heights and depths of most wondrous
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grace ; but his second coming is to bring with it discoveries of grace as marvellous, and as yet unrevealed. That promise, s< The Lord will give grace and glory," (Psa. lxxxiv. 11,) seems specially to refer to the time, when, after days of sad long- ing, (verse 2,) and weary journeying through the valley of Baca, (ver. 6,) we appear in Zion before God, and standing with the New Jerusalem we sing the song of blessed contrast, " A day in thy courts is better than a thousand," as if this new outburst of grace, which meets us as we enter the gates of pearl, overpassed all that we had tasted before. The apostle Peter also points forward to the same period foi the full display of grace, when he speaks ot " the grace that is to be brought unto us* at the revelation of Jesus Christ " (1 Petei i. 13) ; indicating this to us, that in thaf day, new and larger circles of grace shall open out, just as the horizon widens when the sun ascends. To this same day the
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prophet Zechariah points when he says, " He shall bring forth the headstone with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it." (Zech. iv. 7.) But especially is this truth taught us by the apostle Paul when he tells us, that God's object in quickening us together with Christ, in raising us up to- gether and making us sit together in heavenly places, is, that " in the ages to come* he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness to- wards us through Christ Jesus." t Here he heaps word upon word, as if he could find none strong enough for his purpose ;
* kv reus ailocri tois kTrzpyofxivoLS, that is, " in the ages that are coming npon us." It is the same word as is used in those two places in Luke, "looking after those things that are coming on the earth," and, " as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the earth." Not as if this were confined to millennial times. These are called " the age to come," but these others are ** the ages to come."