There can be no denying the fact that there are two kinds of Christian experience, one of which is an experience, and the other one of liberty. It is true that there ought to be only the experience of liberty, but as we have to deal with what is, rather than with what ought to be, we cannot shut our eyes to the sad condition of bondage in which a large portion of the Church of Christ pass many, if not all the years of their Christian life. The reason of this and the remedy for it are not difficult to find. The reason is legality, and the remedy is Christ. In the Epistle to the Galatians this subject is treated of exhaustively. The very situation of this Epistle in the order of the books of the New Testament is significant, immediately everyday preceding as it does, the three Epistles which unfold such wonderful riches and treasures as are ours in Christ. For I feel sure that in the order of the books of the Bible there is wonderful teachings for those whose eyes have been opened to understand it. Any one who has read that valuable book, "The Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament," by Barnard will know what I mean. He proves the fact that there is a regular development of truth in the order of the books of the New Testament, and divides this development into four stages. He shows us that there is first, in the four Gospels, the building of the temple, or the work of Christ wrought out before us; second, in the Acts, the doors of this temple are thrown open and the world is invited to enter, or Christ is preached and sinners are invited to come to Him; third, in the Epistles, is the life in this temple, and the inhabitant of the temple is shown the treasures and riches that belong to him there, or the life in Christ is revealed to us and the fullness there is in Him for every believer; and fourth, in the Revelation, we have declared to us the future glorious consummation of this temple, when it becomes the New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven. This development of truth is also the actual development of the experience of each individual soul. First, Christ is seen, as in the Gospels; then the soul comes to Him, and enters into the life hid in Him, as in Acts; then it begins to find out and appropriate the fullness there is in Him, as in the Epistles. And it is in this third stage that the lesson comes which I wish especially to enlarge upon here. It is very possible to pass through the Gospels into the Acts, and to become really an inhabitant of this glorious temple, and then to stop short and never explore the various chambers of the temple, nor get possession of its infinite treasures. It is just as though the guests, who have been invited at a beautiful palace amply able to accommodate every one of them and to provide for all their wants, should go only as far as just inside the door, and should stand, uncomfortably and starving and shivering, in the vestibule, declaring themselves to be too unworthy to presume to go any farther into the house, or to enter into the enjoyment of the comforts and luxuries provided for them by their wealthy host. Such conduct on the part of the invited guests would not only be utter folly, but would also distress us exceedingly. And I believe that our dear Lord, who has asked us to come to Him and to abide in Him, is continually grieved at our hesitation and unwillingness to go in and sit at His table, and enjoy the satisfying provision that He has made for us. Like the poor Prodigal, our thought is that we are not worthy to be called sons, but that we must be content to take the place of hired servants in our Father's house. And, as a consequence, instead of the happy ease and liberty of a child, there creeps into our Christian life the constraint and bondage of a servant. And we, who have been called to liberty, find ourselves entangled again under the yoke of bondage. It is this bondage of which the Epistle to the Galatians treats. And it was absolutely necessary to have it removed before the Holy Ghost could reveal the wonderful secrets of God's love and grace which are contained in the three Epistles that followÄEphesians, Philippians and Colossians. For, as I have said, the order of the books of the Bible has deep lessons. And in the Epistles, which reveal to us the life in Christ, we are led, as it were, from one room to another, and from a lower story to a higher, as each Epistle unfold to us some new and deeper secret of the inexhaustible love of God. In Romans we have given to us the first necessary provision of our Father's house, and it is a clear knowledge of His will concerning us and His plan for us. In this Epistle the doctrines of our religion are fully developed in a clear and logical order, and it is the only Epistle where this is the case. We begin here with the fall of man, and are taken step by step, up through God's order to the point where we can say, with unfaltering confidence, "For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." If a soul wants to know God's thoughts of salvation, Romans is the book to go for it. And no one need ever have any difficulty or perplexity as to His will who will only receive, without questioning, the teaching of this book. After Romans come Corinthians, which gives us some very necessary instructions as to home-life, and church-life, and our relations with one another as the children of one Father. This, of course, is the next step in our progress. Then comes Galatians, where the greatest danger of the Church is met and put out of the way, and this is legality, or the spirit of bondage. And how right and logical it seems that, after clear doctrine and right practice are settled in any church, the next step should be to point out its chiefest danger, and to show the way of deliverance from it. There is also another reason for the especial position of this Epistle. When a person enters a house, it is essential that at once his position in that house should be settled and understood. If that position is that of a servant, then one is not to expect the riches of that house to be thrown open to his use, nor the secrets of that house revealed to him. But if his position is that of a friend, a child, a bride, then the word of the Father is, "All that I have is thine;" "All things are yours." Now, in Ephesians, the announcement is to be made to us that God "hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ," and before we are in a condition to believe in this announcement and rejoice in it, we must be taught to know that we are no more servants, but sons, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ. It is exactly as though in the book of Ephesians we enter into the private study of our friend, and having seated ourselves there, he begins to tell us his secretsÄall the wonderful things he has for us, and overwhelms our souls with the story of the riches and treasures he has gathered together for our use. It is the Lord telling His secrets in the Book of Ephesians to them that fear Him. It is just the development of what Jesus said, "Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth; but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." Also of those passages in the Psalms where we are told He will show us His covenant. He shows us this covenant in the Book of Ephesians. He lets us into the secrets of His grace towards us, even before the foundation of the world. The Book of Ephesians is the book of communion. Now communion is based on forgiveness, but communion is not forgiveness, it is something that follows forgiveness. As long as there is any reserve, any want of reconciliation between ourselves and a friend, as long as there is any separation of spirit, there cannot be communion. All that separates between souls and the Lord must go before we can know what communion is. The Book of Galatians shows us what is generally the dividing things between Christ and the soul, and that is legality. Paul here speaks in terms of severe condemnation of the people to whom he is writing. It does not appear that they had done any very bad thing, but they had believed a very bad thing; the attitude of their soul was wrong. We continually forget that it is not so much what men do that is taken account of by God but what men are. As it says in this book, "In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature," and God is a great deal more concerned about what men are than what they do. We can see the reason for this very easily, for if we are right we shall certainly do right. But we may do right without being right at all, and of course the doing right is nothing, unless we are right at the bottom. So that the essential thing after all is character, the true inward life of the soul as it is towards God. The book of Galatians is evidently addressed to Christians, to people who had received the Spirit and tasted the good word of Life. They had begun in the Spirit. Now the question of Paul is, How are you going to be made perfect? How are you going to live? You have been born, that is a settled question; now what sort of life are you going to lead? You have entered into your home in this glorious temple, now how are you going to get possession of its wonderful treasures? Are you to work for them as a servant, or to receive them as a gift, bestowed upon a child? You have glorious promises given to you, how will you get them fulfilled? The Galatians had given a wrong answer to these questions. They had said, in effect, "It is to be by works." They believed that Christ alone was enough for forgiveness; but they thought that when it come to daily practical righteousness, something must be added to Christ, some works of their own. And Paul's indignation against Peter arose from the fact that Peter had given his endorsement to this idea, by withdrawing himself from the uncircumcised Gentile Christians, and refusing to eat with them, on the ground of their not having been circumcised. The Galatian Christians had begun all right. They had received the Spirit by the hearing of faith. They had learned at first that the Lord Jesus Christ was a complete Saviour, and they had trusted Him for their salvation; but some Jewish brethren had come to them and said, "Oh, no; you are very much mistaken. Jesus is not enough without you are circumcised." They added circumcision to the work of Christ. We in the present day are shocked at this, and so we add something elseÄsome sort of Christian work, resolutions, agonizings, visiting the poor, teaching mission Sunday schools, some self-effort of some kind. It does not make much matter what you add, the wrong thing is to add anything at all. The church talks in deep condemnation of the "Jew's religion," and yet there is a good deal of the Jew's religion mixed with the Christian religion now. The Jews religion is one of worksÄ"This do, and thou shalt live." The religion of Christ, on the contrary, is, "Live, and then thou shalt do." The Law says always, "Pay me that thou owest." The Gospel says, "I frankly forgive thee all." The Law says, "Make you a new heart and a new spirit!" The Gospel says, "A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you." The law says, "The wages of sin is death." The Gospel says, "The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." The Law says, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy strength." The Gospel says, "Herein is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." The religion of works is as though a man should want to have an apple orchard, and should try to do it by getting some apples first, and then getting a tree and tying the apples on it, and finally getting some roots and fastening them on to the tree; first the fruit, and then the roots. But the religion of Jesus begins at the root, and then grows up and blooms out into flowers and fruit. Paul says to the Galatians that the law was their schoolmaster to bring them to Christ, but that after faith is come they were no longer under a schoolmaster. "Wherefore," he says, "thou art no more a servant, but a son." "Stand fast therefore," he continues, "in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." It is as though we had been servants in a house and been under the law of the master and had tried to please him, but the service had been one of duty. Now the master takes the servant and lifts her up to be his bride. She may go on doing the same things as before, but she does them in a different spirit, not from a sense of duty, but from love to her husband. Imagine the bride after a while beginning to think of her previous low estate, and to lose the sense of union with her husband, imagining that after all she is nothing but a servant, and saying, "My master," instead of, "My husband." This is just what had happened to the Galatians. They were still Christians, but legal Christians, working from the constraints of an outward law, and not from the power of an inward life. And such Christians find it very hard work. They had to keep themselves at their work by arguments, reasonings, scoldings and all sorts of things. Love never has to do this. Love acts from some sort of inward impulse that carries it along. Love in a mother will make her nurse her sick child for weeks and months without feeling it a burden; whereas if she did it because the law compelled her, she would break down in two or three nights. This Galatian religion is a gratifying religion to self. There is nothing that self dislikes so much as to be left on one side and to have no notice taken of it; and therefore any form of legality that creeps into the Church is sure to find some favour. And when any Christian talks of walking without law, in the wonderful life of freedom, ease, naturalness, and love, the legal Christian immediately thinks some heresy is being preached. It is a sort of spiritual treadmill to go on day after day in a certain line of duty, in which one has no heart; and people who do so cannot understand what the Bible can mean when it talks about standing in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. They are exactly like Jacob. The Lord had given him a promise that he should be head over Esau, but he and his mother did not think the Lord could manage it without their help, and the consequence of their management was that Jacob had to run way from his father's house. Instead of being the master over Esau, he had become an exile. And just so the Lord gives Christians a promise that they shall reign over everything, but they do not think it can be done unless they help Him to bring it about, and so they try to manage matters in their Christian life. Jacob was a son, but he tried to manage to get his rights, just as many a Christian is trying to manage to get his, and the result is with them as it was with Jacob, they lose the sweet, happy, confiding place of a child in its father's house, and live in the servant's place. They have to work hard, as Jacob did. By day and night he had to work, and sleep forsook his eyes, and yet, as he said, if the Lord had not been with him, notwithstanding all his work, he would not have got a single thing. People often say they get certain things by working, but it is not by working, but because the Lord is with them. I had a dear friend who had a hard time in her Christian life. She would have wonderful experiences and conflicts, and after two or three hours of it she would get peace and then be happy the rest of the day. I tried to explain to her about a life of trust like a child in a home. "Oh," she said, "but I have such good times after I have gone through these conflicts." "Well," I asked, "What brings about the good time when you do get it." "Why, finally," she replied, "I come to the point of just trusting the Lord." "Suppose you should come to that point, to begin with," I asked? "Oh," was the reply, "I never thought I could do that." Look at the difference between Jacob and Isaac. Eleazer said, "God hath blessed Abraham, and He hath given to Isaac whatsoever He hath." Isaac did not work for it; his father just gave it to him because he was a child, and he loved him. The Epistle to the Ephesians is full of what God hath given. It is impossible to get into the child's place until legality is put away. If a child had a notion that a parent would not give him clothing, or food, or provide for him unless he worked for it, there could not possibly be any sweet communion between the parent and the child. I once knew a little girl who did get that notion, and she went around and asked at the doors in the neighbourhood if they did not want some one to come and work for them. It distressed her father unspeakably to think that she did not know his heart better than that; but it did not distress him half so much as it distresses our Heavenly Father to think His children will work so hard for their spiritual living. This book of Ephesians shows the soul brought out of the servant's place, and into the child's place. When people are near to each other and love each other, no matter how grand the gifts are that one may give to another, they can be accepted without any feeling of embarrassment or obligation. So when the soul gets near to God, He can begin to tell it about all the wonderful things He has for it. People will not listen to Him until they get near. They say they are too unworthy, and if He puts the blessing into their very laps, they rise up and let it drop; but as soon as they get near to Him they are delighted to have the blessings poured out upon them, and can never think anything too much to receive, knowing that it is like our Lord to be liberal. "All things are yours, for ye are Christ's and Christ is God's." The whole higher Christian life is shut up in being a child of God. Nothing more is needed than just to believe that God is as good a Father as the best ideal earthly father, and that the relationship of a child to God is just the same as that of a child to its parent in this world. Children do not need to carry the money for their support in their own pockets. If the father has plenty that satisfies them, and is a great deal better even than if it were in the child's own possession, as then it might get lost. So it is not necessary for Christians to have all their spiritual possessions in their own pockets. It is far better that their riches should all be stored up for them in Christ, and when they want anything they can go and ask Him for it. He of God is "made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption," and apart from Him, we have nothing. In Galatians we see the believer working for his living, as a servant works. In Ephesians we see him receiving all he needs from his Father's hand, as a child receives. Can we question for a moment which is the most acceptable way in the sight of God? Can we wonder that Paul was so distressed at the bondage into which the Galatian Christians had been brought? Can we not understand something of the dishonour that this life of legal bondage does to the work of Christ, and comprehend what Paul meant when he said: "I do not frustrate the grace of God; for if righteousness come by the law then is Christ dead in vain." The Galatians did not deny Christ; they only wanted to add something to Christ. Their idea was Christ and circumcision. But to add anything to Christ is to deny His completeness and to exalt self. Men will undergo painful self-sacrifices sooner than acknowledge that they are utterly helpless and worthless. A man will gladly be even a fakir, if only it is self that does it, so that self may share the glory. And a religion of bondage always exalts self. It is what I do, my efforts, my wrestlings, my faithfulness. But a religion of liberty leaves self nothing to glory in; it is all Christ, and what He does, and what He is, and how wonderfully He saves. The child does not boast of itself, but of its father and mother; and our "souls make their boast in the Lord," and "the humble hear thereof and are glad." Sometimes a great mystery is made out of this higher Christian life; but it seems to me this contrast between bondage and liberty must make it plain. It is only to find out that we really are "no more servants but sons," and to enter into the blessed privileges of the relationship. All can understand what it is to be a little child; there is no mystery about it. God did not use the figure of a father and children without knowing all that this relationship implies; and those who know Him as their Father know the whole secret, and can go right out of the book of Galatians into the book of Ephesians. They are their Father's heirs, and may enter now into possession of all that is necessary for their present needs. They will be very simple in their prayers. "Lord," they will say, "I am Thy child, and I need such and such things." "My child," He will answer, "there it is stored up for thee in Christ; go and take it." They will not need to have a great wrestling time every morning to get what they need for the day. Would it not be a dreadful state of affairs if the children in a family should be compelled to wrestle with their parents every morning for their food and clothing? And our Lord tells us that, "If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?" There is a text which says, "And I will walk at liberty, for I seek Thy precepts." Our only true liberty must come from seeking and understanding the mind and thoughts of God. If He has provided only a servant's place for us, then the Christians whose lives are lives of bondage and restraint are right. But if He has called us to be children and heirsÄto be His friends, His brethren, His brideÄhow sadly and grievously wrong it is for us ever to be entangled again under the yoke of bondage! The thought of bondage is utterly abhorrant to any one of these sweet relationships. And while bondage will not, of course, hinder the final entrance of the poor enslaved soul into its heavenly rest, it will, I am sure, put it into the sad condition of those who are described in 1 Corinthians 3:11-15. Their work shall be burned, and they shall suffer loss; yet they themselves shall be saved, but so as by fire. Oh, that every child of God did but know his wondrous privileges! Let me entreat of you to abandon yourselves so utterly to the Lord Jesus Christ, that He might be able to work in you all the good pleasures of His will, and may, by the law of the Spirit of Life in Him, deliver you from every other law that could possibly enslave you. "Against such there is no law," is the divine sentence concerning all who walk and live in the Spirit; and who shall find it most blessedly true in your own experience if you will but lay aside all self-effort and self dependence of every kind, and will consent to let Christ live in you, and work in you, and be your indwelling life. For "God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work."