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and behold, I am alive for evermore." The very Body that was sacrificed on the cross is now seated on the throne: "I beheld, and lo, a Lamb as it had been slain."

Divine

And his atonement is “sufficient.” justice has been satisfied. Christ has made “satisfaction." As surely as "the sins of the whole world" were laid on Him on the cross, and paid for by Him on the cross, so surely is it proved that those sins are atoned for by His resurrection : "He has put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." That is atonement.

And now that the sacrifice is accepted, the oblation presented, the atonement made, it is our inestimable privilege to draw near to God, and, as His reconciled children, to feast at His own table," presenting ourselves as a living sacrifice," offering the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, and, by a divine faith that believes the word while it seeks not to comprehend the mystery, feeding on Him who lives, because we trust on Him who died, and Whose death and life are both ours, if we are His.

As truly and as really as Christ was "made sin," so truly and really are all that are "in Him" "made the righteousness of God." Christ, "the

holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners," is made by God, not a sinner, but SIN-the concentrated sin of the world. All sin, root and branch, original and actual, is laid upon Him -taken off the world, put on the Saviour of the world that every one who believeth in Him, who is "in Him" by a living faith, may be made the righteousness of God,—may stand before God in righteousness as perfect as that sin was entire and universal in which Christ stood.

The just changes places with the unjust. The Holy Child Jesus is clad in the dress of the criminal, stands in the place of the criminal, is tried for the offences of the criminal, suffers the penalty of the criminal, that the criminal may be clad in the robes of the King's Son, stand in the place, be rewarded for the obedience, and enjoy the blessedness, of the Heir of God, and become joint-heir with Christ.

Let me guard against any misconception. Let it not for a moment be thought that, in stating our belief that "the sin of the world" was laid on Christ, we affirm or imply that He had any part in sin. "He knew no sin." His nature was sinless: every thought, motive, disposition, temper of his heart and mind, was sinless; every word

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sinless; every action pure from sin; but sin was so laid on Him as to be made judicially His own; while His spirit recoiled from the hateful thing, the hateful thing was "laid upon Him." That He was therefore "made a curse," Scripture does, as we believe, clearly show; and it shows with equal clearness that, as the sinless Saviour stood in the sinner's place as man's sin-bearer, so does every believing and repenting sinner stand in the Saviour's place, as righteous in His righte"This is the name whereby He shall be

ousness.

called, The Lord our Righteousness."

And the living faith" of the operation of God” does, from the moment it enters the sinner's heart, "work by love," and by that obedience which is the unfailing accompaniment of true love.

163

"THE RICH AND POOR MEET

TOGETHER."

66 THE poor shall never cease out of the land." God has said it, and man cannot unsay it. Men may try to get rid of the poor. There were men who did so in very old times. They added "house to house, and field to field, that they might be placed alone in the midst of the earth." They acted "The Deserted Village" in Jewish times. They bought up all the land within sight of their mansion. They pulled down the objectionable and unsightly hovels. They accomplished their wish. In whatever direction they looked out from their "ceiled house," they saw nothing that was not their own. How did God deal with these men? "In mine ears said the Lord of hosts, of a truth many houses shall be desolate even great and fair without inhabitant." Death can climb even a high window. Pestilence can steal into a ceiled house. The great landowner may be a childless man, while the poor,

whom he has sent to a distance, may be rich in children for good children are riches to a good poor man. Or, the heir of all these lands may be puny and feeble, and the splendid christening may be followed close by the splendid funeral. "God's blessing maketh rich;" and He has plainly told us that as He "careth for the poor," so He loves the men and loves the land that do the same.

It seems to be His will, in Providence, that seams of poverty should lie very near to lodes of riches; that the requirements of the wealthy should minister to the necessities of the poor; that those who want help should be near those who give it; those who must be ministered to near those who minister. I know that there is a constant effort to escape from this; but such effort is in itself more than questionable, and where it is successful is injurious in its results. There is a tendency in modern times for men to get away from the place where they have gained their wealth, and from which they are still deriving it. In times which were certainly in this respect better than our own, the workman, whose skill was the source of wealth to those who used his service, lived near

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