brightest beams, and spiritual life is cherished; a place where the Word of truth is possessed, perused, and faithfully preached; where the gospel of his grace is proclaimed ; where his Spirit is poured dewn ; where gracious influences are at work and Divine power felt; where the Divine presence is promised and enjoyed; and where every promised blessing is sure to be bestowed and fully realized. ‘’he plants, moreover, are the most recious—even the best of their kind. Man, in his original state, was made but a little ower than the angels. God made man upright, and thus, when he proceeded from his hands, he was stamped with the Creator’s image, possessed of uprightness, and invested with dominion, And man, even in his fallen state, possesses noble endowments and distinguished faculties. He has understanding capable of studying the works and ways of God, affections to love and prize him, a will that can be moved by motives, tender emotions, and far-reaching sympathies—high powers of head and heart. ‘These powers, it is true, are all weakened and misdirected in consequence of sin. Butoh! when they are quickened by the Spirit of God and influenced by his grace; in other words, when the sinner is united to the Saviour, when by faith he is engrafted into him and become a living branch of the living Vine, a fruitful branch of the true Vine, he is then a plant of the choicest kind, qualified for yielding spiritual fruit, and capable of showing forth the praises of the Creator. ‘Then does he correspond and come up in some measure to his origina! condition as God himself describes it: “ Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?” 3. The fencing. He set an hedge about it. The people of Israel were hedged in, both politically and physically. The position of Palestine contributed to this separation of its inhabitants. On the north were the slopes of Lebanon, on the south the Idum@an desert, on the west the Great Sea, on the east the Jordan with its lakes, and Pera beyond. But God’s spiritual vineyard was his Church, as existing first among the Jewish people and then in Gentile lands. The direct reference is to the Jewish Church as established under Moses, Joshua, the judges, and the theocracy ; the great fence that hedged it in was the Law. But we may go back yet further; for God set an hedge about his Church in Old Testament times, from the call of Abraham, by the covenant of circumcision made with that patriarch, and by the whole written Law, moral as well as ceremonial, given to his descendants. In this way he separated the vineyard of the Church from the wide and wild common of the world. The Law was “the middle wall of partition” between Jew and Gentile. But in Christian times, and among Gentile peoples also, the Church is fenced around. ‘There is still a hedge between the communion of saints and the world of the ungodly. ‘Profession of the doctrines which Christ and his apostles taught, and the practice of the duties they enjoined, compose that hedge. Faith in his promises and obedience to his precepts draw the line of demarcation broad and wide between them. ‘The exercise of whole- some discipline keeps the hedge in order. And a Church that does not or cannot exercise this salutary check on its members, saying who are and who are not worthy of its membership, is so far forth powerless for good, or like salt that has lost its savour, The vineyard of which the Prophet Isaiah (v. 5) speaks had a double fence—both a hedge and a wall—as it is written, “I will take away the hedge thereof, .. . and break down the wall thereof.” We have frequently seen two hedges round a garden—the euter one of thorn, the inner one of beech. Thus it is with the vineyard of the Lord. A visible profession of Church membership is the outer hedge; an interest in Christ is the inner one—and, it must be added, the essential one. All who have embraced the mercy of God in Christ Jesus are within the enclosure of the Church in the true sense ; all who have not are aliens to the commonwealth of Israel. “ As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believed on his name.” These are safe within the hedge. “He that believeth not shall not seo life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” All such are outside the hedge. 4. Importand practicul question. Inside this hedge or outside it? This is the question—the great uestion. What, then, is our position individually? Out of Christ, we are without , for “no man cometh to the Father but by him;” and without hope, for the hope
of the hypocrite will perish; and without happiness, the secret and source of which is to “delight one’s self in God, and he gives thee thy heart’s desire;” without life, for “ this is life eternal, to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent;” and without heaven, for Christ is the way thither, as well as the door of
186 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK. (on. xu. 1—44.
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entrance. In Christ we are sheltered from the storm of coming wrath. The sunshine of the Divine favour rests on us; the fruit of the Spirit is borne by us. We can then say, “There is now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” There is the hedge of Divine providence about the Church, as we read, “(In that day sing ye unto her, A vineyard of red wine. I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it uight and day.” We are invited to walk about Zion and consider her strong fortifications, counting her towers, contemplating her bulwarks, and considering her palaces, so as to convince ourselves that those defences, unscathed by the assaults of enemies in the past, will 1emain as impregnable for the future.
“On the Rock of Ages founded, What can shake thy sure repose? With salvation’s walls surrounded, Thou may’st smile at all thy foes.”