Articles, Sermons and Letters by Others

‘For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father’ (Ephesians 2:18). It is ‘access’ that we all have, says the apostle; and this means not only an open door, but entire liberty of entrance; nay, a welcome; nay, an introduction to God; such an introduction as a friend at court gives, into the presence of the sovereign. The apostle’s statement gives us three points of discourse, and these connect themselves with the whole Godhead in its three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, for each of the blessed Three is concerned in the matter; and we learn here not merely the love of Christ, but the love of the Father and the Spirit. To whom, through whom, by whom, we have access; these are the apostle’s three heads. 1. To whom. To ‘the Father;’ to Him whose name, in the fullest sense of the word, and in all different aspects, expresses paternity or fatherhood. He is the Father, as the first Person of the Trinity, the representative of Godhead. He is the Father of Spirits, and ‘we ...

‘I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord’ (Psalm 122:1) In these words, we have the expression of a condition of feeling, along with a statement of the occasion by which it was induced. The feeling was one of holy joy; and the occasion of it was an invitation to enter into the courts of the Lord. The Jews were directed to hold their three great yearly feasts in the city of the Lord; and from all quarters of Judea upon these solemn seasons, the inhabitants went up in companies, or, in the words of the Psalm before us, ‘the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord,’ that is, according to the injunctions of the testimony – or in compliance with the precepts of their law. And the Psalmist, in the words of the text, expresses his joy upon being called upon by his brethren to join in their sacred bands. There are many differences between the outward worship under the Jewish and under the Chr...

Blessed are they who are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9). This declaration will probably suggest to you a scene more magnificent and blissful than any that will ever be realised on earth. It will not unnaturally lead your thoughts upward to heaven, and forward to that glorious era when the redemption of the church will be consummated, and when all her members, being collected into one harmonious and happy society, shall be admitted by the Captain of their salvation to eat and drink with him in his Father’s heavenly kingdom. To these events the figures in the text itself are elsewhere applied; for Jesus Christ is often represented as the husband, and the church as his bride and his spouse; and, in allusion to a nuptial solemnity and a marriage supper, it is said that, having ‘sanctified and cleansed her’, he will at the last ‘present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but holy and without blemish.’ But, howeve...

My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness (Psalm 63:5). It is a great mercy to enjoy divine ordinances in their purity; but it is a greater mercy to have our souls feasted in them. And we should not content ourselves with an external attendance, without drawing near to God in the institutions of his grace. The pure ordinances are precious to believers, and a day in his courts is better to them than a thousand; but they are not satisfied with the enjoyment of these ordinances, without enjoying their God and their Redeemer in them; and this is one thing by which they are distinguished from hypocrites and formalists. David was in a wilderness, and deprived of the public institutions of religion, when he composed this Psalm: he was detained by persecution from the courts of God; and we find him expressing his high esteem and vehement desire of them. But it was not merely the external ordinances his soul desired; he thirsted after that communion with God which he had formerly ...