plainingly borne, they become a self-evidencing testimony to the power and the grace of Christ. The bonds of Paul were not only manifest alike in all the Barracks and “in all the Palace,” but he tells us they served to nerve and brace the drooping energies of his comrades in the fight of faith. The gracious results of trial in thus bringing into nearer fellowship and identity with Jesus, will only indeed be fully realised and manifested in the bright world where trial is unknown. We must, meanwhile, often rest satisfied that there is much in the trials themselves which are incomprehensible,the 'why' and the 'wherefore' of which Heaven alone shall fully disclose. The day is coming, however, when many a child of earthly affliction will be able to utter, with a higher and infinitely nobler meaning"My bonds IN CHRIST are manifest in all the Palace.”

It was but the other day I read, in the works of a distinguished French philosopher and orator, what I may venture, perhaps somewhat fancifully, to adopt as a beautiful and undesigned comment on these words (assuming for the time the correctness of our own Bible rendering)—“In all the Palace" :—“We are all of us like the weavers of the Gobelins, who, following out the pattern of an unknown artist, endeavour to match the threads of divers colours on the wrong side of the woof, and do not see the result of their labour It is only when the texture is complete, that they can admire at their ease these lovely flowers and

figures, these splendid pictures worthy of the palaces of kings. So it is with us. We work, we suffer, and we see neither the end nor the fruit. But God sees it; and when He releases us from our task, He will disclose to our wondering gaze what He, the great Artist, everywhere present and invisible, has woven out of those toils that now seem so sterile; and He will then deign to hang up in His Palace of gold the flimsy web that we have spun.' " 1

Happy those amongst us whose bonds IN CHRIST' are working out so glorious a consummation! The web of life, with its chameleon pattern-its strange, incomprehensible interweaving of dark and bright threads, fitted, by processes we cannot understand on earth, to be made manifest at last as an adornment in the Palace of the Great King! The weaving of the tapestried web, moreover, if we might still carry out the thought suggested by the emblem, is a slow, gradual (shall we say tedious?) process. It is not the photographic picture which is begun and finished with a flash of light: it resembles rather the hour by hour, and day by day, and month by month, of patient and laborious handicraft. This is Paul's own exact representation of that grander tapestry which the angels of affliction are, behind scenes, busily weaving:-yea, in the quotation we have just given, which is being weaved by a Higher and Better than Angel. Hear his words: "Our

1 Life of Ozonam.

light affliction," says he (others would have given it a different name), WORKETH for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor. iv. 17). Every stitch of the hand, every turn of the shuttle, is 'working out," in some mysterious but very real way, God's great cartoon for the Palace halls and walls of Eternity!

Nor are our "< 'bonds in Christ," in the modern acceptation of the term, necessarily restricted to affliction in its more pronounced form, of sickness, pain, bereavement. These may resolve themselves into some iron fetter in our daily life;-something in the tear and wear of ordinary work; the bonds, it may be, of some seemingly mean and ignoble calling;—the fretting domestic care;-the petty wrong; the ungrateful recompense; the wretched estrangement. Some of these, indeed, if the incidents of the Great Life be thought over, were the very afflictions which the Master Himself endured. Let us seek to face our bonds and crosses, as He did, in a spirit of calm submission; glorifying God in the day of visitation. Not seeking to get rid of trial;-not seeking to strip off the fetters;-not seeking to battle against the appointments of Providence, to break loose from the meanness and paltriness of our life-work and its surroundings; but rather to import into the mean and ignoble, the common and the trivial, a Christian and Christ-like spirit. Thus, meekly acquiescing in whatever the Divine ordination may be, to breathe the

prayer 'divinely taught,' of the Gethsemane agony"Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt."

All trial will thus be ennobled, consecrated, sublimated ;iron fetters will become golden ones, by their being regarded and accepted as "BONDS IN CHRIST."

CHRISTO

XIX.

ACCEPTED IN CHRIST.

"To the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted IN THE BELOVED: IN WHOM we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace."-Eph. i. 6, 7.

"But now, IN CHRIST JESUS, ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ."-Eph. ii. 13.

N this-the most deeply experimental of St. Paul's Epistles, how often do our eyes rest on the replica of his great motto! Let us enter by the gateway thus surmounted by the familiar words, and examine one or two of the sacred treasures within.

I. Note the covenant relationship-"accepted in the Beloved." It is only under a new phraseology what we have already found him describing as "the new creature in Christ Jesus." The soul, unlovable in itself, made lovable "in the Beloved "_" the Altogether lovely ONE" (Sol. Song v. 16).

(Sol. Song vi. 10), is one out of

"Fair as the moon"

many figurative de

scriptions of the Church in its corporate capacity;