BY THE LATE REV. JOHN ROSS, BRUCEFIELD, ONTARIO.
At prayer I pleaded the place which God has given to His own Son in the Holy Scriptures. Felt this to be to me a new way of putting the matter, and a new argument filling my mouth. I have often pleaded with God in the way of appealing to God on the ground of what He knows Jesus Christ to be in His own sight, I have spoken to Him of His own perfect knowledge of Christ in all His worthiness, and in all the value of His blood and obedience. But it gives additional force to this method of pleading, to spread out before God what He has written regarding Him in His own writings. This is advantageous in several respects—(1) In so doing we honour the Scriptures. (2) Additional power is given to the Scriptures over our own hearts, and our faith in them is strengthened and simplified. (3) We have an additional motive to strengthen and stimulate to a more diligent examination of all that God says in the Scriptures regarding His Son. (4) Our faith in God and our hope of prevailing with Him in prayer is increased in proportion to the simplicity with which we are able to rest on what He has Himself written regarding His Son. (5) We are using an argument of real power with God when we base all our pleas on His own written testimony regarding His Son. The Father loveth the Son and honours the prayer in which His own Son is honoured. Christ has with God the very place which the Scriptures ascribe to Him. He is to God and with God for men all that God says of Him in His Word. He has with God all the prevailing power which the Word of God ascribes to Him. For His sake He gives all the Scriptures set Him forth as giving. All that blotting out of iniquity, transgression, and sin, all that shedding forth of His Spirit, all that communication of His blessing and love, all that exercise of His gracious power in subduing and protecting, all that peace and rest and comfort, all that interest in the inheritance of the saints in light which the Scriptures set Him forth as doing for the sake of His own Son. What the Scriptures settle is settled, and there is no use in raising any doubt or question about it. And there is nothing which God in His Word promises to give for the sake of His own Son which He will not give. There is nothing of all that God promises to do for the sake of His Son which he will not do. Christ is all that God says he is. There is in Him for men all that God says there is in Him for them. Our way is therefore extremely simple. It is to read, to hear, to understand, to believe, to appropriate and plead what God has written down for us regarding His own Son, and thus live truly in fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
As many a man loses the sight of a city when he comes near to it, so many a choice soul loses the sight of heaven even when it is nearest to heaven.—Brooks.