is o. great thing gained when we have been led to delight in the spirituality and thoroughness and perfection of God's Le.w. II. TRE CONSTANT SENSE OB' B'ALLil'IG BHOBT OB' THE IDEAL. The renewed soul feels ~ho.t it somehow cal?not do what it would. ~t ;iever hita the bull's-eye. The good that it had hoped to do 1e never reached; the evil 1t had hopoo to avoid somehow gets accomplished. There ie a sense of failure all through. To recur to the illllJ!tration from penmanship, the copy is found to be always very different indeed from the ori!tlnal. But the schoolboy does not, in consequence, insist on lowering the standard. H;' does not insist that the master will write him a head-line only a little better than he ca.n write himself, and thus let him improve by easy stages. He wisely accepts the perfect pattern of what penmanship should be, and laments that he is coming towards it only by very tardy steps. In the same way, the wholesome sense of failore abides in the soul; the perfect Law antagonizes imperfect attainment, and the soul walks very softly before the Lord. and strives to please him. Ill. THE 0AUBE OB' THB FAILURE IB JroUND IN THE BODY O"J' DUTIL The delight in the perfect Law and the desire after it is accompanied by a painful sense of another law counter-working what is good. It is called "sin," that is, indwelling sin. It is called the "flesh," that carnal pa.rt of man which militates against what i1 spiritual. It is called "a law in our members warring against the law of our mind." It is called "the law of sin;" it is called " the body of this death," or " this body of death." Now, what a go.in it is for us to rise against this old nature within, to take God's side against it, to take the field against this old self! We are never right till by repentance we take God's side against ourselves. The old nature has to be crucified, slain, overcome. .Antagonism is thus begun. We find there is no use in blaming our progenitors, or circumstances, or environment. What we have got t.o do is to fight the old self in the interests of God and of that "better self" which he has given us. IV. IN THIS HOLY WAB JEstrs CHBIST IS THE ONLY DELIVERER. The a.oostle was ready to cry in his antagonism to indwelling sin, "0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? n The more progress made, the more intense the antipathy to the evil nature within I But the Deliverer is found in Je;;us. He comes to dwell within us and be a "better self." He dwells within us by his Holy Spirit, and this Spirit is not only militant, but victorious. The mind is reinforced., and the flesh is combated, and the result is progress through anmgonism. We follow Christ to victory over ourselves. 1-R. M. E.
EXPOSITION.
CHAPTER VIII. vii. oonflnia huju status attig:it.. Nuno etie.m plo.ne ex divertioulo erimio in vie.m Ven. 1-39.--{o) The ble,sed condition redit qum habetnr Cl&p. vii 6" (Bengel). and assured hope of auoh as are in <Jhrw Ver. 2.-l!'or the le.w of the Spirit of life JUll,/J. The summary of the oontents of in Christ J'esllS made me free (no, hath made rM; the aorut refers to the time when the this chapter, whioh follows the Exposition, Christian became possessed of the Spirit of mny be referred to in the first pince by the life in Christ) from the law of Bin and death. student, so as to nssist comprehension of Here is a distinct oontrast to the state de- the line or thought. eoribed in vers. H, 23 of eh. vii., o.nd a. realization of what was yclll'Ded for in ¥ex. Ver. 1.-There is therefore now 110 0011- 24, "the law of sin and of death " being de!llll&tion to them whioh are in Christ J'esu. evidently "the law of sin iu the members " (The additional words of this verse in the previously spoken of. The ~. befor<l m Tedus Reoeptus hnve but slight support, captivity to this law, is now freed from it. hnving probably been supplied from var. 4. And how P Not by i~ becoming a. different They nre out of plnoe here.) "Nuno venit ryrll; not by a ch,rnge or the constituent nd libere.tionem et libertatem. Nlln autem elements of hUlllt\n nt1tnre; but by the in- ponit adversativl\Dl B~, auum, sed oouolu- troduction of a new h,w-the law of the sivnm II.pm, ergo; quie. jam in fine oe.pit.ia Spirit of life-which htl.'! ~wt\lloipakd the 1 Of, Dock's 'Ohristliohe Reden,' L a. 826; Hewiuon'e 'Remains,' ii. p. 250; A.. w. Ho.re'■ 'Sermons,' vol. i. ~- 209. 206 THE EPISTLE OF PAUL TO THE ROMANS. [oB, vm. 1-39.