Table of Contents

Concerning Himself

Delivering Grace

Emmanuel

HIS CREATIVE WISDOM AND POWER.

HIS GREAT SACRIFICE.

HIS DEATH UPON THE CROSS.

HIS RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD.

HIS SUPREMACY OVER ALL EVIL.

"AND WHEN THEY SAW HIM THEY WORSHIPPED HIM."

"HE IS RISEN."

HE MUST BE SUPREME.

HE IS THE LEADER OF HIS SERVANTS.

Feast, Famine and Flame

* * * *

FINIS

For This Cause

The Holy Spirit's Chief Work

The Glory of His Person

His Suffering Love

The Espousals

The Answer of the Great Lover

Christ Everything

The Judgment of the False Church

Great Joy and its Cause

The Lamb

His Wife hath made Herself Ready

Having the Glory of God

Four Square, and Ever-open Gates

The Street of Gold

God is the Light and the Lamb the Lamp

The Pure River of the Water of Life

The Tree of Life

The Lord God Giveth them Light

God All in All

The Tabernacle of God

THE HOLY SPIRIT'S CHIEF WORK

THE GLORY OF HIS PERSON

HIS SUFFERING LOVE

THE ESPOUSALS

THE ANSWER OF THE GREAT LOVER

CHRIST EVERYTHING

THE EARLY MORNING

THE HEAT OF THE DAY

THE JUDGMENT OF THE FALSE CHURCH

GREAT JOY AND ITS CAUSE

THE LAMB

HIS WIFE HATH MADE HERSELF READY

THE BRIDE OF THE LAMB.

HAVING THE GLORY OF GOD

THE WALL OF THE HOLY CITY

FOUR SQUARE, AND EVER-OPEN GATES

THE STREET OF GOLD

GOD IS THE LIGHT AND THE LAMB THE LAMP

THE PURE RIVER OF THE WATER OF LIFE

THE TREE OF LIFE

THE LORD GOD GIVETH THEM LIGHT

GOD ALL IN ALL

THE TABERNACLE OF GOD

"SURELY I COME QUICKLY."

God and the World

The Grace that Saves

Historical Incidents

How to Overcome

Scottish Tales

Standing by the Cross

THE ONE WHO CAME

THE PLACE INTO WHICH HE CAME

THE OBJECT OF HIS COMING

THE GOLDEN SETTING

1 HE COMES IN BY THE DOOR

2. HE IS GOD.

3. HE MUST SAVE HIS SHEEP FROM EVERY THREATENING FOE.

4. HE MUST PRESERVE THEM FOR EVER, SO THAT NONE OF THEM PERISH.

FAITH

FAITHFULNESS

FELLOWSHIP

THE PROPHETIC WORD

HIS BIRTH IN BETHLEHEM

THE HIDDEN YEARS

HOW HE APPEARED TO MEN

HIS ENTRANCE ON PUBLIC SERVICE

THE SORROWS OF HIS LIFE

HIS CROSS

OUR CONDITION FOR WHOM HE DIED

HIS CHARACTER WHO DIED FOR US

HIS APPARENT COMPLETE ECLIPSE

HIS BURIAL

HIS DEATH AS GOD'S JUDGMENT

HIS RESURRECTION AND PRESENT WORK

HIS COMING AGAIN

HIS GLORIOUS KINGDOM

AN ABSENT LORD AND A SUPPER OF REMEMBRANCE

A LIFE OF WITNESS AND A PERFECT PATTERN

THERE IS A TIRELESS FOE, BUT AN ALL-PREVAILING INTERCESSOR

A LIFE OF LABOUR WITH A BLESSED RECOMPENSE

THE FIRST SHOWING

THE SECOND SHOWING

THE THIRD SHOWING

BLINDING

BEGUILING

BUFFETING

BESMIRCHING

Tales of the Sea

"Waiting for the Coming"

"Ye are Christ's"

THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD.

I SHALL NOT WANT.

HE MAKETH ME TO LIE DOWN IN GREEN PASTURES.

HE LEADETH ME BESIDE THE STILL WATERS.

HE LEADETH ME IN THE PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE.

I WILL FEAR NO EVIL, FOR THOU ART WITH ME. THY ROD AND THY STAFF THEY COMFORT ME.

"THY ROD AND THY STAFF THEY COMFORT ME."

HIS ADVENT.

HIS EXIT.

HIS RETURN TO GLORY.

HIS COMING AGAIN.

THE LORD JESUS IS GREATER THAN OUR SINS.

THE LORD JESUS IS GREATER THAN OUR SERVICE.

THE LORD JESUS IS GREATER THAN OUR SORROWS.

THE LORD JESUS IS GREATER THAN SELF.

2 Corinthians 5.

SAUL.

JONATHAN.

MEPHIBOSHETH.

1. CALLING THE ASSEMBLY.

2. THE JOURNEYING OF THE CAMPS.

3. WHEN IN CONFLICT WITH THE OPPRESSOR.

4. ON THE DAYS OF YOUR GLADNESS AND ON YOUR SOLEMN DAYS.

5. AT THE BEGINNINGS OF THEIR MONTHS.

6. OVER THEIR BURNT OFFERINGS AND PEACE OFFERINGS.

The Holy Ghost

THE COMING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

THE PERSONALITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

THE ACTIVITIES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

WHO?

WHEN?

WHY?

THE COMFORTER.

John 15: 26.

John 16: 7-15.

OTHER RESULTS OF HIS COMING.

Life after Death

The Grace of the Lord and the Women

J. T. Mawson - Some Works

J T Mawson

This document may be found online at www.stempublishing.com

You are welcome to freely access and use this material for personal study or sending to other Bible students, compiling extracts for notes etc, but please do not republish without permission.

With the prayerful desire that the Lord Jesus Christ will use this God-given ministry in this form for His glory and the blessing of many in these last days before His coming. © Les Hodgett (contact@stempublishing.com) (2011)

Concerning Himself

Concerning Himself

J. T. Mawson.

Preface

The Word of God

With the true Church of God on earth, I believe in God and the Word of His Grace, and I am persuaded that if "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life," He would see to it that we should be in no uncertainty about it, else how could any man have said, "Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift"?

If the only-begotten Son of God, divinely perfect and blessed, came into the world and lived and died and rose again from the dead for the blessing of men, God must of necessity give men a record of this, also divinely perfect and blessed, that those for whom He came might have a divine and perfect assurance of it. Admit the former and the latter follows in logical sequence.

To suppose that God would send His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him, and having done that allow an imperfect, contradictory human record to be the only record of His life and death and resurrection would be to suppose Him guilty of colossal folly. The record must be as perfect in its sphere as the One whose life and mission it records was perfect in His, or else we have no sure knowledge, no certainty about these things upon which our souls' eternal welfare depends.

The Holy Scriptures are God-breathed; the men who wrote them were moved by the Holy Ghost; they had the things they wrote, not from hearsay, nor from their own imperfect observation, though they did declare what they had seen and heard (1 John 1), but they did this as guided and instructed by the Holy Ghost, for, said their Lord, "The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My Name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you" (John 14: 26).

The Holy Scriptures are the Word of God to us; to them we turn for light and instruction as to Christ and His work. Old and New Testament bear their united testimony to Him, and the revelation that they give is wholly satisfying.

In this small volume I have endeavoured to open up the Scriptures that speak of Him. He did this Himself on the day of His resurrection. When walking with two of His disciples who did not recognise Him, He said to them, "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself (Luke 24: 25-27).

The Word of God is the only authority upon which I base the assurance with which I have written of these things, and by the Word of God alone what I have written must be tested and judged. J. T. Mawson.

Contents

The Miraculous Birth: The Fact and the Reason for It

The Deity of the Lord Jesus: The Necessity for It

The Deity of the Lord Jesus: In the Opening of the New Testament

The Sinlessness of the Lord Jesus: Why it Must Be

The Temptations of the Lord Jesus: What Their Character Was

The Miracles of the Lord Jesus: What They Prove

The Deity of the Lord Jesus: In the Gospel of John

The Death of the Lord Jesus: Atonement by Blood

The Resurrection of the Lord Jesus: God's Seal upon His Work

The Exaltation of the Lord Jesus: The Answer to His Humiliation

Our Great High Priest: His Qualification for the Office

The Deity of the Lord Jesus: In the Later Epistles

The Son of Man: The Judge of Quick and Dead

Chapter 1

The Miraculous Birth: The Fact and the Reason for It

Men who have pledged themselves to preach and testify to "the Faith once delivered to the saints" have become bold and more bold in rejecting the truth as to our Lord's entrance into the world. To quote from one of them: "I cannot help including the birth stories among the things that do not matter. There are some things that matter a great deal. There are some life and death matters, if it comes to that, but this is not one of them. It does not matter."

It is my purpose to show that it does matter, that it is one of the foundation stones of our faith, and that, apart from it, the whole edifice of the truth must collapse and fall.

Many are the names and titles that describe the person and glories of our Lord Jesus Christ in the New Testament. He is the Word who was with God in the beginning, and who was God; the Creator of all things, the Giver of universal life and the Light of men; He is the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, His Beloved, in whom is all His delight; He is the Resurrection and the Life; He is the brightness of God's glory and the express image of His Person, who upholds all things by the word of His power; He is the wisdom of God, the power of God and the Lord of glory, the Christ, who is over all, God blessed for ever, having an everlasting throne and ruling with a righteous sceptre; He is the Same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; He is the Root and the Offspring of David, the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End; He is the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world, the Bread of God and of life, the Door of Salvation, the Son of Man with power on earth to forgive sins; He is the only Saviour and universal Judge, the Lord, having a Name which is above every name, before whom every knee must bend, and in whose hand lies the destiny of every creature; He is the One who liveth and was dead, and behold He is alive for evermore and hath the keys of Hades and of death; He is Emmanuel, God with us, and in Him dwelleth all the Fulness of the Godhead bodily; He is the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; the bright Morning Star, the true God and Eternal Life, and the I AM.

Some of these names belong to Him as having become Man, and as having died and risen again; others describe what He was before He set the pendulum of time in motion, or ever the world was made — what He is in His own uncreated, unchangeable and eternal Being. To these latter belong "the Word," "the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father," and "the Son" whom the Father only knows. By these names He is distinguished as to His personality in the Godhead, but being one with the Father and the Holy Ghost in the Godhead, He shares in every title that belongs to God, such as "the blessed and only Potentate, King of kings, and Lord of lords; who only hath immortality, dwelling in light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen or can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen" (1 Tim. 6: 15, 16). The Father has decreed "that all men should honour the Son even as they honour the Father" (John 5: 23). We do this when we own His equality with the Father, and bow before Him as our God. "He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent Him."

We are to consider the entrance of this august Person into the world and to enquire what manner of birth was His who bears all this glory. That He was born of a woman is not disputed; He was a true and proper Man and not a phantom. Every other man born into the world began to be at his conception, and came into the world as a personality that had had no former existence; but our Lord Jesus Christ was rich before His poverty in Bethlehem; He thought it not robbery to be equal with God before He was found in fashion as a Man; He was the Word before He became flesh; He was God's own Son who was sent in the likeness of sinful flesh, made of a woman, when the fulness of time had come (Gal. 4: 4). This glorious pre-existence surely means that the birth of our Lord into this world was not as the birth of any other man that had ever been born. His birth was an incarnation, the coming of a Divine Person into a condition in which He had not been before, to carry out all the will of God and be the Saviour of us men.

His birth was a unique event — the greatest, the most amazing that had ever happened; greater by far than the creation of man at the beginning, and unless our minds are darkened to the true meaning of it, we should certainly expect that it would be brought about in some other way than by the ordinary laws of nature; we feel that a Divine Person coming into manhood must have a supernatural birth, and this feeling is established and confirmed by the Word of God.

We open the New Testament and find on the first page of it the story told in simple language, and in about 250 words. It is a subject on which the imagination might have run riot, as it did in the numerous fables and legends that gathered about it as spirituality declined and superstition advanced in the early centuries of the Christian era; but in this God-breathed account of it, the imaginations of man's mind are excluded, and every sentence of the story bears the imprimatur of God. "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as His mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take to thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call His name JESUS; for He shall save His people from their sins."

This is the beginning, the door through which we enter into the New Testament and into the realm of infinite and eternal blessedness that it reveals to our souls. It is the beginning of the full and final revelation of God to man. We cannot advance to the climax and completion of this revelation, if we refuse the beginning of it; we must enter into it by the door or be thieves and robbers of the glory of God. The fulness of time had come, and the voice of the Son spoke and said, "A body hast Thou prepared Me . . . Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of Me) to do Thy will, O God" (Heb. 10: 5-7).

It is said that only two of the New Testament writers make mention of the Virgin birth. Well, two witnesses are enough, and at their mouth every word shall be established; but does not this saying, "A body hast Thou prepared Me," give a third witness? It surely involves the miraculous conception; and it proclaims the fact that neither the will of the flesh nor the power of man had any place in it, but that the will and wisdom of God combined to prepare that holy incorruptible body within the womb of the Virgin-mother.

Matthew's Record

There are two accounts of this great event. Matthew's Gospel records the communication to Joseph by the angel, and Luke tells us of the annunciation to Mary. And when we discern the respective characters of these two Gospels and the way the Lord is presented in them, we have no difficulty in seeing how perfect these records are, each in its own place. Matthew unfolds the glory of the Lord as King. His Gospel is "the book of the generation of JESUS CHRIST, THE SON OF DAVID, the Son of Abraham." He came as the Heir to the throne of David and to establish and fulfil all the promises made to Abraham. But here was a difficulty; while Jesus Christ was the long-promised Heir, Joseph stood in the direct line of succession and was the legal heir, as this genealogy proves. And this was recognised by the Lord's messenger when he saluted him as "Joseph, thou son of David." He was an obscure village carpenter, proving the truth of the words of the prophet that the tabernacle of David had fallen down and lay in ruins (Amos 9: 11), and yet he showed traits of true royalty according to God, in that he was "a just man" and in his compassion and merciful intention toward the weak, and as he thought, failing woman, and in his trust in the Word of God and obedience to it.

It was right that he should have been addressed by the angel not only because of his own personal concern as to the condition of his espoused wife, but also because of his care for the integrity of the succession to the throne of David. It might appear a foolish and futile thing to have been concerned about the latter, seeing that six centuries had passed since the sceptre had departed from the house of David, but faith holds on to the promises of God, even when human strength has failed and every visible hope has fled; and Joseph was a man of faith. And being a man of faith, he did as he was bidden by the angel of the Lord and took Mary unto him as his wife, without hesitation or further misgiving; and by so doing, he cast the protection of his name about her, and made her first-born Son his Heir — the legal Heir to David's throne.

But there was a matter of even greater importance than what was due to Joseph and the integrity of the Royal line and the necessity of Jesus Christ being the legal Heir to the throne; there was God's own integrity and His faithfulness to His Word. And these were made good and revealed in the words, "Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us." That was the most astonishing prophecy that God ever gave through a prophet's lips; it means, as we hope to show, the intervention of God in a new and personal way for the deliverance of His people; it foretold something that would be outside and apart from all the power of man, and, impossible as it may seem to be to men who have no faith, it was fulfilled when the espoused wife of Joseph brought forth a Son, whose name was called JESUS, the Saviour of His people from their sins.

In that lowly Babe, the Virgin's Son, conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, the two Testaments are bound together; the hopes of the Old and the faith of the New unite in Him, and we can with exultation take up the prophetic word and join with Israel and say, "Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be on His shoulder: and His Name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and upon His kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and justice from henceforth for ever. THE ZEAL OF THE LORD OF HOSTS WILL PERFORM THIS (Isa. 9: 6, 7);

Luke's Record

The Gospel of Luke was written to a Gentile believer and has the world in view rather than Israel; consequently there was not the same necessity as in Matthew's Gospel to show that the birth of the Lord was in accordance with the prophecies made in the Old Testament to Israel. In it the Lord is presented as true Man, born of a woman, come in grace to all men, and there was not the same need to give Joseph the prominence that he has in Matthew's Gospel, where the true heirship to David's throne was a vital matter. But there was need that all people to whom "the good tidings of great joy" as to the Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, were brought, should know from whence He came and how, that they might understand and appreciate the fact that His coming was not by the power of man, but entirely of God and in sovereign grace. The annunciation to Mary, a lowly daughter of David's house, and espoused to a working man, brings out this grace in its unsurpassable richness and charm.

Gabriel's message from God to Mary is divided into three parts. First, the salutation which proclaims the greatness of the favour that God was to bestow upon her. Unknown and poor though she was, she was chosen by sovereign grace from among all women to be the vessel by whom God would bring about His great purpose. Second, there was the revelation of what this purpose was. "Fear not, Mary," said the angel, "for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a Son, and shalt call His name JESUS. He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David: and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of His kingdom there shall be no end." He that was to be born to her was to be the Son of David, and to have His father's throne: that she might have understood, seeing she belonged to the house of David, but how could He be JESUS Jehovah — the Saviour? How could He be called the Son of the Highest? The Highest is the title of God in His supremacy over all the earth, and in heaven; the One whose word and ways none may challenge, and who will manifest Himself thus in the coming Millennial Kingdom. How could the Son of her womb have the right to be called His Son? We do not wonder that she asked that question; it was a right and proper question to ask, and it brought out the third part of Gabriel's message from God which enlightened her as to how it was to be brought to pass. "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, the power of the Highest shall over-shadow thee; therefore also that holy Thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."

This last utterance of the angel "who stands in the presence of God" requires no comment. It most surely drives away all doubt for those who will believe. The birth of the Saviour was miraculous, it was by God's power, it was God's work. Man and his corruptible seed had no part in it; the Son of Mary was holy and undefiled. He was the Son of God. Of this J. N. Darby has written, "It is not here the doctrine of the eternal relationship of Son with the Father. The Gospel of John, the Epistle to the Hebrews and that to the Colossians, establish this precious truth and demonstrate its importance, but here it is that which is born by virtue of the miraculous conception, which on that ground is called the Son of God." And if unbelief says it is contrary to every law of nature and impossible, faith answers in the words of Gabriel, who knew God's power so well, "with God nothing shall be impossible."

The necessity for the virgin birth

The fact that men need a Saviour, a Deliverer, is evident everywhere, and has been all through their history since the fall. And the first promise that one should appear followed swiftly upon Satan's triumph over man in Eden, and it came forth from the mouth of God. "The Seed of the woman," said He to the victorious serpent, "shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise His heel." If Adam had been able to recover himself and bruise his tempter and conqueror beneath his feet, God would have stood aside and let him do it, but there could be no hope from him or from any that he could beget. If he had fallen a prey to Satan's subtlety when he stood erect in the plenitude of his powers, how could he by any means recover what he had lost now that he was defeated and fettered by Satan, and lying under the sentence of death by God's just decree? All his progeny were powerless like himself. "By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, and death passed upon all men for that all have sinned." (Rom. 5: 12). The hope was not in Adam but in the woman's Seed. It was He, whoever He might be, who was to destroy the great destroyer of our frail and fallen race, and deliver us from his power. The New Testament tells us plainly who He is. "For this purpose," says 1 John 3: 8, "was THE SON OF GOD manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil." And Hebrews 2: 15 tells us that THE SON — in whom God has spoken in these last days — because "the children were partakers of flesh and blood, also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death, He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." It is plain from these Scriptures that the Seed of the woman is the Son of God, and we are told that "all the promises of God in Him are yea and in Him Amen."

The first promise prepares us for the Virgin birth and we are not surprised to read, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Emmanuel." And if unbelief persists in declaring that to be impossible, faith answers, Yes, with men it is impossible; and that is the great and solemn fact that this God-given sign throws into prominence, it is the very lesson that God would teach by the manner of His intervention. Men are unable to save themselves and unable to find amongst even the best of Adam's fallen children one man who can redeem his brother, or give the just ransom for him. Every man needs a Saviour for himself, and because of that, God has stepped in and has provided the Man — the Kinsman-Redeemer, but He has done it in a way that humbles the pride of man and sets him aside. "A virgin shall conceive and bear a son." The Virgin's Son would owe nothing to man; His very presence in the world would be independent of man. His coming into the world would be God's work. It would be God's intervention in miraculous power and sovereign mercy — the salvation of the Lord. So we read that in due time, Mary brought forth her firstborn Son and "wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid Him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn." Thus came Emmanuel, apart from all the power of men and outside the abodes of men, for not only could not men produce the Deliverer, but they did not want Him when He came.

Does it matter?

Like produces like. This is one of the fundamental laws of nature as established by God. It is stamped upon the Creation chapter — fish, fowl, and flesh were all ordained to bring forth each "after his kind." And man could do no other than this. "Adam," we read, "begat a son in his own likeness, after his own image" (Gen. 5: 3). And so it has been throughout all the generations of men. Sinful men beget sinful children. Therefore it is written, "They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies" (Ps. 58: 3), and "all we like sheep have gone astray" (Isa. 53: 6), and "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3: 23). In the great penitential Psalm, David confesses, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me," which simply means, "I have come of a sinful stock, my very nature is sinful," and this is true of every man born into the world. Does it matter then or does it not, how the Lord was born into this world? Had He come by natural generation, would He not have been as every other man? To deny the Virgin birth is to deny His pre-existence in the Godhead, and to deny the holiness of His Manhood, and to rob mankind of the one and only Saviour.

It is said that nothing is based upon this great truth in the New Testament. But everything is based upon it; it is the foundation of everything that follows. I stress the fact that it meets us on the first page of the New Testament, that it is the door through which we enter into the full revelation of God. Apart from it, we have no intervention of God for His own glory and our salvation; Jesus is not the great I AM, but a mere man like the rest of men, and we have no sinless Saviour. How, apart from the miraculous conception and the Virgin birth, could the Lord have said, "I know whence I came . . . I proceeded forth and came from God . . . Verily, verily I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am (John 8); or how could Peter have applied to Him the words of the Psalm, "Thou wilt not suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption" (Acts 2: 27): or the Apostles have spoken of Him as God's Holy Child, Jesus (Acts 4: 30). Or how could Paul have spoken of Him as "Christ who is over all, God blessed for ever" (Romans 9: 5), or as "the Second Man, the Lord out of heaven" (1 Cor. 15: 47); or how could John have insisted with such persistence on the fact that Jesus is the Son of God and the great object of faith, the true God and Eternal Life?

For ourselves, we linger with the shepherds as they gather round the Babe in the manger; we press into the house with the Magi from the East and worship the young Child with them. We own Him to be truly Man — sinless and holy; but more, for we confess Him, as did Thomas, when he saw His wounded hands and side after He had risen from the dead, OUR LORD AND OUR GOD. And we say as we consider the manner of God's intervention for His glory and our eternal blessing, "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor? or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed to Him again? For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things; to whom be glory for ever. Amen."

Chapter 2

The Deity of the Lord Jesus: The Necessity for It

"I, even I, am the Lord, and beside Me there is no Saviour. I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. . . . Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else." — Isaiah 45.

We can understand the envy with which the kings of Egypt would view the rise and progress of Israel. They had held that nation as slaves for many generations but had been compelled by the power of Jehovah to release them, and had seen Jerusalem become the most magnificent and wealthiest city on earth under the rule of David and Solomon. Small wonder that at the first evidence of weakness Shishak came up against that city with a great army and pillaged the Temple and the king's house, and took away the priceless treasure of them, including the shields of gold that Solomon had made. Then Rehoboam, that feeble and foolish son of a great father, does not appear to have put up any resistance; he let the glory of the city go without protest. What did it matter? He could substitute brass for gold, and brass looks like gold, almost; peace seemed cheap at the price. And so it was when he went up to the house of the Lord, brazen shields went up before him instead of shields of fine gold, and when his religious duties were done they were committed to the guard for safe keeping as though they were the real thing (1 Kings 14).

What the king of Egypt did to Jerusalem, the devil, who is the god and prince of the world, has done for Christendom. For ages he had held mankind in darkness and bondage, but deliverance came at the advent of the Lord Jesus, who lived among men and died and rose again. Then "God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." Multitudes were delivered from the kingdom of darkness and translated into the kingdom of the Son of the Father's love, and there was established on earth the kingdom of heaven which was enriched by heavenly treasure: the pure gold of God's truth concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

But with the decline of living faith and the rise of profession without reality in these modern days, the devil has seen and seized his opportunity, and has laid his envious and ruthless hands upon these treasures and has robbed an indifferent and faithless church of its shields of gold. He could not have done it if there had not been traitors within who were pledged to hold and fight for these treasures — "the Faith once for all delivered to the saints." They have been his allies in this.

The truth as to the person of the Lord is the finest of the gold of our faith; what He is in His own eternal Being gives character to it all. It is declared in the following great texts: "God was manifest in the flesh," not, "Jesus was a manifestation of God," as some say, but that He is Himself, in His own person, God. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God . . . and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth" (John 1: 1-14). But this fine gold has been surrendered by many leaders in Christendom, who ought to have defended it to the death. They have surrendered it with other priceless treasures for popularity with the world and in fear of "modern scholarship." They seem to be well pleased to let these great truths go, for their insubject minds prefer their own investigations to God's revelation, and man's effort to uplift himself is more to them than God's intervention for his redemption and they have seized the opportunity to substitute their own base brass for God's fine gold. A Christ of their imagination is more to their liking than the Christ of God, a Christ who is stripped of the glory of His eternal Deity, and being stripped of that supreme glory is stripped of every other glory that could be acceptable to God and of use to men. And they think that they are the gainers by the change. "We are rich and increased with goods," they boast, "and have need of nothing," and they know not that "they are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked" and need to turn again to our Sovereign Lord and buy of Him gold tried in the fire that they may be rich (Rev. 3: 17, 18).

The pretence of approach to God is kept up, but the brazen shields go before them instead of shields of gold, and God will not have their counterfeits. "I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by Me," are our Lord's own words, and they are recorded for us in that Gospel which reveals to us the glory of His divine and eternal Being, which indeed is not absent from any part of Scripture; and nothing less than this will do for God. The brazen imitation may suit and fascinate men, but it is an abomination to God, nothing but the pure gold can He accept, and in vain is their worship of Him as long as they teach the doctrines and opinions of men for the gospel of God concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

And nothing but the pure gold of this gospel will satisfy the soul of a man when he is fully awakened to his deep need. When the light of God streams into his conscience and he sees the exceeding sinfulness of his sin, and the greatness of his peril and how far his sin has removed him from God, he will spurn the brass of man's imagination as a mockery and a sham, and confess that there can be for him no salvation in any other Name, but the Name of Jesus — Jehovah the Saviour. As to this, the late Handley Moule wrote, "The human soul, once fully awakened to its needs, to its mysterious greatness and to its mysterious but awfully real sinfulness, can find rest only in the Saviour, who is, in equal truth, one with man and one with God. Such a Saviour bridges as with living adamant the gulf of doom and sin which severs creature from Maker. A saviour who is not quite God is a bridge broken at the farther end."

It is here I would begin; before endeavouring to show that all Scripture bears witness to the fact that Jesus is the eternal Word, "The Christ, who is over all, God blessed for ever," I would urge the necessity for it. It is a necessity to God, if He is to be known by His creature, and to find His delights in the sons of men, redeemed from all iniquity and purified unto Himself as a peculiar people, zealous of good works; it is a necessity to man if he is ever to know God as his God, to be forgiven, and at peace, and find his soul's everlasting satisfaction in Him. The human soul would grope in vain for light if it were not so; it would cry out hopelessly in its misery, for there would be none to help; there would be "neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded," as it was when the prophets of Baal cried all the day long to their false god (1 Kings 18: 29). We should be a lost race, wandering stars cut off from our central Sun without hope of restoration to our true orbit and with no outlook but the blackness of darkness for ever, if Jesus were not God: "the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father."

Consider the cry that broke out of the awakened soul of that pagan jailor at Philippi, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" What answer could satisfy that bewildered man, trembling on the brink of a lost eternity? There was but one answer that could satisfy him. Suppose instead of that one and only answer Paul had said, "Believe in Adam, or Abraham, or Moses, or John the Baptist." What a mocker of the man's misery he would have been; or suppose he had said, for he was a greater man than them all, "Believe on me and thou shalt be saved." Would not the soul and conscience of the jailor have revolted against the outrage and have turned from him as a blasphemer and an impostor? But how fitting, how satisfying was the answer that he did give, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." The whole gospel of God was involved in that answer; it put that seeking sinner into vital contact with Him who of old had said, "Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none beside Me" (Isa. 45: 22), it satisfied him, for it gave him a perfect, because a divine Saviour.

The necessity for the Word to become flesh did not arise only when that great event took place, it was there from the beginning when sin entered into the world. The patriarch Job felt the necessity and voiced it in memorable words when he said, as he searched for a way by which a man could be just with God: "He is not a man as I am, that I should answer Him, and we should come together in judgment. Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both. Let Him take away His rod from me, and let not His fear terrify me: then would I speak, and not fear Him; but it is not so with me" (Job 9). It is not difficult to interpret what his feelings were, for they are the feelings of all who have been awakened by God's Spirit to their need. He said in effect: "I know that I have sinned against Him, and if He were a man as I am, I could, having the feelings of a man, understand how I have offended Him; I could go to Him and make restitution for the wrong I have done to Him and so be at peace. But He is not a man as I am, and I cannot measure the demands of His justice against me. The gulf between us is unmeasurable from my side; He is almighty, holy and just, and I am weak, sinful and unholy, and there is no one that I know of to stand betwixt us, who could speak from Him to me, and from me to Him." See how accurately his awakened conscience had gauged the situation: he desired one who could stand betwixt God, infinitely holy and just, and the sinner, guilty and afraid, and put his hand upon them both: He must be equal to God and equal to men. And says Job, "I do not know such a one. I have felt the need for Him, I have longed for Him and sought for Him but I have not found Him." And Job, be it noted, who expressed his soul's deep longing in these words, was the man who came nearer to perfection than any man of his day; and if he was hopeless and despairing because he had no Daysman, it is plain that the Daysman, the Mediator, could not arise from among men such as he was. If He is to come at all He must come from above, and when He comes, He must be able to put His hand upon God: He must be God's equal; pure as God is pure, holy as God is holy, great as God is great: no one less could intervene, or be of any use in this supreme matter to Job or to any other man. Yet He must come low enough to put His hand upon men. He must pass by angels and be one of us, yet sinless, or His touch would defile the throne of God and be unavailing for us. He must represent God and yet be able to identify Himself with us, or He could not take up our vast indebtedness and speak for us. He must be God and man.

Man's extremity is God's opportunity, and the One whom Job could not find on earth has come from heaven, and JESUS, the Virgin's Son, is Emmanuel: GOD WITH US. Being God, He knew according to God's perfect estimate what the effect to the universe of man's sin was. He knew how the majesty of God was challenged by man's disregard of His will, and what the demands of the eternal throne were in regard to the violation of its just decrees. He knew how man's pride and self will had made him the lawful captive of Satan, and how great was the gulf that separated him from his God, and how powerless he was to right the wrong. He knew the penalty that had to be paid and the work that had to be done, and knowing all this He came, saying, "A body hast Thou prepared Me . . . Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of Me) to do Thy will, O God" (Heb. 10: 5-7). He became the Son of Man, that He might stand in the place of men, and be lifted up as their substitute and representative and meet the bill of their indebtedness. This involved Him in all the sorrows of Calvary, and there "He gave Himself a ransom for all." If He had not become man He could not have died, if He had not been God His death would have been without value, but now His death accomplished and the ransom paid, He is "the one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus."

He stooped from His eternal glory and was made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man He put His hand upon us, degraded though we were, and He did it tenderly, graciously so that we are not afraid. He is full of grace and truth and there is no terror for us in His hand; we do not shrink from Him, for He has touched us with the hand of a man, yet He was never less than God, and God has touched us in Him. He has put one hand upon us and the other He has placed upon the throne of God. With the one hand He has offered the fullest satisfaction to every righteous claim of God, and with the other He bestows fulness of grace upon men. He brings us to God and gives us a place in His presence without fear, and in everlasting peace, a place established upon an infallible and immovable foundation of divine righteousness laid down by Him who is God and Man in His own blessed person.

But if the necessity on man's side was great, it was even greater on God's side; the fulfilment of His purposes and the revelation of the deep love of His heart towards men as well as the glory of His Name all depend upon the Deity of the Lord Jesus. How could God reveal Himself to men who were cut off from Him by their sins? How could He win their hearts from their fear and hatred of Him and deliver them from the darkness in which they groped? How could men love God if they did not know Him, and how could they know Him, since no man hath seen God at any time unless the only-begotten Son which is in His bosom came forth to declare Him? It was certainly necessary that these things should be done if ever that great word was to be fulfilled, "And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away" (Rev. 21: 3, 4).

Before all this could be an accomplished fact the sin of the world must be borne away, and who could do that? It is recorded that, "John (the Baptist) seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1: 29). We are familiar with the words, so familiar that we are but lightly impressed with their immensity and meaning. "The sin of the world!" Think of it! Think of the sin of one city, what man could take that away? or of one street in a city, or of one house in that street, or of one man in that house? Could any man take away his own sin and stand before God, "holy and without blame before Him in love"? for nothing less than that will suit Him. The questions have only to be asked to prove to all who are not wilfully blind that this work could only lie in the hands of the eternal God. Yet as John saw that lowly Stranger from Nazareth moving towards him among the multitudes of Israel, he proclaimed Him to be the Taker-away of the sin of the world, and in that word he proclaimed His Godhead power and worth. No wonder that he was compelled to add, "This is He of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for He was before me."

That which is written in Revelation 21 shall come to pass, for "the words are true and faithful" (verse 5). The same voice that cried, "It is finished" on the cross at Golgotha shall be heard saying "It is done," and God shall rest with the multitude of His redeemed sons in His own love that has been declared by the Son, and shall be all and in all to them for ever. Meanwhile He declares, "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life." God Himself is the Fountain, and the thirst of the human soul can only be assuaged and satisfied with God, and God is fully revealed to us in JESUS. For "God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory."

Chapter 3

The Deity of the Lord Jesus: In the Opening of the New Testament

Here, then, is that which the Spirit of God sets before us: Jesus, the Son of David, conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost; Jehovah, the Saviour, to deliver Israel from their sins; God with us: who could comprehend or fathom the mystery of His nature in whom all these things combined? His life, in fact, as we shall see, displays the obedience of the perfect Man, and the perfection and the power of God. — J. N. Darby.

It was not the work of earlier writers of the New Testament to prove that the Lord Jesus Christ is God. To them this great truth was not a matter of question or debate, it was their whole faith, and the standpoint from which they made their inspired-by-the-Holy-Spirit records. It has been said that just as the golden threads were inextricably woven with the blue and purple and scarlet and fine linen of the High Priest's ephod and girdle (Ex. 18) so is the Deity of Christ woven into all that these men wrote; and that is true, yet the type is feeble and inadequate, as all material types of what is infinite must be. The Deity of Christ is more than interwoven into the Gospel records, it is the warp upon which all that is recorded in them is wrought; it is the root out of which all truth grows; it is the fountain from which all blessing flows. If it could be torn from these four Gospels they would be meaningless shreds, and the glorious faith of the Son of God would be compelled to take its place along with other vain, worldly philosophies, having some interest perhaps to scholars, but void of all saving value for sinners. Those who reject it, reject the only hope, the only way of deliverance for men, for all Scripture shows that if men were to be saved, God must come down to them to do it, and also, if God does come down to men, He must come as their Saviour.

And it is with this that the New Testament opens. Upon the first page of it, in our Authorised Version, the Name of JESUS appears in capital letters, and it gives us the title and the great subject of the Book. That Name means Saviour, and He had come to save. The New Testament is the Book of God's salvation, and it shows us that God Himself is the Saviour, and He only. He might delegate great works to His angel-servants, and speak in divers ways to men by His prophets, but this work of salvation He must undertake Himself, or it would never be done.

Let us now consider this, "Fear not," said the angel of the Lord to Joseph, "to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call His name JESUS: for He shall save His people from their sins." He did not say that He would save sinners, Jew and Gentile, though that is most blessedly true, and comes fully to light as the truth unfolds, but to "save His people." His people were Israel, and they were in view in the angel's announcement, and the fulfilment of the word of God by His prophets to them. They were Jehovah's people, a people chosen of God as His own peculiar possession, even though they had departed far from Him. Their sins had separated them from Him, but He would not abandon His rights in them. He could not if He was to be faithful to His word and promise. He must undertake their salvation. And Jesus was to appear to do this, because, as the angel said, these people chosen of God were His PEOPLE.

There are many Old Testament passages addressed to Israel which bind up their salvation with God's personal intervention on their behalf and that prove conclusively that He only could save them. I will quote a few of them, "I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour" (Isa. 43: 3). "I, even I, am the Lord, and beside Me there is no Saviour" (verse 11). "There is no God else beside Me, a just God and a Saviour" (45: 21). "All flesh shall know that I the Lord am thy Saviour, and thy Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob" (49: 26). "I am the Lord thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but Me; for there is no Saviour beside Me" (Hosea 13: 4). The name Jesus carries divine glory with it; that it means Jehovah the Saviour; and it is certainly clear from these great texts that none but God could be the Saviour, and if any others pretended to be able to do this, their pretence only proved them to be thieves and robbers (John 10), but of Jesus, the angel said, "He shall save His people from their sins." Then who else could He be but God?

The first quotation from the prophets

As we apprehend the force and meaning of the words of the angel of the Lord to Joseph we are prepared for the statement that follows, "Now this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us." When Mary brought forth her first-born Son the Saviour-Messiah had entered the world, He who had said to Moses, "I AM THAT I AM: Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel I AM hath sent me to you" (Ex. 3: 14), was not now sending a servant with a message but He had appeared Himself to be their Saviour. This mystery of God-incarnate must ever baffle all intellectual investigation, but it does not stumble faith; for faith expects that God will perform His word. If He had spoken of this by the prophet, what He had said must come to pass. And faith knows that when God moves He moves in a way worthy of Himself. He confounds the wise and the proud and the mighty by that which is apparently weak and of no account. It was even so in this matter. He came into manhood and in great humility, not to condemn and consume a sinful people, but to offer Himself to them as their Saviour and Lord.

The second quotation from the prophets

The coming of the wise men from the East to enquire where He was who was born King of the Jews, gave Jerusalem the opportunity of not only beholding its King but of seeing its God manifest in flesh. The chief men of the city were gathered together by Herod, the Idumean usurper, and they showed that they were well acquainted with the Scriptures that spoke of His birth. But in citing Micah 5: 2, why did they omit that part of it that declares His eternal Being and activities? The omission seems to indicate that they had no desire for a close acquaintance with their God, the idea was not acceptable to them; an alien tyrant seems to have been more to their minds than Jehovah their Saviour. But the prophecy which they quoted not only foretold the place of His birth and the dignity of His office, but the glory of His Person. Micah wrote, "They shall smite the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek" an extraordinary prophecy; but actually fulfilled when they took the reed that they had put in His right hand as a mock sceptre and smote Him on the head (Matt. 27: 30) — "But thou Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto Me that is to be ruler in Israel whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting (or the days of eternity)" ( Micah 5: 1, 2).

Who could have conceived this strange thing, that He whose goings forth were from eternity, who in divine, creative energy had cast the stars before Him as a golden pathway for His glorious feet, should have come forth in obscure Bethlehem, born of an obscure virgin-mother, in all the apparent weakness of human babehood, to be the Servant of the Godhead and to tread the filthy streets of those eastern cities in His search for the diseased and distressed and devil-possessed, and to go forth at last bearing His cross to Golgotha to save His people from their sins? What goings forth were these! Yet these were the ways of divine love, made known in the Son of Man, who came not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many. It was the only way if God was to be known as the Saviour, and if Jesus was to make good His title to that glorious Name.

The third quotation from the prophets

Passing over other quotations from the prophets that do not bear on our subject we come to Matt. 3. John the Baptist was a man full of the Holy Spirit, and by the guidance and power of the Spirit he bore testimony to Jesus. He refused to talk of himself; his mission was to "prepare the way of the LORD," according to the prophecy of Isaiah 40: 3. And of Him whose forerunner he was, he said, "He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear, He shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with fire: whose fan is in His hand and He will throughly purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the garner, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire" (Matt. 3: 11, 12). With the Lord close upon his heels, this faithful Forerunner declared his own limitations; he could baptise the people with water; he could bring them down into that which signified death and no more; but at the same time he proclaimed the might of his Lord. He would lift them into the sphere of life and endue them with the power and intelligence that belonged to that life, or — dread alternative — baptise them with fire. He would gather His wheat into the garner and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.

Israel was His floor, and He the Lord would discriminate between His wheat and the chaff. Who but the Lord could do this? It is written, "The Lord knoweth them that are His." He had come in grace, the Lord in whom is salvation, but He had come to a recalcitrant nation, a remnant only of which would receive Him; and since He is a just God as well as a Saviour, His judgment must fall on the rebellious. "For the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, all that do wickedly shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch" (Mal. 4: 1). "The Father . . . hath committed all judgment to the Son: that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father" (John 5: 22, 23). "What a fact of immeasurable greatness was the presence of the Lord God in the midst of His people, in the Person of Him who, although He was doubtless to be the fulfilment of all the promises, was necessarily, though rejected, the Judge of all the evil existing among His people." (J. N. D.)

The fourth quotation from the prophets

The next quotation from the prophets which has a definite bearing on our subject is in ch. 4. John had been cast into prison. He had been a burning and a shining light in the darkness, but as the stars fade away when the sun rises, so he passed out of sight that all eyes might be fixed upon the One who was greater than he; "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, The land of Zebulun, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles: the people which sat in darkness saw a great light; and to them which sat in the region of the shadow of death light is sprung up." The quotation is from the 9th chapter of the prophecy and it declares the greatness of the One in whom this great light shone, and we must not fail to notice this. "Unto us," says the prophet, "a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be on His shoulder: and His Name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, the Father of Eternity, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon His Kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this."

How great are the glories of this five-fold name! too bright indeed for mortal eyes, if it were not in Jesus that they shine, but in Him they reach us as softly and sweetly as the dawn, "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given." Here is meekness, gentleness and love. We are not afraid of a babe; we do not shrink in terror from a son. "Fear not," said the angel to the Shepherds, "for behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger." And His Name — the name of that Babe upon whom the Shepherds looked with wonder and whom the wise men worshipped — has a five-fold glory. Can we discern it in the Gospels? I think we can, indeed it pervades them and diffuses its fragrance from every page of them.

His name shall be called WONDERFUL. The devil owned it when he was compelled to leave Him, having utterly failed to allure Him from the path of righteousness (Matt. 4: 11). The people confessed it when they were astonished at His doctrine (Matt. 7: 28); the soldiers who were sent to take Him were compelled to own it when they said, "Never man spake like this Man" (John 7: 26); the people confessed it again when they said, "He hath done all things well" (Mark 7: 37); His disciples felt it when they asked, "What manner of man is this?" (Matt. 8: 25); the devils were forced to the confession of it when they said, "What have we to do with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth?" (Matt. 8: 29); and the Father proclaimed it when from the excellent glory He said, "Thou art My Son, (even) the Beloved, in whom I greatly delight."

COUNSELLOR. "Learn of Me," He said, "for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest to your souls" (Matt. 11: 29), and "Whosoever heareth these sayings of Mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house: and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock" (Matt. 7: 24).

THE MIGHTY GOD. This is the name of God as the Omnipotent One, the mighty EL, the Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, Who disposes of men as He will, and is the strength and refuge of those that trust in Him. This is the central glory of the five-fold Name and it shone from the lowly Nazarene when He stilled the storm on the midnight sea (Matt . 8: 26); thrust back and controlled the power of death (Matt. 8: 23); multiplied the loaves and fishes to satisfy the hungry crowds (Matt. 14: 15); claimed the undivided allegiance of the hearts of men (Matt. 4: 18-22; Matt. 19: 21); forgave the sins of those that sought Him (Matt. 9: 2); and said, "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11: 28).

THE FATHER OF ETERNITY. Our minds can travel back through the ages of time, but they halt at the frontiers of eternity; yet this fourth beam of this all-glorious Name carries us into eternity whether we will or not, and tells us that every age of it proceeded from Him, and that He controls them with all their issues. If I may be permitted to go outside this Gospel of Matthew I will quote from Colossians 1, where it is said of "The Son of the Father's love" (verse 13), "for by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him; and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist" (vv. 16, 17). And turning back to our Gospel I read of this Creator-Son, "No man knoweth the Son but the Father" (11: 27), and there shines a beam too bright for creature eye, a glory that no man hath seen or can see.

THE PRINCE OF PEACE. There is not much said about peace in Matthew's Gospel — it belongs more to Luke's and the latter part of John's — but the reason is not far to seek. As the Prince of Peace, He sent forth His messengers preaching peace in every house into which they went, but the people were not worthy of that peace, for they rejected the Prince of it, and the peace they would not have returned to those who carried it (Matt. 10: 13), and the Prince of Peace had to say in view of this stubbornness and blindness, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace but a sword" (Matt. 10: 34). Nevertheless He was the Prince of Peace, and Peter proclaimed this when He told the first Gentiles that ever heard the gospel, "The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ: (He is Lord of all)" (Acts 10: 36). And all who owned His Lordship entered into peace then as they also do even unto this day.

The glory shone in vain for Israel then, for they stumbled at the lowliness of their great Messiah; but the day is surely coming when He will dispel their darkness, and lift the veil that covers them and open their wondering eyes and they shall say in that day, "Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation" (Isa. 25: 9). Then of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, and He will establish His kingdom with judgment and justice for ever. And He will swallow up death in victory and wipe away tears from off all faces, for He is the Saviour of His people, JEHOVAH-JESUS.

Thus we see Him in the early chapters of Matthew, who is the Son in the glorious Trinity (Matt. 28: 19), co-equal with the Father and the Holy Ghost, enter into the world as man, yet Emmanuel, to be the Saviour of His people, and their Ruler, who was not a child of days, but the Lord of Eternity; and their all-discerning and righteous Judge, and the One who will drive before His victorious feet all darkness and the power of death and fill His kingdom and the whole earth with the light of the knowledge of God which shines even now in His face for all who believe.

Chapter 4

The Sinlessness of the Lord Jesus: Why it Must Be

Never once did He confess sin; never once asked for pardon, though He enjoined both upon all others. Indeed, for all others this returning as prodigal, humble and repentant, was the one way that He set forth to the peace and rest of the Father's forgiveness. Yet He never gave a hint, He never breathed a prayer, that implied that He needed this. He challenged His enemies to convince Him of sin. He declared positively that He did always the things that pleased His Father. He had power on earth to forgive sin, but needed no forgiveness Himself. — ADAPTED.

Three words are given in Scripture to define sin; they are brought together in Exodus 34: 7, Psalm 32 and Psalm 51 — they are transgression, iniquity and sin. These words are not mere synonyms that could displace one another and nothing be lost, for each has its own terrible meaning. TRANSGRESSION is revolt from, it means a tearing of oneself away. God has declared His will for men, but they prefer their own wills, and in pursuit of their own wills they tear themselves away from God. INIQUITY means twisted, crooked, perverse. God has laid down a road for the feet of men to tread, and that road is as straight as His everlasting sceptre, but men have made for themselves crooked ways (Isa. 59: 8); they are a crooked and perverse generation (Phil. 2: 15). SIN means missing the mark. God has set up His mark, the end at which every man should aim. God Himself should be the end and aim of every man's life, but every man has substituted self for God, and set up his own mark to displace God's; and has missed the very mark and purpose of his existence. Along with sin in this threefold character goes GUILE; it permeates the life of every man who has not been honest before God. His effort is to appear different to what he knows himself to be, to cover up and hide his sinfulness and even to imagine that he can deceive God Himself as to it. Then the New Testament gives us a striking definition of sin in 1 John 3: 4, where we should read, "for sin is lawlessness," and that covers all that sin is; it is not a mere yielding to the sudden and capricious impulses of our nature, but the determination that lies deep in a man's will, though perhaps seldom expressed, to go his own way and be independent of God.

As we consider what sin is as it is defined for us in the Scriptures, we are conscious that we must plead guilty before God to transgression and iniquity and sin, and confess that it is not only in practice that we are sinners, but that we are sinners in our very nature; that what we have done springs out of what we are; the fruit reveals the nature of the root. But we are equally conscious that in this respect our Lord stands out in complete contrast to all that we are; our minds recoil from even the suggestion that there was sin in Him; our spiritual instinct tells us that He was not as we are, that He would be of no use to us if He had been, and we find that these instincts are confirmed by the plainest possible statements in the Word of God.

The flesh and blood that He took was wholly apart from sin. His body was a holy body prepared for Him by God. As a man He was "holy, harmless and undefiled." He was as holy in His manhood nature and life amid the sordidness and sin of the world as He was in the beginning, when by His divine power and glory He created the heavens and the earth. This holy manhood could not have been apart from the miraculous birth. In no other way than that supernatural way could the everlasting Word have come in flesh. Hence in announcing His birth to the Virgin-mother, the angel of the Lord declared, "That holy Thing that shall be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God." And from the moment that the Holy Ghost came upon the most blessed of all women, and the power of the Highest overshadowed her, her Firstborn Son was wholly for God; His own words were, "Thou art He that took Me out of the womb; Thou didst make Me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts" (Ps. 22).

Heaven and earth and even the nether regions confessed His holiness; God and men and demons bore witness to it. The Holy Ghost descended upon Him at His baptism, not as a burning flame, but as a dove, indicating surely that there was nothing in Him that was obnoxious to the holiness of God's Spirit, but everything in absolute harmony there with Him; and the Father declared that His eye had searched, and found only that in Him that delighted Him. At the very beginning of His public service to God and men, the demons recognised Him and confessed Him as God's holy One (Mark 1), and His Apostles, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and in the full light of His life and death and resurrection and ascension to glory, bore witness again and again to this essential fact of our Faith; this fact apart from which our Faith is a delusion and a lie.

The sinless sacrifice for sin

It stands out in the Epistles as a thing to be noted and cherished, that when the question of sin and the sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus as our substitute in regard to it arises, His sinlessness is emphasized. 2 Corinthians 5: 21 tells us that God made Him to be sin for us, but adds that He "knew no sin." 1 Peter 2: 24 tells us that He "His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree," but assures us that He "did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth" (verse 22). 1 John 3: 5 tells us that He was manifested to take away our sins, and adds, "in Him was no sin." Surely nothing could be clearer than that no sacrifice but a sinless sacrifice could meet the claims of God's holiness against sin, and if Jesus had not been sinless He could not have stood in the sinner's place; He would not have survived the judgment, and we should have had no Saviour.

The necessity for this sinless offering was foretold in the types and shadows of the Old Testament. The passover lamb had to be without blemish, a male of the first year (Ex. 12); and every sacrifice that was offered to God had to be of the same unblemished sort. "If there be any blemish therein, as if it be lame, or blind, or have any ill blemish, thou shalt not sacrifice it unto the Lord thy God" (Deut. 15: 20). "But whatsoever hath a blemish, that shall ye not offer: for it shall not be acceptable for you" (Lev. 22: 20). If God could not accept a blemished sacrifice as foreshadowing the sacrifice of Christ, how abhorrent is the thought that He who was the Substance of all the shadows and the Fulfiller of all the types, had a blemish or the taint of sin in Him! And that such a thought might have no place in our minds, we are told that when the time for the offering up of the sacrifice came, He "through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God" (Heb. 9: 14). Was that offering accepted? It could not have been if it had not been a sinless offering. It was accepted. The Word of God declares that "it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins," but that this Man's one offering hath "perfected for ever them that are sanctified." That one offering was so free from all taint of sin, so essentially, inherently and intrinsically holy and excellent that He having made it has sat down at the right hand of God, never to arise again for such a work; and so complete and efficacious is it, that the Holy Ghost can bear witness that God will remember no more the sins and iniquities of all those that believe, and that through it they have the title now to enter into the very presence of God (Heb. 10).

Not sinless only but wholly good

Now absence of sin would not have been enough, and we cannot stop at the fact that there was no sin, either in the nature or acts of the Man Christ Jesus; we look for positive good, and we are not disappointed. We read, "To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin" (James 4: 17), and we find this positive goodness in Him at all times and in every circumstance; it was His glory. "He went about doing good, for God was with Him" (Acts 10: 38), and for this He was anointed with the Holy Ghost. He was conceived by and anointed with the Holy Ghost. There is a beautiful type of this in Leviticus 2, where the unleavened cakes mingled with and anointed with oil tell of the life of Jesus, permeated and empowered by the Holy Ghost, of which the oil is a well-known type. The absence of leaven teaches that there was no evil in Him, for leaven is everywhere in Scripture a symbol of evil. Upon these cakes frankincense was put, typical of the fragrance of that goodness that God ever saw in Him. Where every other man transgressed and revolted from the known will of God, He could say, "I do always the things that please Him" (John 8: 29). Where every other man had sinned, and missed God's mark, He could say to His Father, "I have glorified Thee on the earth, I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do" (John 17: 4); and where every other man had loved iniquity and turned out of the right way, it is said of Him, "Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity" (Heb. 1: 9). And there was no guile in Him, He was even the same that He said from the beginning (John 8: 25).

From the first breath that He drew in the manger until He committed His spirit into His Father's hands at the cross, He was holy unto God. No adverse will within Him ever warred against God's will for Him. No sinful thought or selfish desire ever spoiled the fragrance of His life; there was no fly in that sweet ointment. He was the well-beloved Son in whom was the Father's full delight, doing always the things that pleased Him. He was in the world that reeked with moral putrefaction, surrounded by sin, hated by sinners, assailed by the devil and tested by every trial and He suffered as no other man had suffered or could suffer because of it all;

"Yet spotless, undefiled and pure

Our great Redeemer stood;

While Satan's fiery darts He bore,

And did resist to blood."

The more deeply the life of Jesus is studied, the more impressive does His holy dependence upon God and His obedience to His Word and will appear. And He was obedient without murmuring, though the will of God involved Him in a life of suffering and a death of shame. His heart went out with all that He did. This is beautifully set forth in Isaiah 50, where the Spirit of Christ speaks in the prophet, saying, "The Lord God hath given Me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: He wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth My ear to hear as the learned. The Lord God hath opened Mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not My face from shame and spitting." In this connection I would quote a beautiful series of the Lord's own sayings that we might contemplate them with wonder and joy.

"My meat and drink is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work" (John 4: 34).

"I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent Me" (John 5: 30).

"I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me" (John 6: 38).

"The living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father" (John 6: 57).

"I and My Father are One."

"Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me. And I knew that Thou hearest Me always" (John 11: 41).

"The Father which sent Me, He gave Me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that His commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto Me, so I speak" (John 12: 49, 50).

"That the world may know that I love the Father: and as the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do" (John 14: 31).

"I have kept My Father's commandments, and abide in His love" (John 15: 10).

"I have glorified Thee on the earth; I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do" (John 17: 4).

"It is finished" (John 19: 30).

I might quote many more of these sayings of His, but these are enough to prove to us that He was "the blessed Man" of Psalm 1, that walked not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the scornful. But His delight was in the law of the Lord, and in His law did He meditate day and night. In nature and life, in thought and word and deed, in spirit, soul and body He was always and altogether the holy One of God.

Finally think of the testimony that was borne to Him when He was condemned as a malefactor to a cross of shame. Judas the traitor said, "I have betrayed innocent blood." Pilate the judge said, "Behold, I bring Him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in Him," and again, "I find no fault in Him." And he saith unto them the third time, "Why, what evil hath He done? I find no cause of death in Him." The dying thief said, "This Man hath done nothing amiss," and the centurion who carried out the execution exclaimed, "Certainly this was a righteous Man," and again, "Truly this was the Son of God."

Chapter 5

The Temptations of the Lord Jesus: What Their Character Was

"The righteous and holy Man, the Son of God, enjoying the privileges proper to such a one, He must undergo the trial of those devices through which the first Adam fell. It is His spiritual condition which is tested. To maintain His position He must have no other will than that of His Father, and fulfil it whatever might be the consequences to Himself. He must fulfil it in the midst of all the difficulties, the privations, the isolation, the desert where Satan's power was, which might tempt Him to follow an easier path than that which should only be for the glory of His Father. He must renounce all the rights that belonged to His own Person, save as He should receive them from God, yielding them up to Him with a perfect trust." — J. N. Darby.

Some people do not seem able to understand any other sort of temptation than the incitement to do evil, and they argue that temptation can have neither force nor meaning to a man unless there is within him the desire, or at least the liability to yield. We are all familiar with that character of temptation, and it is recognised in the Scriptures, where we read, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man: but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lusts and enticed" (James 1: 13, 14). Yet we are also told in the same Scriptures, "God did tempt Abraham" when He bade him offer up Isaac (Gen. 22: 1). This must have been some other kind of temptation than that of which James speaks; it was certainly not an enticement to do evil; it could not have been, for it is as impossible that God should tempt a man in that way, as it is impossible for Him to lie. It was a testing of what was in Abraham; his faith was put into the crucible and it came out of it, as we know, as gold tried by the fire. And this character of temptation is spoken of more often in the Scriptures than that of enticement to sin.

The two kinds of temptation

There are two kinds of temptation. Peter speaks of both. He says, "He that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin" (1 Peter 4: 1). That means that when the enticement to sin assails the Christian, instead of gratifying the desire within that answers to the temptation without, he resists it, and suffers in the flesh. He says, "No, Christ suffered for my sins. I will not allow and gratify that which caused Him to suffer the Just for the unjust to bring me to God." But in 1 Peter 1: 6, 7, he speaks of "manifold temptations"; these are not enticements to do evil, but the trial of the Christian's faith. They are tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, perils, sword, pain, bereavement, tears and other burdens and vicissitudes of life (Rom. 8: 35), by which Christians are tested, and which discover whether God is greater to them than their sorrows and adversities, and nearer to them than their circumstances, and whether they can wholly trust in Him at all times. Plainly, then, temptation is often used in Scripture when enticement to do evil is not the subject at all. Enticement, if yielded to, betrays the bad that is in us, but this other kind of temptation tests us and brings out the good if we really rely upon God, or it may reveal to us our self-confidence and folly, as it did in Peter's case.

Because people do not distinguish between these two kinds of temptation they argue that since the Scripture says that the Lord Jesus "was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 2: 18; Heb. 4: 15) — He had to resist the assaults from without, and to watch a traitor within, though He ever fought this two-fold battle successfully. We have heard it said by earnest though unenlightened Christians that in their conflicts with evil they have been comforted by the thought that the Lord had to struggle as they struggle, and that because He overcame in the struggle so may they hope to do. He did indeed overcome in every temptation, but the temptations were entirely from without and never from within as ours so often are; and they certainly may be more than conquerors through Him that loved them, but it will be on other ground entirely from that that they suppose.

The Lord tempted apart from sin

This popular teaching is not the truth. It means that there was liability in the Lord to sin even though He did not yield. Such a view of Him is not found in Scripture; it is false; it is derogatory to His holy person and damaging to the faith of His saints. This false idea is chiefly built upon the passage already quoted from Hebrews 4: 15; but there is no doubt on the part of those who are able to judge in these matters that the words, "yet without sin," in the Authorised Version, are a faulty translation and should be "sin apart," or "apart from sin." Those who have a Scofield Reference Bible will find it so given in the margin; see also J. N. Darby's New Translation. He was tried by every kind of temptation except that kind. He was never enticed as we are, for there was nothing within Him that answered to sin without, except holy suffering because of it. Our Saviour, High Priest and Leader was and must ever be beyond the possibility of sin. This is the truth that must be emphasised.

The difficulty that some find in understanding any other sort of temptation than enticement to sin may be because they have known no other. Their conflicts have only been with the evil that is within them, the conflict described in Romans 7. They have hardly started on the heavenly pilgrimage, and know little or nothing of the trials of the race of faith: of the discouragements and difficulties of it, and the assaults of Satan in his endeavours to drive those who are in it back from it or turn aside into an easier path. But it is this that is in view in the Hebrew Epistle where we read so much of the way the Lord endured temptation. Christians are not there viewed as struggling in the Slough of Despond, they have got beyond that, and are pilgrims, and warriors, and worshippers; partakers of the heavenly calling, leaving the world behind them and pressing onward to the city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

Now Jesus is the author and finisher of this way of faith. He began at the beginning of it and trod every step of it to its completion, and He knows every trial and difficulty in it, and how Satan besets with many wiles and threatenings those who are following Him in it, for He has experienced them all, and was tempted in all points on that road and in that life of faith, apart from sin, and consequently He is able to sympathise with them and succour them in their hours of weakness and distress and in every time of need.

I quote from Lectures on Hebrews, by S. Ridout: "We read of one of Bunyan's characters that at the close of his life said, wherever he had found the footprints of the Lord Jesus, there he had coveted to put his feet. How beautiful that! but sweeter far is the thought that our blessed Lord, when here on earth, searched wherever the feet of His weary saints would have to tread, and He not only coveted to do it, but He did put His feet just there. He has gone through all the circumstances of the wilderness, He knows what all the testing and trials of it mean in a way infinitely beyond the experience of the ripest saint, for He has passed through it, apart from the deadening, dulling, wasteful experiences of sin. We pass through the wilderness, alas, too often yielding to sin. Our blessed Lord passed through, never yielding in thought for one moment to a thing that was not in accordance to His Father's will."

The Lord Jesus led the way in this path of faith and testing and suffering; and this is the meaning of such statements as, "In that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted" (Heb. 2: 18). And again, "Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered" (Heb. 5: 8). That does not mean that He learnt to obey, He never needed lessons of that sort; His very nature was wholly subject to God, but He learnt what obedience entailed in a world that was ruled by the devil, the Prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. He who is the Lord of hosts, came down into a life of obedience and dependence on God, and He was thoroughly tested in it. As every girder in a great bridge is tested before it is put into its destined place in the bridge, so was our Lord tested under the utmost pressure and He was never found wanting. There was no resistance to God's will in Him, no resentment, no murmuring, no fault, no flaw; the will of God did not chafe his Holy soul, He delighted to do it both day and night, and having passed through every test, and graduated in the school of suffering, He has fully qualified to be the author of eternal salvation unto all who obey Him (Heb. 5: 9).

The temptation in the wilderness

But now leaving that phase of temptation in which we have a part and in which we may have the succour and sympathy of the Lord, we come to the great conflict in the wilderness, when He in whom was all goodness, and who was the God-ordained Leader of the forces of Light met the spirit of evil, the Prince of the powers of darkness. We may learn many lessons as we contemplate these temptations of the Lord; and as we watch His ways we may see how we may overcome, though we must always remember that if we meet Satan at all we meet a defeated foe. Jesus met him when he was flushed with four thousand years of triumph over men. But our subject is not what He was as a pattern for us, but rather what was involved in the conflict for God and men, for Himself and the great adversary.

The Lord had appeared according to the ancient word to "preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord," but these whom He had come to bless were the devil's captives. He held them as prisoners in his palace, and was "the strong man" who was determined to keep his goods from all molestation. Moreover, he trusted in his armour and thought himself invincible — it is all described by the Lord in a few terse sentences in Luke 11: 21, 22. For forty centuries he had bound men as captives; he had forged many weapons to effect this and apparently he had done as he wished among them, no one had appeared who could spoil him of his armour or dispute his right to the children of men. The question had been asked by the prophet in former days, "Shall the prey be taken from the mighty? and shall the lawful captives be delivered?" so hopeless did it all seem to be. But Jehovah had answered, "Even the captive of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered . . . and all flesh shall know that I the Lord am the Saviour" (Isa. 49: 24-26). But this deliverance of the devil's captives awaited the coming of the One who was "stronger than he," and against whom his most subtlety forged weapons would utterly fail. That Jesus was He, we know, but He had to prove Himself in direct conflict with the devil. Before He could do one public work of mercy or speak one public word of grace this issue had to be tried.

Then further the devil had claimed the kingdoms of the world; he dominated them and arrogated to himself the right to dispose of them as he pleased, but Jesus was the destined and rightful Heir, and the devil knew it; could he out-manoeuvre Him and deceive Him and bring Him under his dominion as he had done Adam? He was to be permitted to try, and to tempt the Lord to the utmost of his power, and by his efforts bring into manifestation what was in the heart and mind and will of the Lord, and prove whether He loved righteousness and hated iniquity or not, and whether He was able and worthy to wield the universal sceptre.

And there was still another matter at issue, this second Man had come as the image of the invisible God: as His representative could He hold the ground for God against all attacks where the first man had basely surrendered his trust? Was God to be glorified in and through man? Would He be able to look upon One, who would sacrifice every worldly advantage, and Himself also, for His will, and overcome the adversary by complete dependence and absolute, unquestioning obedience to the One who had sent Him? This was a great issue, everything in the age-long conflict between good and evil, depended upon it.

In this encounter with Satan, Jesus was alone and wholly dependent upon God; no disciple was near to cheer Him and no angel ministered to Him until the fight was finished. This isolation from all aid from others is emphasised by the fact that He was carried into the wilderness by the Spirit to meet the foe: away from the abodes of men to the haunts of the wild beasts. And the fact that the temptation is recorded in the Synoptic Gospels and not in that of John, would teach us that it was in His manhood-weakness and dependence upon God that the fight was waged, and not by the Godhead power that dwelt in Him; for John's Gospel is the Gospel of His divine glory, the glory of the Son brought down into Manhood while the Synoptic Gospels show us the same Person, truly, but as "the woman's Seed," the lowly Man of sorrows, who had no resources but in God.

The first temptation

It has often been said that in these three temptations of the Lord "all that is in the world: 1, the lust of the flesh; 2, the lust of the eyes; 3, the pride of life" appear; and I have no doubt that this is true, for these three phases of the world are the weapons in which the devil trusts in his enslavement of men, and it is in this order that they are recorded in Luke's Gospel, which gives us the moral and not the historical order of them.

In the proposal that Jesus should make the stones into bread there was a subtle suggestion of kindly interest in His welfare as well as a reflection upon God, as there had been when he tempted Eve in Eden. Are you the Son of God and hungry? Surely God has forgotten you, or is indifferent to your need! Use the power you possess and relieve your hunger. Thus might the temptation be paraphrased. It was met by a perfect answer, "It is written that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of GOD." God and His word were all to Jesus, He would not use His power on His own behalf or to take Himself out of the place of dependence upon God. He could endure hunger but not independence of God. He sought no ease or comfort for Himself, His meat and drink were the will of God and to finish His work. The lust of the flesh had no place in His heart nor was there a joint in His armour where a doubt as to God's goodness could be thrust; and where Adam and Eve were overthrown and wounded to death, Jesus stood firm and unscathed.

The second temptation

In the second temptation the world's kingdoms were set before His eyes, with all the power and pomp and splendour of them, which dazzle and fascinate men, and for which they will sell their souls and deny their God. And these kingdoms all belonged to Jesus, but God's way, and the only way by which He could secure them in everlasting righteousness was by suffering and death. "You shall have them," said the tempter, "by an easy way. I will give them to you if you will but worship me; acknowledge me as greater than yourself and God; take them from my hand and all shall be yours." But those glittering kingdoms had no attraction in that hour for the holy One of God. He would not take them from any hand but God's hand, He could trust God to put all things beneath His feet when the due time came, but that time was not yet. His eyes were upon God, and He met the temptation with an uncompromising answer, "It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve."

The third temptation

The third temptation was the most subtle of the three, and the devil backed it up by a partly quoted text. He proposed that the Lord should cast Himself down from a pinnacle of the temple, and by such an exploit gain a double advantage — put God to the test, and prove Him, as to whether You are the special object of His care according to the word quoted, and at the same time convince the multitude in the courtyard of the temple that You are the Messiah, the Son of God. The trap was laid in vain, and His answer, "It is written, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God," showed how thoroughly Jesus perceived the devil's purpose. It was no business of His to put God's word to the test to see whether God would honour it or not, no doubt as to it ever entered His mind, it did not need to be proved to Him; nor was it His business to vindicate Himself before the people. "My times are in Thy hands" was the whole spirit of His life and activities, and He would not take them out of God's hands.

GOD was the answer of this ever dependent and so ever victorious Man. He looked to GOD for His sustenance; GOD filled His heart to the exclusion of all other glory; His whole confidence and trust was in GOD; God's will was His law, God's way was His delight; He set the Lord always before Him and He was not moved. It was thus that He was tested and came through the testing stronger than the foe. By resisting all the efforts of "the strong man" to turn Him from His devotion to God, He bound him fast and went forth in the power of the Spirit to make his goods His spoil; for the grace and mercy of God showed themselves in Him and He went about doing good and delivering all that were oppressed of the devil. He was in the midst of men as a living Deliverer, the Master of Satan who had oppressed them so long.

How miserable and inadequate and dishonouring to the Lord is the teaching that He met no personal devil in the wilderness, but merely retired into it to consider various schemes by which He might press His claims upon men and prove His Messiahship to them, and that the temptations were nothing more than plans of campaign that He considered and rejected.

The final temptation

But the overcoming in the wilderness was not the end of the conflict, the devil wielded the power of death and by it kept men in bondage all their life-time for fear of it. And Jesus had come to wrench that power from him, and He could only do this by dying. It was not a living Deliverer that could emancipate men from the tyrant's power — blinded by the devil they rejected Him in that character — but a dying Redeemer. He had come to die, this only was the way of obedience to God and of love to men. And it was as the shadow of that death crept darkly over His path that Satan returned to the attack, to tempt Him to draw back from that way of suffering. The horror and shame and woe unspeakable that lay before Him pressed heavily upon the spirit of the Lord, and He began to show to His disciples that it was to a cross and not to a throne that He was progressing. And Satan seized the occasion, and using the impetuous and unwary Peter as his spokesman he endeavoured to turn the Lord from His fixed purpose to do the will of God even to death. "This be far from Thee (pity Thyself), this shall not be unto Thee." But the Lord detected the foe in that friendly guise, and the temptation to think of Himself was met with stern rebuke, "Get thee behind Me, Satan," and then to Peter, "thou savourest not the things that be of GOD." As in the wilderness before He entered upon His public service so now at the end of it, GOD was the sole object of His life.

It was in this same spirit of dependence and full subjection to the will of God that He went through the agony of Gethsemane, when Satan marshalled all the powers of darkness to appall Him and drive Him back from making the great sacrifice; but He came out of the trial saying, "The cup which My Father hath given Me shall I not drink it." And so onward to the cross. In the days of His flesh He "offered up prayers and supplications with a strong crying and tears unto Him who was able to save Him out of death, and was heard in that He feared" for His piety His whole-hearted dependence upon God and His trust in Him (Heb. 5: 7). Satan was utterly foiled, he was beaten at every point in the field, and Jesus, whom he could neither decoy nor drive from the path of God's will, through death has destroyed him that had the power of death, that He might deliver them who through the fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage, and become the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him. He went down into death, committing Himself into His Father's hands, and the Father's glory has raised Him from the dead, and now He can say to all who bow down before Him, "Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am He that liveth and was dead, and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death."

And the devil is a defeated foe. He has no authority or power over the saints; he

"trembles when he sees

The weakest saint upon his knees."

They have but to resist him and he will flee from them, for they are no longer his prey, but the blood-purchased possession of the Saviour who has delivered them, and they are to share in all the results of the great victory of the Lord over him for "The God of peace shall shortly bruise Satan under their feet" (Rom. 16: 20).

Chapter 6

The Miracles of the Lord Jesus: What They Prove

Each discourse, each miracle, nay each word and act, is a fresh ray of glory streaming forth from the Person of the Word through the veil of His flesh. The Incarnation is the one great wonder; other miracles follow as a matter of course. The real marvel would be if the Incarnate Being should work no miracles; as it is they are the natural results of His presence among men, rather than its higher manifestation. — Liddon.

A miracle is an act of superhuman power. All the miracles of the Lord Jesus were such, and were the attestation of His person and mission. He had come forth from the Father, and come into the world, and His miracles were the proof of this. They were His Father's works, as His arresting and challenging words to the Jews declared, "If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not. But if I do, though ye believe not Me, believe the works; that ye may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him" (John 10: 37, 38). The Holy Ghost speaking through Simon Peter on the day of Pentecost described these works as "miracles, wonders and signs which God did by Him." They were works of power that amazed the people, and were signs to them that God had come down to them in mercy.

Modernists refuse to accept the miraculous. They hold that there are "laws of nature" that are immutable and cannot be overruled or suspended, and that what appeared to be miracles in former days were simply the operations of certain of these laws which were unknown to the majority of people at the time. They would instance the fact that the solemn tramp of the soldiers' feet at the funeral of King George was heard in the uttermost ends of the earth as plainly as in the streets of London. One hundred years ago such an idea would have been laughed at as the conception of a madman. Yes, but the works of the Lord were not on such a plane as that; they were wrought in another realm; they were addressed to the needs and miseries of men, which were the result of sin having entered into the world. They were not a challenge to immutable laws but the revelation of infinite mercy in the One to whom all the prophets bore witness. When doubts assailed the imprisoned Baptist and he sent his disciples to Jesus, saying, Art Thou He that should come, or look we for another? He answered, "Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard, how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the Gospel is preached. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me" (Luke 7).

He who did these things was the One who had created all things, "For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible . . . all things were created by Him and for Him . . . and by Him all things consist," and amongst the "all things" were these laws of nature that bind the universe together for its good. They are His laws and must surely be subservient to Him, for He who made them controls them, they all subsist in Him. In them is declared the wisdom of the Creator. They have been there from the beginning of creation for men to discover and make use of, and, when discovered, they ought to have had the effect of turning men into worshippers of the One who created them, and making them ashamed of themselves that they had not discovered them before. Instead of which, men are puffed up with pride as though they had invented them themselves. And yet what an immeasurable gulf the ability to discover and make use of these laws puts between man and the beasts.

Whatever laws there may be in the physical universe, one thing is certain, the law of man's relation to his Creator and God was disturbed by his disobedience in Eden. Then there entered into his being and his relations with God and with his fellows and with nature what had not been there before. "By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin; and death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Rom. 5: 1) "The law of sin and death" (Rom. 8) began then to exercise its inexorable power in the lives of men; they were affected by it spiritually, morally and physically. Tears, death, sorrow, crying and pain (Rev. 21: 4), as well as enmity against God, and the curse which fell upon the whole earth, were the result of this invasion of man's life by sin; these things affect him in this life, and "after this the judgment." It was to this state of things that the Lord addressed Himself when He came into the world. The object of His coming was to deliver men from all oppression; to reveal what God is in His very nature; to restore the broken relationship with God, and to bring men back into full suitability to God, as the Scriptures declare, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them" (2 Cor. 5: 19). If miracles were a means to this end, which was God's great purpose, what power could prevent them? This reconciling men to God was the greatest of all miracles.

It is against the intervention of God for the blessing of men that modernism opposes its subtle forces. And with this in view it must explain away the miracles. I give an instance of this. In a paper entitled "The Spirit of God and the Healing of Disease" appearing, regrettably enough, in an evangelical magazine, we are treated to the following: —

"It is recorded by St. Luke in Ch. 13. A woman came to the synagogue suffering from an infirmity or weakness. The complaint was of long standing eighteen years. Jesus described her as a daughter of Abraham whom Satan had bound. With our present knowledge we should say, 'In the grip of a false idea, making weakness instead of health God's will for her.'

The cure was not easy even for Jesus. When He saw her, He called her and said, 'Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.' But she was not cured. Then Jesus evidently came down from the platform into the body of the synagogue where the woman was, and laid His hand upon her. In this way His vision of perfect health inspired her. His mighty faith overcame her timidity and she was healed."

Passing over the obvious distortion of the Divinely-given record, which says nothing about the cure not being easy, nor the woman not being cured at the word of the Lord, nor His having to step down from the platform to accomplish it — to that which is worse, we must conclude, if we accept this author's view, that we, with our present knowledge, know more than the Lord did about infirmity and disease, and that what He accomplished in the healing of the woman He did as a clever psychologist or Christian Scientist and not as the Sovereign Lord, "the Son of God, manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3: 8).

It is all of one piece with the general attack upon the glory and the person of our Lord, His infallibility and omniscience, and upon the character of His mission to men. It is worse than that. If the Lord wrought His miracles by suggestion, and by using powers that are available to any who care to exercise them and not by Divine power, He must have known this, and consequently He was a deceiver when He said, "the works that I do in My Father's Name, they bear witness of Me" (John 10: 25). "The Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works . . . believe Me for the very works' sake" (John 14: 10, 11).

All the Lord's miracles were works of mercy, with the exception of the cursing of the fig tree, and some great significance lay behind that act. It was with the fig leaves that Adam and Eve endeavoured to clothe their nakedness after their disobedience and fall in Eden, and the Jews' religion had degenerated into the effort to secure by ritual and works of the law a covering for their moral and spiritual nakedness, while remaining alienated from God and disobedient to Him. That whole system of the Jews' religion that had no room for Christ and refused to yield to Him the glory that was His due, was condemned by God, as are all the efforts of men to cover their sin and obtain righteousness by works. We, who believe the Scriptures, know that the only covering for sin and the souls of sinners is atonement by blood. The word translated atonement in the Scriptures means, a covering. I suggest that the cursing of the fig tree was a symbolical act, teaching us these great and fundamental facts. The time and circumstances in which it was done seem to confirm this.

The beginning of His miracles was in Cana of Galilee, and by it He manifested His glory — "The people which sat in darkness saw a great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light sprang up" — and His disciples believed on Him. It was a remarkable miracle, this turning the water into wine at the marriage feast. He had ordained the marriage tie at the beginning, and though it had become sadly marred by sin, He hallowed it by His presence. They were not great or rich, this couple who called Jesus to their marriage; indeed the fact that they had no wine would indicate that they were very poor; but Jesus was the Friend of the poor, as He is to this day, and He manifested His glory by caring for them in their need and raising the joy of their marriage day to a level they could not have known if He had not been there. "He provided a fit accompaniment, provided it of the best, and in such large measure as has alarmed and amazed the moralist. The quality and the greatness of the gift were worthy of God; and we see the generosity all the more clearly when we remember that this bountiful Creator had a little while before refused to create bread to relieve Himself of hunger." (Nicholl.)

The glory that began to shine at Cana shed a greater brightness at the close of those eventful years, when His foes pressed about Him to arrest Him. Malchus, the servant of the high priest, would hold a commission from his master to go with Judas into the garden and lead the multitude that went out to capture the Lord. How astonished Peter must have been when he saw Judas step out of the crowd and put the traitor-kiss upon his Lord. He did not know how to deal with Judas, but he had no hesitation as to how to treat Malchus, when he, vaunting his temporary authority, laid hands upon the Lord, and in the name of the high priest directed the band to make Him prisoner. At such audacity Peter's indignation flamed hotly, and drawing his sword, he aimed one mighty blow at the dastard, meaning to lay him dead at his feet, cleft through the skull.

It was new work for the fisherman, he had not been trained to wield a sword, and his misdirected energy only resulted in the loss of an ear to Malchus, and the exposure of his own impetuous folly, and, shall we add, his true love for his Master. But there was yet another result. The Lord had said, "I must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day: the night cometh when no man can work. As long as I am in the world I am the light of the world." The gloom of night was gathering thickly upon the world, but He was still its light, and there was one more work of mercy that He must do before the devil and men had their way, a work not to be wrought upon a friend but upon a foe, who had come against Him with murder in his heart. Hence, with a word of gentle rebuke to Peter, He stretched forth His hand and touched the severed ear and healed it. Here was the miracle of all miracles, of good triumphing over evil, of Divine and infinite mercy pouring out itself upon men in the very height and venom of their sin.

"Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business" are the first words that are recorded as having come from His mouth in the Gospel of Luke, in which Gospel alone is the healing of the ear recorded. That business was blessing and not judgment; it was healing and not a sword. The audacity of Malchus and the impetuosity of Peter only served as an opportunity for the continued goodness that was in Him, and, having done that work, He submitted Himself to His foes, and they bound with cords His hands that had only been stretched out to bless, and led Him away to mockery and shame and crucifixion.

The works of the Lord were such as no other man did (John 15: 24) and they left those who saw them without excuse. What wonderful works they were! but the way in which they were done was even more wonderful than the works. And how the hearts of those who were the subjects of them must have been moved by them, unless they remained dead in spite of them. Consider what the feelings of the leper must have been when the Lord, moved with compassion, stretched forth His hand and laid it upon him saying, "I will, be thou clean." Could any other man have done that? If the leper had come near to Peter, he would have cried, "Keep away from me." If he had approached to John, he would have said, "Away, don't come near to me." The leper's touch would have contaminated any other man, but the hand and word of Jesus drove the foul disease away. What must have been the feelings of Jairus and his wife when the Lord took their dead daughter by the hand and said, "Maid, arise," and showed, not His power only, but His consideration for the child when He commanded them to give her meat. Think of His care for the people who were faint by the way, when He provided them with such a meal as they had never had before, and that out of five loaves and two small fishes. Yet, though He created by His divine power, He would permit no waste. The fragments left over from that meal must be gathered up for another.

Stand by and behold Him when He said to the widowed woman, bereaved of her only son, "Weep not," and then, turning to the dead son, said, "Young man, I say unto thee, arise." He might have claimed the life and service of the young man, and added, "Follow Me," but He did not, He delivered him to his mother. What heart could have remained unmoved that saw His cheeks wet with tears as Mary of Bethany bowed down in her sorrow at His feet or remained unthrilled with a hitherto unfelt triumph when He cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth." We can easily conceive the astonishment and excitement of the crowd when the dead man answered that loud command and came forth from his tomb but Jesus was not excited. His quiet word to those that stood by to loose him from the grave clothes and let him go, showed how calm He was, and how considerate for Lazarus in his strange circumstances. It is not easy to say whether the compassion of His heart or the power of His word, or His gentle consideration for His friend would command the greatest admiration on that great occasion.

While the people confessed, "He hath done all things well," the motive behind the works they did not understand. Even His brethren misjudged Him: they said to Him, "There is no man that doeth anything in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If Thou do these things, show Thyself to the world." They could not understand One who sought not His own glory and would not have the honour that comes from men, and who did the works only that they might believe that the Father had sent Him, for beyond the deliverance from their physical sufferings was the need of souls of the knowledge of God. Yet His glory could not be hid, it shone in the works that He did, for if they were the Father's works, who could do these but the Son? His works bore witness to the fact that the Father had sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. And because the world was such as it was, only the Father's sent One could be its Saviour, and having come, He must of necessity work miracles in it, for God is love.

We might rightly have challenged His claim to have come from the Father if He had moved with apparent indifference amid the miseries of men, if He had left the leper to his corruption, the blind to his darkness, and the cripple to his weakness; if He had not been moved to compassion by the widow's tears, if He had not wept with Mary, and smiled upon the children. But His words, "My Father worketh hitherto and I work" reveal the indissoluble oneness that existed in all things between the Father and the Son; and these works of mercy for the blessing of men were among these all things. They were the Father's works.

His miracles all declared what the feelings of God were towards His creatures in their miseries, and though they were wrought in vain as far as the nation in which they were done was concerned, they abide for us in the record of them in the Holy Scriptures that we may read of them and meditate upon them and rejoice in that great salvation, "which first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him; God also bearing them witness both by signs and wonders and divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost according to His own will" (Heb. 2).

Chapter 7

The Deity of the Lord Jesus: In the Gospel of John

In the four Gospels, says St. Augustine, or rather in the four books of the one Gospel, the Apostle John, deservedly compared to an eagle by reason of his spiritual understanding, has lifted the enunciation of truth to a far higher and sublimer point than the other three, and by this elevation he would fain have our hearts lifted up likewise. For the other three Evangelists walked, so to speak, on earth with our Lord as Man. Of His Godhead they said but few things. But John, as if he found it oppressive to walk on earth, has opened his treatise as it were with a peal of thunder; he has raised himself not merely above the earth, and the whole compass of the air and heaven, but even above the angel-host, and every order of the invisible powers, and has reached even to Him by whom all things were made, in that sentence, In the beginning was the Word." — Liddon.

In the history of the Church on earth no greater theologian than Athanasius ever arose to champion the truth of God against error, yet great and faithful as he was, he confessed that "whenever he forced his understanding to meditate on the Divinity (Deity) of the Logos (the Word) his toilsome and unavailing efforts recoiled on themselves; that the more he thought the less he comprehended; and the more he wrote, the less capable was he of expressing his thoughts" (Gibbon). We do not wonder at that when we consider the immeasurable greatness of the Subject and the limited capacity of man's understanding.

This inability of the human mind by its own effort to discover and know God was clearly recognised by men of intelligence in ancient times. Zophar the Naamathite challenged Job as to it, when he asked, "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?" (Job 11: 7). And Agur the son of Jakeh appealed to Ithiel (whose name meant, There is a God) for help when he confessed his ignorance of God. "I have neither learned wisdom," said he, "nor have I the knowledge of the Holy. Who hath ascended up into heaven and descended? Who hath gathered the wind in His fists; who hath bound the waters in a garment? Who hath established the ends of the earth? What is His name and what is His Son's Name, if thou canst tell?" As far as we know Ithiel had no answer to that appeal.

The modern mind is not more capable in itself of grasping the things of God than were these great men of old, for "It is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him." And if the things of God are outside man's range, how infinitely above him must God Himself — the Father and His Son — be! And yet we must know Him; the awakened soul is conscious that all its blessing lies in the knowledge of God, and pants for this knowledge as the hart pants for the water brooks.

When "the Word became flesh" and dwelt among men, He revealed the great secret as to how God was to be known when He said, "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight" (Matt. 11: 25, 26). These words from the lips of the Lord Himself declare that the knowledge of God cannot be gained by laborious and brain-wearying investigation, no matter how sincere the labour may be, but only by revelation; they strike at the root of the pride of the human intellect and prick the bubble of those who, "vainly puffed up in their fleshly minds," reject the revelation and think to find out God by their own searching; they shut out the reasonings and imaginations of the self-confident mind, which always, alas, since man is fallen, and "alienated in his mind by wicked works," exalts itself against the true knowledge of God (Col. 2: 18: Col. 1: 21; 2 Cor. 10: 5). They show that there are two sides to the fact of revelation. There is activity on God's part and receptivity on ours. God is revealed and the babes receive the revelation. The light shines and there are eyes that admit it. The truth is declared, but it is also believed. God must speak and men must hear, for "faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God." And we are as dependent upon God for the babe-nature and the opened eyes and the believing heart, and the listening ears, as we are for the revelation that these perceive, appreciate and appropriate.

In Old Testament times there were certain limited revelations of God's attributes and ways. The heavens declared the glory of His power, and firmament showed His handiwork. The law given at Sinai announced the uprightness of His kingdom and the justice of His throne. He showed Himself often in His providential care for men and as the covenant-keeping God; and proclaimed His Name, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth." But these partial revelations, rays from the eternal splendour, only served to make those who received them cry out for a fuller, a complete knowledge of His heart and nature, as when Moses said, "Show me Thy glory" (Ex. 33), and David pleaded, "O send out Thy light and Thy truth; let them lead me, let them bring me unto Thy holy hill and to Thy tabernacles" (Ps. 43) Those soul longings have been answered in a manner that neither Moses nor David could have conceived. The glory has appeared and the light and the truth have come in the Son of God, for "God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets hath in these last times spoken unto us by His Son . . . Who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person" (Heb. 1: 3). "No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him" (John 1: 18). And the Son in whom God has spoken and who has declared what God is in His very nature and has glorified Him on the earth, said, "I am the light of the world" (John 8: 12), and "I am the truth" (John 14: 6).

We are dependent upon the Holy Scripture for all our knowledge of this full revelation, for we were not on earth when the Son of God dwelt among men, but the Father sent forth the Holy Spirit to inspire and guide the men who companied with Him to bear an infallible witness to what they heard and saw. "That which we have heard," wrote one of them, "Which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life . . . declare we unto you" (1 John 1: 1-3).

There is a peculiar dignity and authority about the Scriptures. It could not be otherwise, since they are the words of the living and almighty God. For instance, they do not set out to prove that God is, they state the fact and show the effect of His presence and power, and they tell us that it is only the fool — the man void of all understanding that says in his heart, "There is no God" (Ps. 14: 1). They open with that majestic statement, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The New Testament is more than the equal of the Old, in this dignity and authority. It does not set out to prove that the One we know as Jesus is God, equally with the Father and the Holy Ghost, it states the fact and shows the effect of it. So that the Gospel which I think may be justly called the greatest book in the New Testament, opens with the sublime statement, "In the beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God; and the Word was God."

The "beginning" of Genesis signifies the moment when the voice of God called the worlds into being, and the pendulum of Time began to swing, but the opening words of John's Gospel carries us further back than that and tell us that when the first creatorial word was uttered the Word was there. Whatever may have been the activities of the Godhead anterior to creation, He had His part in them, for then He was with God, His delight and companion (Prov. 8), and He was God, His equal, "His Fellow," in all things purposed and done — in His existence He is eternal, in His nature He is divine; in His person, He is distinct. "All things were made by Him." His was the voice that commanded and it was done. That creative life-giving energy which abides only in God, wrought with divine power and wisdom through Him; "and without Him was not anything made that was made."

Two other passages in the New Testament definitely and fully predicate the creation of all things to Him. In one of them, words are taken up from the Old Testament (Ps. 102), "And Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the works of Thy hand: they shall perish; but Thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as a garment; and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but Thou art the same, and Thy years fail not." This ascription to Him, who creates for His own purpose and dissolves what He has created when it has served that purpose, but who abides, unchanging and eternal in His person and being, occurs in an Epistle addressed to Hebrew Christians, that they might be properly impressed with the glory of their Lord and the greatness of the salvation that they had in Him. The other passage was written to Gentile believers and tells us "By Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers, all things were created by Him, and for Him; and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist" (Col. 1). Jew and Gentile alike must recognise and acknowledge His glory, and none who believe, whether Jew or Gentile, must have any doubt as to the greatness of the One whom they have confessed as Lord and Saviour. He is God the Creator: as to power almighty; as to wisdom infinite; as to authority, supreme; as to being, eternal.

The opening of John's Gospel could not be plainer in its statements than it is, and they are framed by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit to meet every opposition to the truth that might arise in the human heart. Interest is awakened by these statements as to whether any on earth would believe and confess the truth of them as they were known and confessed in heaven, and we may be sure that heaven was engrossed in this same question. As we pass from page to page of the Gospel, we see a ray of the light break first into one heart and then into another; here a man and there a woman is brought to bow in worship at the feet of the Sovereign Lord of all, and so to confess that He is indeed God; but it is not until the end of the Gospel is reached (John 21 is a beautiful postscript to it), that His disciples behold Him and own Him in His full glory. On that second "first day of the week" the disciples were gathered together, and Thomas the unbeliever with them. In disposition and temper he was a veritable materialist and had declared that he would believe nothing that he could not see and handle. Then Jesus stood in the midst, and showed to the astonished eyes of his obstinate follower the wounds that He had sustained in His death and which remained in His incorruptible body. It was enough for Thomas; he was an infidel no longer, but falling down before his Master, he voiced the faith and adoration of all his brethren in those true and memorable words, "MY LORD AND MY GOD."

If the Lord Jesus had not been what Thomas confessed Him to be, but only a good and true man, He would have rebuked him for uttering foolish words, for it would have been an unspeakable wickedness for one man to accept from another man that adoration which only belongs to God; but He did accept it, because it was His right, and He went further and declared the blessedness of all those throughout the ages who should perceive His glory and confess it and render like homage to Him: saying, "Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, yet have believed." In this great and convincing incident we see how the end of the Gospel answers to the opening word of it.

The place that the Lord Jesus, the Son of the Father, has in the thoughts and affections of the Father and the Holy Ghost is instructive. I will quote certain passages from the Gospel of John which show that He was the worthy and adequate Object of the Father's love when on earth and the One for whose glory the Holy Ghost labours now. "We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father" (John 1: 14); "The only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father" (John 1: 18); "The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hands" (John 3: 35) "The Father loveth the Son, and showeth Him all things that Himself doeth" (John 5: 20); "The living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father" (John 6: 57); "The Father hath not left Me alone" (John 7: 29); "Therefore doth My Father love Me because I lay down My life" (John 10: 17) "I and My Father are One" (John 10: 30). And that we might know that this love that the Father had for Him and the delight that He had in Him were not confined to His life on earth, He said, "Father . . . Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world" (John 17: 24).

But now that He has gone back to the Father we learn that the Holy Ghost has come from thence to bear witness to Him. As the Father once looked down upon Him, so now the Holy Ghost looks up to Him, and would turn the eyes of all His disciples in the same direction. We read, "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My Name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you" (John 14: 26). "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me" (John 15: 26). "Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak: and He will show you things to come.

He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are Mine: therefore said I, that He shall take of Mine, and shall show it unto you" (John 16: 13-15).

The revelation of God is complete, and we know God now as Father, Son and Holy Ghost: three Persons yet one God. It was this that came into full manifestation when Jesus was here, for "in Him all the fulness (of the Godhead) was pleased to dwell" (Col. 1: 19, see also Col. 2: 10, Darby's N.T.), and "God was manifest in the flesh" (1 Tim. 3: 16).

The Father is the source of all blessing for men.

The Son has brought the blessing to men.

The Holy Ghost makes the blessing good in men.

Each Person in the Godhead is engaged in making the revelation a reality in the souls of men, for we read, "No man knoweth the Father save THE SON and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him" (Matt. 11: 27). "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but MY FATHER which is in heaven" (Matt. 16: 17). "God hath revealed them unto us by His SPIRIT: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God" (1 Cor. 2: 10).

The Holy Spirit dwells within the believer, a power commensurate with the love that moved the Father to send the Son, and works in the hearts of those who have humbly yielded to the Lord, so that they are not now groping in darkness, or wearying themselves in a vain search after God by human effort, for the true light is shining and "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost." "And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we should know Him that is true; and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. Children, keep yourselves from idols" (1 John 5: 20, 21).

Chapter 8

The Death of the Lord Jesus: Atonement by Blood

It has been truly said, there is nothing like the cross. It stands and shall stand for ever in all its solitary greatness and grandeur, the wonder of every intelligent creature, and the pillar upon which is indelibly inscribed the evil and hatred of fallen man and the goodness and love of God. There appears the greatest sin that man ever committed and there is the mightiest display of mercy on the part of God that ever came to light. It is the place where man was tested in every spring of his moral being, and it is where the compassions of God were sounded to their depths. There man lifted up impious hand and struck at his Creator with deadly intent, and the answer of God was given in unspeakable, infinite and victorious love.

"The very spear that pierced His side

Drew forth the blood to save." — Boyd.

"And behold a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne, and He that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone" (Rev. 4: 2, 3). It is my conviction that if the glorious and eternally blessed Occupant of that throne had appeared only as the jasper stone — the clear, unsullied crystal — no created being could have stood before Him, but because the blood-red rays of the sardine blend with the light of the jasper, the worst of sinners may have a footing there in everlasting righteousness and peace. To understand what the symbol illustrates take the great Christian message which is declared to us in 1 John 1: 5, "God is light and in Him is no darkness at all." There is the clear shining of the crystal, but if that had been all could any man have abode in the searching brightness of it? But there follows at once the fear-dispelling, peace-giving word, "The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin." How perfectly that great fact harmonises and blends with the light! Indeed it is part of it. What confidence it gives to the soul, and what uprightness! For in the light nothing can be hidden, yet all is covered by the blood, it is the perfect atonement, equal in its efficacy to the full shining of the light. In the knowledge of this the one who believes walks in the light even as God is in the light and can rejoice in the supremacy of the throne that shines as the jasper and the sardine stone.

Had sin never entered into the world there would, of course, have been no need for atonement by blood, and according to our estimate of what sin is will be our appreciation of it. If a man thinks that sin is merely "the survival of the tiger in humanity" which evolution will most surely destroy, as some divinity professors have asserted, he will deny all need of it; if he thinks that a man's sin is nothing more than weakness, or a mere negation that he may overcome in time, he will resent the word that tells him that he needs a Saviour such as Jesus is; but if he discovers that his deeds are the outward evidence of a corrupted inward nature, and that his "sin is lawlessness" as the Bible says it is, "for every one that doeth sin doeth lawlessness" (1 John 3: 4, R.V.); if his soul bows down before the truth that "by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, and death passed upon all men for that all have sinned" (Rom. 5: 12), then atonement by blood will become a necessity to him and his awakened conscience will be satisfied with nothing less.

Atonement by blood is as necessary to God as it is to us. Apart from it His true and full nature and character could never have been known by any of His creatures, least of all by sinful men; but by it His ways are revealed and justified, for it is by the way He has dealt with this question of man's sinfulness that what He is has been fully declared.

We must face the question as to what God is as well as what we are. Would we have Him to be other than the gospel says He is? In the gospel His righteousness is declared and His wrath is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Could any creature have security and peace if it were not so? There are those who cavil at God's right to execute justice; would they care to live in a land where crime was strong and law weak? No, they are ready enough to support the law of the land in which they live, and to justify its penalties for their own protection, but deny the right to God to govern and to judge in His universe. Of them the Bible says, "Thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for thou that judgest doest the same things. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them that commit such things." How daring and how unreasonable is that spirit in a man which insists upon his neighbour obeying the laws of the land and yet refuses to be subject to the law of God!

Others plead that they are weak and cannot resist temptation to sin, and because of this God must be merciful. But if

"weakness may excuse

What murderer, what traitor, what parricide

Incestuous, sacrilegious, but may plead it?

That plea

With God or man will gain thee no remission."

If the judgment of God were not according to truth and justice, if He winked at sin, and were the indulgent, spineless and weak-fatherly being that the modernist would have Him be, then an awakened conscience of a man would be morally greater and better than He, and the devil would take advantage of His weakness and seize His throne. But we may be thankful and rejoice that God is God, and that His Justice will "never descend from her sceptred royalty" and compound with sin. God will maintain His supremacy and abide for ever and without change in His infinite and unsullied holiness, and all His ways will be in absolute and unchallengeable righteousness.

Since that is so, what of men who are sinful and who have been guilty of rebellion against Him, and as a consequence are lying under the sentence and power of death? There could be no hope for them apart from atonement by blood. Hence the Bible, which is God's Word to men, is full of it; it is, as someone else has said, the diamond pivot upon which the New Testament turns, and it is the burden of the Old. It is woven into the very fabric of the Holy Scriptures and is the basis of all relationship between God and sinful men; apart from it there is no light, no peace, no hope for men. If we reject this the Bible has neither message nor meaning for us.

The Old Testament declares, "It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul" (Lev. 17: 11), and the New Testament adds its witness by saying, "Without shedding of blood is no remission" (Heb. 9: 22). The coats of skin with which God clothed Adam and Eve in Eden first proclaimed the fact that a victim not chargeable with the offence must suffer in the place of the guilty if he is to go free. Abel's lamb, the ram that was caught in the thicket and offered instead of Isaac, the paschal lamb in Egypt, and all those offerings that were consumed upon Israelitish altars, taught to all who had ears to hear and hearts to understand that there was no other way by which a man's sins could be covered and his transgressions forgiven.

Yet in those countless altars and sacrifices God had no pleasure. He had no pleasure in Israel's offerings because of the character of those that brought them. "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and I delight not in the blood of bullocks." There was no sincerity in the hearts of those who brought them; but the great, the fundamental reason for God's displeasure with them was that the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin. Hebrews 10 is the great chapter which shows us the futility of these offerings. There we learn that they called sin to remembrance every year, for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sin, and nobody could suppose that they could please God. Then why were they offered? They were a shadow of good things to come, and they filled up the period of waiting until the Substance appeared. The substance is Christ; it was to Him that all these ancient sacrifices pointed and of His coming they spoke with tongues that were eloquent to the ear of faith. Theories are wearisome, and doctrines are of no value unless they centre in Christ. IT IS HE whom God hath set forth, a propitiation through faith in His blood (Rom. 3: 25). He is the propitiation for our sins, but not for ours alone, but also for the whole world (1 John 2: 2).

The word atonement does not occur in our New Testament, except in Romans 5: 11, and it is well known that in that passage it is a wrong translation, and should be "reconciliation." It is an Old Testament word which means "to cover" and does not mean "at-one-ment" as theology declares. It means that the offence is blotted out by the offering; an equivalent is rendered to the aggrieved party which covers the crime. Yet at-onement, or to use the fuller, New Testament word, reconciliation, is very closely allied to it, for reconciliation is the result of the atoning sacrifice and death of Christ. By it men are reconciled to God. "For when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son" (Rom. 5: 10). This reconciliation is realised when there has been awakened in our souls a sense of need and our eyes are turned upon Him to whom God Himself looks, His Son who died for us, and in Him we have a common object with God.

What an hour that was when the Son of God rose up and coming into the world said, "Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body hast Thou prepared Me: In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of Me) to do Thy will, O God" (Heb. 10: 5-7). We are sure that all heaven was stirred, and the attention of every creature in those realms above was entirely concentrated upon that great event, but who shall tell what it meant to God? His holy will, His glory, the vindication of His character, the revelation of His love were all committed to His beloved Son, to Jesus the Babe in Bethlehem. And to Him we must look, for the words of the Baptist are as much for us as they were for the crowds that heard them on the banks of Jordan, "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world."

It has been argued that the doctrine of the atonement is an immoral doctrine, for, according to it, the innocent is compelled to suffer in the place of the guilty. But that is a perversion of the doctrine. When the Son of God came forth to suffer for guilty men, there was no compulsion but that of love. The love of God was the spring and motive of His coming. The well-known John 3: 16 would be enough most surely to decide that, but we draw upon other texts not so often used, "We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the World." "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4). "God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5: 8). And when the Father sent the Son He did not send One who was unwilling to go at His command. "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God," proves beyond question that His coming was voluntary. He was one with the Father in this, and He took up that body which was prepared for Him by God — He became Man that He might accomplish in manhood all the will of God in regard to men.

Nor did the innocent suffer for the guilty when Jesus died. We cannot attach that word to Him, for it means without knowledge of good and evil, and He had full knowledge of all things. He was holy and not innocent; He knew what the sin of man was in its exceeding sinfulness and hated it, and was Himself sinless though a Man; and He knew what the righteousness of God was and loved it, and was God's righteous Servant to manifest and establish it.

Yet He did suffer for the guilty; the Bible tells us this in the plainest language, "Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3: 18). Yes, that is it, "the Just for the unjust," and in that suffering He bore the judgment that the unjust deserved. Atonement is made by the blood which flowed forth from the spear-riven side of Jesus. In virtue of it the sinner is brought to God and by it God is glorified. The love of God and His mercy and grace are exercised in the sinner's salvation in absolute accord with His holiness, righteousness, justice and truth; the majesty of His throne is upheld and His heart flows out in blessing to men; He is a just God and yet a Saviour.

There is the Godward aspect of atonement and the usward who believe aspect of it. The Godward aspect of it is propitiation, which is brought out in Romans 3: 25. It was typified in the sin-offering that was consumed without the camp of Israel on the great day of Atonement. The fact that it was consumed outside the camp indicated in figure God's abhorrence of sin, and the great anti-type of that comes out in those solemn words, "He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. 5: 21). Here, we must confess, is a holy mystery, as deep and impenetrable as was the darkness that for three hours enveloped the cross. But having taken the sinner's place Jesus endured the judgment that was against the sinner, even to being forsaken of God. There was no mitigation of the judgment for Him, but because of who He was, the holy Son of God, He was able to endure and exhaust the judgment, and cry, "It is finished."

The blood of the sin-offering that was burnt without the camp was carried by the high priest into the holiest in the Tabernacle and sprinkled there upon the golden mercy seat and seven times before it, and that was the propitiation, and that was the place where God could meet with His people. Romans 3: 22, 23 gives the antitype of this shadow. It says, "Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood." The word "propitiation" as used in Romans really means "a mercy seat" or meeting place. And God has set forth Christ Jesus to be this "through faith in His blood." There God in His holiness can meet the sinner in his guilt. God is there in free grace, but not apart from righteousness, and the sinner may draw near in faith.

The usward who believe aspect of the atonement is redemption and reconciliation. In Christ, who has so blessedly glorified God about the sin question, "we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins," and we "have been reconciled to God by the death of His Son." Could it be otherwise? All enmity must die out of our hearts as we see God's great desire for our blessing as it has been displayed in the death of His Son, and the more we consider His death the more we are filled with wonder at its suitability to the situation. Nothing else could have met God's claims, nothing else could have met our need; Christ crucified is the power and the wisdom of God and the present and eternal boast of all who are saved.

It should not be difficult to understand that the carrying out of this great work depended wholly upon what the Lord is. If He had not become Man He could not have been our substitute and representative; but having become Man, He was lifted up for us, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness; and if He had not been the sinless Man He could not have stood for us, for how could one who had sins of his own to suffer for, be a substitute for others? But if He had not been more than man, if He had not been God in His own eternal Being, His sacrifice would have had no atoning value. Who could measure and meet the claims of God's eternal justice but God? Who could understand how sin had challenged the very majesty of God and threatened the stability of God's throne but God? Who could put one hand upon God and one hand upon a guilty sinner, and glorify the One and bless the other, and bring the two together in righteousness and peace, but One who in His own Person was God and man? If He had not been man He could not have died, if He had not been God His death would have been without value.

We rejoice in a full atonement great peace fills our hearts as we consider it, for what He our Saviour God has done will abide for ever, His blood can never lose its value. We know that by His "one offering He has perfected for ever them that are sanctified," and we know that all things in heaven and on earth are to be reconciled to God on the sure foundation of that same offering. And when that has been effected the throne of God and the Lamb shall be the great centre from which streams of blessing and life will flow to multitudes of men who own the authority of that throne. Thus we return to our beginning, "And He that sat upon the throne was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone."

Chapter 9

The Resurrection of the Lord Jesus: God's Seal upon His Work

"The literal resurrection of Jesus was the cardinal fact upon which the earliest preachers of the gospel based their appeal to the Jewish people. Paul, writing to a Gentile church, expressly makes Christianity answer with its life for the literal truth of the resurrection. "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is vain also." Some modern writers would possibly have reproached Paul with offering a harsh alternative instead of an argument. But Paul would have replied, first, that our Lord's honour and credit were entirely staked upon the issue, since He foretold His resurrection as the sign that would justify His claims: and, secondly, that the fact of the resurrection was attested by evidence which must outweigh everything except an a priori conviction of the impossibility of miracle, since it was attested by the word of more than five hundred persons who had actually seen the risen Jesus." — Liddon.

Never had brighter hopes been buried in any grave than in the grave of Jesus, and never had hearts been more bereft than the hearts of the disciples and of those women that loved and followed Him. How they must have shuddered in their sorrow as the great stone was rolled to its place at the door of the sepulchre, and shut from their tear-dimmed vision the body of their Lord. The night that followed that last Passover feast was a woeful night for them, and for all who loved the Hope of Israel; it was a night unrelieved by any solace from without or faith from within, for having, as they supposed, lost their Lord, they had lost their all and could do nothing but mourn and weep. Yet there was one thing that kept the broken hearts of those women from refusing to perform their office: they would go on the first day of the week and anoint His body. His Kingship had been rejected by the Jews: His claim to it was the charge upon which Pilate had condemned Him to the cross; the multitude had gone to their homes saying, He was no king at all or He would have come down from the cross and saved Himself; but to those women He was King, and more; and though He had lost the kingdom, yet He should lie in His tomb as like a King as they could make it possible. By some means or other they would force their way into that sealed and guarded grave and fill it with the fragrance of the spices that they had prepared, and with the sweeter fragrance of their love; this should be their last tribute to Him, and then they would return — yes, but how, and where, and to what?

Mark tells us that they reached the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. Were they blind to the golden glow of that wondrous morning? It is more than likely, for a grave was their goal, and to pour their best upon the dead their purpose; this was the only balm they knew for their death-stricken and hopeless hearts; and what charm could a sunrise have for such as they?

But what a sunrise that must have been, though their eyes did not appreciate it! Let no man tell me that the day dawned as other days, or that all nature did not exult in that great hour. There must have been a triumph and a fragrance in it that never rising of the sun had known before. If when He died — He, the Creator become flesh — the sun drew a veil across its face, and all nature wrapped itself in sable garments, and the earth trembled to its very heart in horror at the deed that men had wrought, there must have been a corresponding joy when the conquering heel of life was placed upon the neck of death, and the shame of the cross was answered by an empty tomb. "HE IS RISEN." The glad news had sung its triumphant music to the ends of creation, and "the sun, moon and stars," "the mountains and hills, the fruit trees and cedars," the heavens and the earth were the glorious orchestra that accompanied the angel's proclamation.

What wonders greeted those women when they reached the sacred spot. The stone was gone, and instead of Roman soldiers, brutal men who would have found a wretched joy in casting insults at them, they found a heavenly guard in possession, a messenger from God in white apparel. Heaven was not in mourning; its messenger wore the garments of victory and joy, and only waited for human ears to listen to his story. And these women were the first to hear it, and as they heard, the silent chords in their hearts awoke to song, and they turned their backs upon the empty grave, and forgot their useless spices and themselves also, and with fear and great joy did run to tell the tidings. Blessed women, they were the first of ransomed sinners to be swept by the rapture of the resurrection triumph, the first of that countless host whose singing shall be sweeter and more joyous and more prolonged than any raised by sun, moon and stars, or even angels.

The proofs of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ are so many and infallible that nothing but blind unbelief would deny it; but the modernists deny it, they think, like their fathers, the first century Sadducees, that it is an incredible thing that God should raise the dead. The fact is it does not fit in with their evolution doctrines, which doctrines reveal their wish to be free from all responsibility to God. "The wish is father to the thought." The solemn fact of death, not as the debt of nature, but as the wages of sin, the judgment of God upon man because of sin (Gen. 3: 17), and resurrection from the dead, which is God's intervention in a scene of death, put an impassable gulf between man and the beasts, and show clearly, in spite of all the efforts of these men to prove the opposite, that their pedigree cannot be traced to a common ancestry. These great facts prove that man was created entirely apart from the beasts, a being accountable to God, and that he has fallen from the high estate in which God set him, and that God only can deliver him from the death that has passed upon him by and through resurrection. But these men rather than bow to the truth of God as to their hopeless sinful state, and receive from Him the life, through Christ, which He as the God of resurrection gives, reject the truth and love the lie. As to resurrection, say some of them, the idea sprang up in the mind of Zoroaster, the Persian philosopher, and that the Jews brought it back from their exile in Babylon, and that the Lord and His disciples incorporated it into their teaching, and that He never rose from the dead.

But the resurrection of the Lord was "according to the Scriptures," Scriptures that existed centuries before Zoroaster breathed. Take the words of David in Psalm 16 "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell (sheol): neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption." We might well ask, Of whom spake David this, of himself or some other man? Not of himself surely, for he was not God's Holy One. Simon Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, answers our question. "Men and brethren," said he to the assembled Jews, "let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God has sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, He would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; he seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that His soul was not left in hell (hades), neither His flesh did see corruption. This Jesus hath God raised up whereof we all are witnesses" (Acts 2: 29-32).

The resurrection of Christ from the dead which we have most surely believed was predicted by the prophets in the Scriptures and proclaimed by the Apostles who were chosen of the Lord to be the witnesses of it. How interesting and convincing are these witnesses cited by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. The women are not called, for their evidence in those days would not have greatly counted, but says Paul, "I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures: and that He was seen of Cephas." It was like the Lord to appear first to Cephas; by that act He not only proved that He had risen up from the dead but He showed that He was unchanged in His unwearied grace towards the most failing of His beloved disciples. He was the same Jesus. And this fact had impressed itself upon all the disciples, for we remember how they said when gathered together on the evening of the Resurrection day, "The Lord is risen indeed and hath appeared unto Simon." "The Lord is risen," that was the revelation of His glory, "And hath appeared unto Simon," that was the revelation of His grace. His grace is as great as His glory.

"Then of the twelve." Could they be deceived, who knew Him so well? They evidently did not expect to see Him, for when he appeared in their midst they were troubled and affrighted and thought that they had seen a spirit, but His well-known voice dispelled their fear, and when He showed them His hands and feet and side they were glad, for they knew and recognised their Lord. And would they ever forget the peace that filled their hearts in that upper room, when He had said, "Peace unto you"?

"After that He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once." This appearance is probably that recorded as having taken place in the appointed mountain of Galilee, where they bowed in worship before Him, though some doubted. But worshippers and doubters alike had become witnesses, and the greater part of them remained witnesses to the day when Paul wrote of them, at least twenty-five years after.

"After that He was seen of James," who was one of the Lord's brethren, who did not believe in Him in pre-Calvary days, but that sinful unbelief was atoned for by the Lord's death, and dispelled by His appearance in resurrection, so that James delighted to speak of himself as the servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

"Then of all the Apostles." This may not have been that occasion when phlegmatic, unbelieving Thomas fell down at His feet and exclaimed, "My Lord and my God!" but it was an outstanding appearance to which all the apostles bore witness and of which all the Christians talked.

"Then last of all He was seen of me also," not on earth but in the glory of God, exalted to the Father's right hand, but the same Jesus of Nazareth whom men despised and slew, and whom Saul of Tarsus persecuted. What a change that sight of Him made in the persecutor! For him from henceforward the world's prizes were but dross, and his risen living Lord became the sole object of life and love and service for him.

"Christ was his end, for Christ was his beginning

Christ his beginning, for his end was Christ."

Need we go beyond the witness that Paul added to that of those who were in Christ before Him? except to confirm and seal it all by the Lord's own words to John in the Isle of Patmos. "When I saw Him," said John, "I fell at His feet as dead, and He laid His right hand upon me, saying unto me, 'Fear not: I am the first and the last: I am He that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen: and have the keys of hell and death'" (Rev. 1: 17, 18).

Now consider the alternative that Paul by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit sets before us. He says, "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is vain also. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ: whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not . . . And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins" (1 Cor. 15).

"If Christ be not raised," the Bible has deceived us, the Gospel is a myth and salvation a dream.

"If Christ be not raised," all faith is vain, there is no forgiveness, we are yet in our sins.

"If Christ be not raised," we who live have no hope, and those who have died have perished.

"If Christ be not raised," sin has prevailed; death has triumphed, and we mourn a defeated Christ.

"If Christ be not raised," the waves of death will flow on without challenge, until the whole race of sinful men has been swept into endless woe.

"If Christ be not raised," God has lost His Son, and men have no Saviour.

"If Christ be not raised," the devil has triumphed, the throne of God is shattered, all light, joy and blessing are blotted out, there will be no peace on earth and no song in heaven.

"If Christ be not raised," those who have prayed, "Thy kingdom come," have prayed in vain; that kingdom will not come, for the kingdom of darkness has won in the great fight, and prayer is a delusion, and faith is folly and there is no true God, and no living Christ, and we who have believed are of all miserable men the most miserable.

"But now is Christ risen," "who was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification."

"But now is Christ risen," who had power to lay down His life and had power to take it again, for this commandment He had received of His Father.

"But now is Christ risen," and now the forgiveness of sins is preached to all men, and in Him all that believe are justified from all things.

"But now is Christ risen," and has proved that He was worthy of the trust that God reposed in Him, and has finished the great work which God gave Him to do, and has become the Author of eternal salvation to all who believe.

"But now is Christ risen," and death is defeated; the devil's power is annulled.

"But now is Christ risen." He has made a way through death for His ransomed people, and they no longer fear it; they can cry, "O death, where is thy sting? grave, where is thy victory?"

"But now is Christ risen, and become the First-fruits of them that slept." Every man in his own order: Christ the First-fruits, afterward they that are Christ's at His coming."

"But now is Christ risen," and "Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP IN VICTORY (1 Cor. 15).

The resurrection of the Lord Jesus is the great witness to His greatness and glory, and to the Father's approval of His life and work on earth. He came forth from the Father to declare to men the great love wherewith He loved them; but they gave Him hatred for love; they despised and rejected Him; they could not endure His presence in the world, and though He was the Lord of glory the princes of this world crucified Him. He was numbered with the transgressors; the cross of a malefactor was the sentence passed upon Him and duly executed by the world. What was God's answer to that? Again and again the Apostles declared God's answer to man's crime. "Ye denied the Holy One and the Just," said Peter to the Jews, "and you desired a murderer to be granted to you; and killed the Prince of Life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses."

We do not wonder that "God hath made this same Jesus both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2: 36), having exalted Him to His own right hand. The marvel of redeeming love is that thus exalted He should be a Prince and a Saviour to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins (Acts 5: 31), not to Israel only, but to every sinner that bows at His feet.

We rejoice and are glad that the Prince of life could not be holden by the power of death. We look within that empty tomb and behold with the wondering disciples the perfect order of it and learn thereby how complete is Satan's defeat, and how signal is God's victory over all the power of death; and we bow in adoration before Him as we believe "the gospel of God concerning His Son Jesus Christ . . . declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead."

Chapter 10

The Exaltation of the Lord Jesus: The Answer to His Humiliation

"He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things." This tells us the boundlessness of His sovereignty. In His works, His journeyings, His triumphs, the highest and the lowest regions are visited by Him. He has been on earth and into the lower parts of the earth. He has been in the grave, the territory and the power of death. He is now in the highest heavens, having passed by all principalities and powers. He was received up gloriously, or in glory, as well as into glory. He entered the light of the highest heavens, but He entered it glorious Himself. The real manhood is there; but it is glorified. In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The body that was pierced is that which all eyes shall see. He shall be the eternal object of divine glory and praise and worship. — J. G. Bellett.

The Old Testament Scriptures hold a riddle that the Jew cannot solve. They looked for and — still look for — a glorious Messiah, the Son of David, but there are many arresting passages in these Scriptures that tell of One who should come in great humility and suffering; who should not be glorious in the eyes of men, but who should in fact be despised and rejected by them. Who could He be? They revelled in such exhilarating prophecies as, "My Servant shall deal prudently, He shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high"; even the disciples of the Lord looked earnestly for the outshining of that glory, but what could be the meaning of "His visage was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men"? It was easy enough to discern the voice of Israel's Deliverer and God in the words, "I clothe the heavens with blackness and I make sackcloth their covering. At My rebuke I dry up the sea," but Who is it that says, "I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheek to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not My face from shame and spitting" (Isa. 50)? Of course, we find the key to the riddle in the New Testament; we know and believe that it is Christ and Him crucified; but this to the Jew is a stumbling-block; he will not have a suffering Messiah and abides in ignorance and unbelief.

It is clear from all Scripture that since man became a sinful, self-centred creature, and death lay upon him as God's judgment, the way to the glory is through suffering; it is "he that humbleth himself that is exalted." I should hesitate to apply the saying, "No cross, no crown" to the Lord Jesus personally, for all the crowns were His according to His rights as the Creator-Son and Heir of all things; yet having descended from the place of His eternal glory and become man for God's glory and our redemption, even He could not reach the joy that was set before Him apart from enduring the cross. He took the downward way of suffering to do the will of God and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross; it was the only way to the crown.

The disciples of the Lord were as blind to the fact that the way of suffering was the only way to the glory as the rest of the Jews, for when He told them that He "must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders, and chief priests and scribes and be killed, and raised again the third day," Peter took Him and rebuked Him, saying, "Be it far from Thee, Lord, this shall not be unto Thee." He had no conception of God's ways though he understood afterwards when he wrote of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow.

The exaltation of Christ cannot be separated from His humiliation. It is God's answer to all that He suffered in a world dominated by the devil, and as a sacrifice for sins. His own words to His disciples unfolded the story that we love to tell, and which, indeed, had been the burden of all Scripture, "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things," He said, "and to enter into His glory," and Peter took up the same theme and enlarged upon it in his Pentecostal witness, "Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye crucified, both Lord and Christ." And Paul gives the full measure of that exaltation, as the consequence of the descent from Godhead glory to the shame of the cross. "Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow: of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2: 9-11).

That Christ is in heaven, a real living man, raised up from the dead, is fundamental to our faith and must be maintained and proclaimed. The Scriptures are so definite about it, that it may seem needless to stress it, but the fact is that multitudes have no knowledge of it at all, they think of Him as a spirit, and not as a man having flesh and bones (Luke 24: 39). A young man, a true but unstable Christian, said to me after we had listened to an address on the exaltation of the Lord, "I never knew that Christ was a real, living man in heaven before, I always thought that He was a spirit." I need not say that the knowledge he gained that day changed his life. I think it would be right to say that even as the disciples of the Lord during His life with them thought only of the glory, and in spite of His own words, had no thought of the sufferings, for they were "slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken"; so now many sincere Christians think only of the sufferings and do not realise the glory to which Christ has been exalted; they sing, "Simply to Thy cross I cling," and have a very feeble conception of Christ "crowned with glory and honour" at the right hand of the Majesty on high. But our faith is not complete without this, it is the crown of it, and a full, robust and joyful Christian life is impossible if it is not known.

From whichever way we view the ways and counsels of God, whether for His own glory, the blessing of men, or the overthrow of all evil, we see that the exaltation of Christ is a necessity. Take these ways of God on their most simple and elementary ground; that of our blessing. The answer to the challenge, "Who can lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" is "It is God that justifieth." But everything that He does must be according to eternal justice, and how can He justify the ungodly? The answer is "It is Christ that died"; by His death a full expiation was made for all our offences. But how do we know that? "Yea, rather, that is risen again." His resurrection is God's seal upon the value of His death; the proof that the price paid in it was sufficient. Had it not been, death would have held Him as its prey for ever and even the power of God could not have raised Him. But there is more than resurrection. "Who is even at the right hand of God." His exaltation is the declaration of God's entire satisfaction and delight in His work which He accomplished for us. The believer's Substitute and Representative is at the right hand of God. Could He have been there if one sin had remained on Him? Impossible! Yet on the cross He was delivered for our offences; there He was made sin for us; there the Lord laid upon Him the iniquities of us all. Nothing else like His exaltation to the Father's right hand could prove how completely He has borne away "sin's heavy load" for us. The devil himself could not prevent that exaltation and can say nothing against it, and consequently he cannot bring any charge against us for whom Christ suffered and died. But further, "Who also maketh intercession for us." If He died and rose again for our justification, He lives and intercedes for us that we might live as justified people.

It is in Christ that we have redemption; in Him we are justified from all things; in Him we are sanctified, and in Him we have an everlasting, inalienable acceptance with God; but it is in Him who is exalted and crowned in glory, beyond the reach of question or challenge. "This man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till His enemies be made His footstool" (Heb. 10). The value of His death abides; His victory over death by resurrection abides; but He is in the glory and the glory is the answer to the suffering, it is the measure of God's approval of His work, and the pledge of our blessing.

The vindication of the Lord and the subjugation of all evil are involved in this exaltation. Let us consider the words of David in Psalm 110 "The Lord saith unto my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool." The Lord used this great saying in His conflict with the Pharisees as a challenge and a warning, giving them thereby an opportunity of discerning who He was and of repenting their enmity towards Him. The words declare His Deity, for they tell us that He was David's Lord, but they also proclaim His exaltation consequent upon His humiliation and rejection by men. Peter takes them up in this way in his Pentecostal appeal to the nation, and his appeal was most powerful; he set two ways open to his hearers, the one was that of surrender to Him whom God had set at His right hand, but refusing that, the other was to be crushed beneath His victorious feet. And it must be one or other for every soul of man.

One most precious feature of our Lord's obedience to His Father's will was His complete committal of Himself to the Father. No thought of self-vindication entered His mind. "He is near that justifieth me" was always the spirit in which He moved onward to the cross. When one of His disciples drew a sword to defend Him in the garden, He said to him, "Put up again thy sword into his place . . . Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" And when at last His enemies had done their worst and He hung rejected and put to shame upon the cross, and the chief priest with the scribes and elders mocked Him saying, "He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now, if He will have Him; for He said, I am the Son of God," He sought no deliverance, and died apparently unheard by heaven. But He was heard. "Thou hast heard Me from the horns of the unicorns," and His exaltation to God's right hand is God's answer to that complete obedience and perfect trust.

In His life of humiliation He proved Himself worthy to command all things for God; and the Father has given all things into His hands. He has set Him "far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; and hath put all things under His feet, and has given Him to be head over all things to the Church." And woe be to those who refuse to own His supremacy, be they men or devils. God's will and purposes shall be carried out to the last letter of them and all are centred in Christ in the glory of God.

It is clear that God created the earth as we know it for man's habitation, for His delights were with the sons of men. He crowned Adam as the head of it, giving him a glorious dominion which he was to hold in fief for God. How soon he handed over his dominion to the devil and lost his crown and became subject to death, and every member of his race is like the head of it. Struggle as they may to regain the lost crown, and no matter how great their ambitions and powers, they cannot do it; all their efforts are brought to naught by death, and the crown lies beyond death. Was then God's purpose that man should have this dominion to be frustrated? That could not be; but we must look away from the first man to the Second, from the first Adam to the Last Adam, even as God has done. And we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour.

He has gained the crown, but He could only do it through death. By the grace of God He tasted death for everything. He came down into a ruined creation, groaning beneath the curse and the power of death, to remove the mortgage that was on it; He became Man to stand in the place of man who had ruined himself, and to take up all his liabilities and to taste death in all its bitterness that He might destroy its power; and having humbled Himself to the lowest point He has been raised to the highest and all things have been put in subjection under His feet. But not yet is this manifested. This is the "not yet" period, the period of faith. But faith has eyes that see things that are to come, and is assured that they must be, and has the present pledge of them in Jesus crowned with glory and honour.

Chapter 11

Our Great High Priest: His Qualification for the Office

"Christ at God's right hand unwearied

By our tale of shame and sin,

Day by day, and hour by hour

Welcoming every wanderer in.

On His heart amidst the glory,

Bearing all our grief and care;

Every burden, ere we feel it,

Weighed and measured by His prayer." — Bevan.

The closing words of Luke's Gospel are most notable. They tell of the Lord Jesus being carried up into heaven and how His disciples "worshipped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy: and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God." It is this "great joy" pouring itself out in worship and praise that arrests the attention. What was the cause of it? These men were distressed and troubled when they knew that their Lord was going away, and He had to comfort them by telling them of His Father's house and of His coming again to take them there. But when He had actually gone they showed no sign of being bereft, they were not sorrowing orphans, but men brimful and overflowing with confidence and joy. This must be accounted for. It is interesting and instructive to see that this Gospel by Luke opens with a dumb priest in the temple, and closes with these happy worshipping men in the same place. Clearly they were the true priests, offering up spiritual sacrifices to God, even though they were not sons of Aaron. Nothing but a great, and to them unexpected, event could have achieved this miracle.

It is not hard to discover why the official priest was dumb; an angel had brought good news from God to him, and he did not believe it. His dumb mouth was the outward sign of a dumb heart. A sad beginning to the Gospel, but what a joyous close! We catch the spirit of it, and share its gladness as we enquire the reason of it.

The understanding of these men, beloved of the Lord, had been opened to understand the Scriptures. They saw with hearts that believed that the road that Christ had taken was the only road, "it behoved Him to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day." He had fulfilled the infallible Word and glorified God in doing it, and God had given His righteous answer to His suffering and death by exalting Him to His own right hand. They had seen Him go into heaven and they exulted in His triumph, but the way that He had gone must have added to their joy. "He led them out as far as to Bethany" — that showed their willing subjection to His control, He was their Lord and Leader — "He lifted up His hands and blessed them" — those uplifted hands and that benediction declared Him to be their great High Priest who had entered into the heavenly sanctuary for them. We must see the meaning of the place into which He has gone and the manner of His going if we are to understand His present High Priestly service. Highest exaltation was His, His going up showed that, but in that exalted place He would not forget them, the manner of His going showed that. No wonder they were filled with joy!

We were not there when He was parted from them and "carried up into heaven," yet the fact is recorded that we might believe it, and vision has been given us by the Spirit's indwelling, and "we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour," and we are exhorted to consider Him, the Apostle and High Priest of our profession. This we will now do.

But first we must see what our profession, or confession, is. We are addressed as "holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling." This is our confession. We know that if He had not tasted death by the grace of God for us, and purged our sins by His own blood, and come triumphantly out of death, such a designation and confession could never have been ours. We owe it all to Him. He is our Sanctifier, "for He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one," He has set us apart for God, even as He has set Himself apart" (John 17: 19), and we are one with Him; "for which cause He is not ashamed to call us brethren." If we are His brethren we are sons of God and the glory of God is our destiny. This is the revelation of God's grace to us, and being received by faith it sets us in motion towards the glory, and Christ is our Leader in that homeward march; He is the Captain of our salvation. But we need to be sustained and succoured in this way of faith, for we are beset with infirmities and the road is not always easy to travel; we need a great High Priest, to sympathise with us and to succour us and to save us to the uttermost as we come to God by Him; and this great office has been bestowed upon Jesus, our Saviour.

"Lord, in all Thy power and glory

Still Thy thoughts and eyes are here;

Watching o'er Thy ransomed people

To Thy gracious heart so dear."

It is in the Epistle to the Hebrews that the Lord is shown to us in this attractive way, and it opens with the declaration of His Divine glory: He is the SON. None less than He could have made purgation for our sins, or could lead us to the glory of God. But He had to come down to us and take part in flesh and blood for this, and Chapter 2 plainly teaches the truth as to His coming into manhood. There was nothing lacking in Him as to His eternal Deity. He was the SON. There was nothing lacking in His complete manhood. He was JESUS, and what He was He ever will be. This truth as to His Person is necessary for us; He only, who is God and man in one blessed Person, could be our Saviour, and He only could be our great High Priest. We have trusted Him as our Saviour; we have committed the eternal welfare of our souls to Him, we may with the same confidence rely upon Him to carry us right through to the glory of God by His intercession for us as our great High Priest.

We are dealing now, not with His finished work of atonement, which cost Him those unspeakable sufferings on the cross, but with His present service towards us in heaven: that of being our great High Priest. His finished work on the cross was for sinners, His present work in heaven is for those sinners who have become saints through faith in Him: it is for all who have believed. We read, "Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining unto God . . . for in that He Himself suffered being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted" (Heb. 2: 17, 18). "For we have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin (sin apart)" (Heb. 4: 15). And again, "Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience, by the things that He suffered and being made perfect, He became the Author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him" (Heb. 5: 8, 9). "But this Man, because He continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them" (Heb. 7: 24, 25).

Here is a theme for our meditation, it is a theme that might well fill volumes printed in gold, but it were better to have it deeply written in our hearts. In pursuing it we are permitted to speak of our great Lord as JESUS, for this precious personal Name occurs many times in this epistle. It is Jesus, who is "the author and finisher of faith" (Heb. 12: 2), which means that He has trodden every step in the way of faith. There is not a trial, temptation, or difficulty in that way that He has not encountered and overcome. That way lay through a world in which all that are godly shall have tribulation, but He overcame the world (John 16: 33). He "endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself" (Heb. 12: 3). "He hath suffered being tempted" (Heb. 2: 8), and this because He was obedient. Everyone who will be obedient to God shall suffer in a hostile world of which Satan is the god and prince, but His obedience was absolute. Nothing, neither allurements nor terrors, diverted Him from finishing the road upon which He had set His feet for God's glory, and that He might succour us. That road started at the manger for He said, "Thou didst make Me to hope when I was upon My mother's breasts, I was cast upon Thee from the womb: Thou art My God from My mother's belly" (Ps. 21), and it ended at the cross, when He cried, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit."

Of course, there is nothing strange in a servant being obedient, it is his life and duty to obey the word of his master, but the wonder here is "though He were SON, yet learned He obedience by the things that He suffered." The Son in the Godhead, whose prerogative it was to command and uphold all things by the word of His power, took the servant's place, but He did not cease to be the Son when He did that. He "was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death" (Heb. 2: 9), but He was always the Lord of the angels, and they must always worship Him (Heb. 1: 6). Though He took the subordinate place for the will of God, there could not be any question of inferiority as to His Person. How emphatic is the word that the Son is God: "Unto the Son He saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever" (Heb. 1: 8). And in Hebrews 3 we learn that Christ is "Son over His own house," which He has builded, and that "He that built all things is God." I stress this that the wonder of His path of obedience and suffering may grow upon our souls and that we might have a deeper appreciation of the outcome of it.

"Being made perfect, He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him." He has fully qualified for this, there is not a test that He has not endured and triumphed in. Hence He is able to sympathise with those who are enduring trials and testings — for that is the meaning of temptations — and to succour them. He is able to save them to the uttermost . . . seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.

Here is the revelation to us of His unchanging, unwearying love. It has been said, that if it were necessary He would come again from heaven to die for us, so great is His love. That is not necessary, "for by one offering He has perfected for ever them that are sanctified" (Heb. 10: 14), but it is necessary that He should live for us, and intercede for us and succour us; and we should be overwhelmed by the difficulties of the way if He did not. He does this as being moved by the same love that made Him die. The birth pangs do not exhaust the mother's love for her babe; she would be willing to lay down her life for it any time.

"Yet she may forgetful prove;

He will never cease to love."

To all who obey Him it can be said, "Seeing then that we have a great High Priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities." He is Jesus, that carries us in thought down to the depths of humiliation and death into which His love carried Him. He is the Son of God, that presents His glory, His magnificent greatness, the splendour of His Person and inheritance. He is Jesus, that tells us of the tender sympathy of His heart for us. He is the Son of God, that tells us of the power of His arm. The tenderest love and the greatest power in the universe abide in Him. He is Jesus, that tells of His preciousness to us. He is the Son of God, that tells us of His preciousness to God. Since He is Jesus, He loves us so well that there is nothing that would be good for us that He will not ask for when He intercedes before God for us; since He is the Son of God, there is nothing that He asks for us that God will deny.

Having such a great High Priest we are exhorted to draw near to God with boldness. First for the help we need in all the ups and downs of life, and second, to be worshippers before Him. We must not confound these two drawings near; they are distinct, and separated one from the other by five chapters in our Epistle. First having such a sympathetic High Priest, we are exhorted "Let us come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace for timely help" (Heb. 4: 16). We are put into contact by our High Priest with the inexhaustible resources of divine grace, and we have but to ask at the throne of grace, and that succour that we need in the hour of trial will be supplied. We could not have a better illustration of this than Paul, when the thorn in the flesh oppressed him so sorely. Should it be taken away? that was his desire; or would he give way under it? that was Satan's desire, but it was unthinkable. The Lord soothed his spirit with infinite sympathy and succoured him with all-sufficient grace.

We see how Simon Peter missed this wonderful sustainment because of his self-confidence. He did not cry to the Lord in the hour of trial as Paul did, and he fell. Yet even he was preserved from despair by the intercession of the Lord. "Simon, Simon," said the Lord, "Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." Paul and Peter were the objects of the tender solicitude of the Lord, as all His saints are. He interceded for them before the trial seized them. Paul was preserved from failure, and Peter was preserved in spite of failure. Grace to keep and grace to restore came to them through the Lord's priestly activities on their behalf. We might take another illustration from Peter's experience. He walked on the water to go to Jesus, and found that the circumstances were such as he could not overcome, and he began to sink. But when he cried out in fear and need the Lord stretched forth His hand and held him up, and he walked on the waves by His support. No picture could set forth more beautifully the gracious succour that is ministered now to those who are conscious that they have no help outside the Lord. He stretches forth the hand of a man to their aid, but in that hand is the power of God.

But He is not only our great High Priest to succour us in our weaknesses, He is over the house of God, and He would have us draw near with boldness, not to the throne of grace only, but into the holiest, into the very presence of God where, not our needs are in question but where God's glories shine forth. We have the title to enter there, and we may do so with hearts full of thanksgiving, without any fear, being fully assured that it is God's delight that we should be there, having our conscience clear of all sense of guilt through the one efficacious offering that Christ has made, and our whole beings consecrated to Him whose love has won our hearts. This is the great present end of the service of the Lord as our great High Priest, and we ought not to be indifferent as to it. It is sad that we would so often avail ourselves of the means without reaching the end, glad to have the relief that the grace gives, but not pressing on to have God as our exceeding joy and the object of our hearts' adoration.

Those men of Luke 24 were in the joy of this in spirit, they do not seem in that glad hour to have had anything to pray for, it was all overflowing praise and worship with them. They had to pray later, and they did pray with real purpose, and we shall need to pray every day, but there is this other side, so near to the heart of God. He would have us draw near for His own sake and not simply because we have needs. He would have us near Himself because He loves us greatly and He desires that our love should flow out to Him in response.

Time and space fail us to pursue this great subject now but "of the things we have spoken this is the sum. We have such an High Priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens," and this glorious person is Jesus the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us, and who ever liveth to make intercession for us. May we be stirred up to know the Lord and His present gracious activities on our behalf in a fuller measure.

Chapter 12

The Deity of the Lord Jesus: In the Later Epistles

"The Son is true God, seated on a throne of divine perpetuity, and maintaining a moral government of matchless and inflexible rectitude, Himself immutable and eternal. He must remain in peerless majesty when the material universe shall have passed away; through all intermediate periods ensuring the triumphs of His church, until every enemy shall be crushed beneath His feet." — Treffry.

It is not in Paul's later Epistles only that the truth of the Deity of our Lord is emphasised, it is the fountain from which all his ministry flowed. "It is taken for granted all through his Epistles, and is the very soul and marrow of the entire series of doctrines. When this is lost sight of, all is misshapen and dislocated but when this is recognised, all falls into its place as the exhibition of infinite power and mercy clothed in a vesture of humiliation and sacrifice, and devoted to the succour and enlightenment of man" (Liddon). The divine glory of his Lord was everything to Paul. We surely realise this as we read of his heroic life of labour and zeal and endurance and sacrifice, and consider his burning words. From the hour when his astonished eyes saw Him in the glory and heard His voice as he lay stricken by His power on the road to Damascus, the enthroned Jesus was the object of his faith and love and life, and he yielded to Him an allegiance that only God could claim. He delighted to speak of himself as His bond slave; to count the greatest prizes that the world could give as the dust beneath his feet and well lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord. He preached Him as the subject of the gospel of God, and called upon men to repent Godward, and to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for their soul's salvation as they would believe in God. He charged the princes of this world with crucifying the Lord of glory, and boldly declared, "If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ let him be anathema." He spoke of Him as our "great God and Saviour Jesus Christ" and as the "Judge of the quick and dead." How awe-inspiring are his words in 2 Thessalonians 1: "The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power." Of whom could such words have been written but of the eternal God?

But it is not difficult to see how necessary it was that the truth should be stated in definite terms in the later epistles, not only for those to whom they were first addressed but for us also. The deity of Christ is the central fact of our Faith; it is the glory of it and that that gives stability to our souls and enables us to endure to the end; and it is that which is the object of the most persistent attacks of Satan. Fierce was the war that raged about it in the early centuries of the Christian era, and to this day the test of everything is "What think ye of Christ, whose Son is He?" If He is David's Son, "How then doth David in spirit call Him Lord?" How good it is that we are not left to the vagaries of the Fathers, or to the opinions of modern theologians, or to our own deductions and conclusions, but that we have the clear, definite, unequivocal words of Holy Scripture for what we believe.

The Hebrew epistle

The faith of the Hebrew Christians was being sorely tried; they had hoped that their nation would have accepted Christ as the Messiah, but only a feeble remnant had done so, and they were between two fires, persecuted by pagan Gentiles and reviled by their own countrymen. And just ahead of them lay the destruction of Jerusalem and their dispersal to the ends of the earth. The time had come for a complete and final break with all that they had held most sacred — priests, sacrifices, temple, city. What could carry them through this time of sore trial and maintain them stedfast in the faith? One thing — the transcendent glory of their Lord and Saviour. Hence their need was the occasion for the Spirit of God to take of the things of Christ and show them to them, and to glorify Him (John 16: 14), and to clothe Him with distinctions and glories which belong only to the eternal God. How wonderful are the opening words of the Epistle, "God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us in His Son, whom He hath appointed Heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." Lack of space and time prevent me from attempting to say anything about this range of glories that could belong to no creature however exalted, but surely the contemplation of them must bow every believing heart in wonder and worship at His feet, and especially so as we realise that it is Jesus, who died for us, to whom these glories belong.

But there is one passage in the chapter that we must consider. It is a quotation from Psalm 102. "And Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the works of Thy hands. They shall perish; but Thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed, but THOU ART THE SAME, and Thy years shall not fail." Who can this be who creates for His own glory, and who, when what He has created has served His purpose, folds it up and sets it aside like a worn-out garment, but who abides Himself in His own eternal, immutable, unchanging Being? Who can He be? Let the end of the Epistle answer the question. "JESUS CHRIST THE SAME yesterday, to-day and for ever." Consider this declaration of His glory. The words were addressed to Him when as man on earth His strength was weakened in the way and He drew near unto death. It was one Person in the Godhead addressing another, and addressing Him, as the words indicate, as the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, the One whose creatorial voice called time into being and who will have the last word about every thing; who when former things have passed away and time has ceased to be, will say, "Behold I make all things new." "It is done" (Rev. 21).

Consider what the effect of the contemplation of this glorious Lord must have had upon these sorely harassed Hebrew Christians; and shall we be less affected? It is He who has said, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." As He said of old to Jacob the wanderer (Gen. 28: 15), to Joshua the warrior (Joshua 1: 5), and to Solomon the worshipper (1 Chron. 28: 20), so He says to us, and what strong consolation His word gives, for it is impossible for Him to lie. So that we may boldly say, as those Hebrews could say, "The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man shall do unto me."

Colossians 1

I have been impressed with the fact that those Scriptures in the Epistles that make reference to our Lord's pre-incarnate being, present Him to our faith as the Son and as the Creator. As the Son He stands in relation to the Father and as the Creator He stands in relation to time and all that He has created. And I am sure that it would be right to say that the universe was made and is upheld by His power that He might fill it with the blessedness of that love wherewith the Father loved Him before the foundation of the world.

In Colossians 1: 13 it is said that the Father "hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love" (New Trans.). This is the only time that the Kingdom of the Father's Son is so named in Scripture; there must be a reason for it. The reason for it, and for the divine glories of the Son that follow, is to be found in the danger that menaced the Faith at Colosse. A subtle foe was bent upon seducing the faithful brethren in that Church from Christ. He was insinuating that while it was well enough to have Christ they would be none the worse off for a little of the world's philosophy. Christ and Plato would make an admirable mixture; and if they would borrow from Jewish ordinances and curb their Christian liberty by a discreet asceticism they would be gainers in every way. The best of Judaism ritual, and the best of Greek thought would enrich their faith. But the whole effort was to displace Christ in their souls and blind them to His eternal oneness with the Father, and to reduce Him in their thoughts to the level of a created being. And this also is the trend of modern thought in Christendom. Even the missionary is told that he must no longer go forth proclaiming the Name of Jesus as the only name in which there is salvation, for there is good and truth, say they, in all religions, and the Moslem and the Hindu have also got messages for mankind and they should meet together with the Christian on equal terms and pool their respective wealth. In view of these efforts to degrade the Son of God, how necessary to us is the Epistle to the Colossians.

How necessary it was that Paul should arise in his loyalty to his Lord, and in bold, God-given words declare the peerless, unassailable glory of Christ, for only that could preserve the saints of God from this deadly error in his day, and nothing else can do it in this. The truth of God does not change, Christ does not change: the Son of the Father's love is from everlasting to everlasting, and He is the Head of His body the Church, and must have no rival. In all things He must have pre-eminence.

We read that "by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him and for Him; and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist." By Him. The force which has summoned the worlds out of nothingness into being and which upholds them in being, is His; He wields it; He is the one Producer and Sustainer of all created existence. For Him. He is not as Arianism afterwards pretended, merely an inferior workman, creating for the glory of a higher Master, for a God superior to Himself; He is the End of created things as well as their immediate Source, and in living for Him every creature finds at once the explanation and the law of its being. For He is before all things, and by Him all things consist" (Liddon).

We surely realise the infinite character of His glory and wisdom as the Creator, yet as the Son He has a greater glory, a glory that surpasses all creature comprehension. As the Creator He is supremely above every creature that He has made, and that supremacy will yet be confessed by every creature in heaven, on earth and under the earth; but the Name of Son declares what He was to the Father before any creature existed. "The Son of His love"; "the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father." "Thou art My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." "Having one Son, His well-beloved." How these words move the heart, and bow us down before the Father, especially when we read that it is into the kingdom of His Son that we have been translated through grace. Some have endeavoured to explain the mystery of this eternal relationship between the Father and the Son, and have made deductions and arrived at conclusions which have been neither wise nor helpful. I will not do that, it is better to accept what is written without asking, How? For "no man knoweth the Son but the Father."

"The higher mysteries of His fame

The creature's grasp transcends.

The Father only that blest Name

Of Son can comprehend."

What is beyond all controversy is that He, the Son, was loved by the Father before the world's foundations, and that the Father sent Him forth, made of a woman. He gave His only-begotten Son, that the love of the eternal relationship might be revealed to us, who without it would have remained in the power of darkness for ever.

The kingdom of His Son is a kingdom of light, and outside of it is darkness. It is a kingdom of light because "He is the image of the invisible God," "the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His Person." "The only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." He is the One who represents God to the universe He has created, and He will flood His kingdom with the knowledge of God. Adam was created as in God's image in a minor way, but he was but a figure of Christ. It is THE SON who is the true image, and God is fully revealed in Him, not as Father only, though that surely is the most blessed part of this divine revelation, but all that the eternal God is has found its expression in Him, for "all the fulness (of the Godhead) was pleased to dwell in Him" — the despised Nazarene, and now "all the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily" (Col. 1: 9; Col. 2: 9, New Trans.). All the light of God for His universe streams from His beloved Son. All else is darkness whether it be Judaism, Grecian philosophy, Hinduism, Mahomedanism, or that Modernism that while holding to the Christian name denies the Father and the Son. For "whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father" (1 John 2: 22, 23). And John, inspired by the Holy Ghost, uses strong language of such. He says they are liars and antichrists. He is the true Light, the Light of the world, and shineth for every man, but "the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ who is the image of God should shine unto them" (2 Cor. 4: 4).

Great and varied are the glories that He bears in this chapter, glories upon which no creature could lay his hands, or claim a title to. He is the Redeemer; the Image of the invisible God; the Creator of all things, and the End for which they were all made, and He sustains the universe that He has made by His almighty and undiminished power. In Him the fulness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell, and by an infinite sacrifice He has made peace so that He will as a result of it, and by His own divine power, reconcile all things on earth and in heaven to God, and bring them into harmony with the central throne. But these glories belong to Him because of who He is; they are names and renown that none but He could have gained, but before He rose up and went forth to glorify God in any of them He was the Son of the Father's love. He is this in His own eternal Being. And those who have believed have been brought into His kingdom, into subjection to Him, and as being in that kingdom they are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God's Son; and they are loved with the love wherewith the Father loved Him, for said He, "I have declared unto them Thy Name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them and I in them" (John 17: 26).

"Beware," then, since such a glorious Lord and Saviour and Head is yours, O Christian, "lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in Him, which is the Head of all principality and power" (2: 8, 9, 10).

Chapter 13

The Son of Man: The Judge of Quick and Dead

"Heaven is opened, and a white horse appears, the familiar figure of war and victory. It is upon the Rider that our eyes are fixed. He is called "Faithful and True," and in righteousness He judges and wars: His warring is but itself a judgment. For this, His eyes penetrate as a flame of fire; nothing escapes them. Many diadems are on His head — the sign of absolute authority — and worthily, for His Name in its full reality, expressing His nature, is an incommunicable one, beyond the knowledge of finite creatures. His vesture is dipped in blood, for already many enemies have fallen before Him. And His Name is called — has been and is, as the languages implies — "the Word of God." The Gospel of John shows us that in creation already He was that, and now in judgment He is no less so." Grant.

"The only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father" became THE SON OF MAN that He might fulfil the whole will of the Triune God. His title of Son of Man is a glorious title. It carries with it universal dominion, as we should expect, seeing He is who He is, and yet the first occurrence of it in the New Testament is in those memorable words of His. "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests: but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head" (Matt. 8: 20). It was into such poverty that He who will rule all things for God came for God's glory and the salvation of men. Before taking the dominion and power, He trod the way of service and suffering. He gently rebuked the pride and ambitions of His disciples with the words, "Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many" (Matt 20: 28). Yet He knew what the result of His sojourn on earth would be, for even in the darkest hour of His life, when arraigned for blasphemy before the high priest of His people, and when "they did spit in His face, and buffeted Him; and smote Him with the palms of their hands" He said, "Nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven" (Matt, 26: 24).

As the Son of Man He was lifted up, even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. It was a necessity, without which His kingdom would have been a barren kingdom, with never a man in it to rejoice in His glory. He was lifted up as the representative of men to bear the judgment that lay upon them that He might be the Redeemer before He takes the throne as Judge. But as surely as He was lifted up upon the cross, so surely will He fill the throne, for "The Father . . . hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man" (John 5: 27).

He has been "ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead." So Peter declared in the first gospel sermon ever preached to Gentile hearers, and I should connect the judgment of the living with His title Son of Man. He will judge the dead also at the end of Time at the great white throne, for "the Father hath committed all judgment to the Son that all men should honour the Son even as they honour the Father" (John 5: 22), but He will do that in His Divine majesty. It is before God that the dead, small and great, shall stand (Rev. 20). HE IS GOD.

As Son of Man He will deal with the living when He comes. Then He will wield the SICKLE, the SWORD and the SCEPTRE. He is seen with the sickle in Rev. 14: 14. "And I looked," says John the Apostle, "and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of Man, having on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle . . . and He that sat upon the cloud thrust in His sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped."

He came into the world to sow the good seed of the kingdom, for "He that soweth the good seed is the Son of Man" (Matt. 13: 27). That sowing cost Him more than mortal tongue shall ever tell. He fulfilled the word "He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed." Aye, not only were "strong crying and tears" His portion, but blood also. "The seed is the word of God," the full revelation of what God is, and He had to die to sow that seed; and He who sowed the seed must reap the harvest; and the latter part of that ancient word will also be fulfilled — "Shall doubtless come again rejoicing, bringing His sheaves with Him" (Ps. 126: 6).

But tares have been sown in the wheat field; this was the work of an enemy, and that enemy was the devil (Matt. 13: 29), and the Son of Man must discriminate between wheat and the tares; so we read that "He shall send forth His angels and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them that do iniquity." As the wielder of the sickle He will execute a discriminating judgment. To use another forceful figure, that of the rugged Baptist, "His fan is in His hand, and He will throughly purge His floor, and gather the wheat into the garner; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire" (Matt. 3: 2).

That passage probably has Israel specially in view, but this discriminating judgment will be extended to the Gentile nations as Matt. 25: 31 teaches. "When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory; and before Him shall be gathered all nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats." It is strange that so many theologians should have interpreted that passage as being the great final judgment of the dead, until which none could know whether they would stand on the right hand of the Lord or the left, saved or lost, say they. It is clear enough that it is the judgment of living nations at the appearing and glory of the Son of Man, and that will take place at the beginning of His reign of a thousand years over the earth, while the final judgment of the dead will take place when those thousand years are finished (Rev. 20).

The Son of Man will bring in the glory and the blessing; the angels of God shall ascend and descend upon Him (John 1: 51). He will bring down heaven to earth for "He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass" (Ps. 72: 6). But note well the figure. It is upon the mown grass that He comes down. The sickle will have done its work first. The sharp sickle in the hand of the gold-crowned Son of Man will be thrust into the earth when God's work and the devil's shall be fully ripe.

We are not surprised that as their Master went up to Jerusalem for the last time His disciples followed Him amazed and afraid. Their forebodings must have been greatly increased when He said to them, "Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man shall be delivered unto the chief priests and scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles: and they shall mock Him, and shall scourge Him and shall spit upon Him and shall kill Him" (Mark 10: 33). Could it be the same Son of Man whom John saw in Patmos, shining in His divine Majesty? Yes, it was the same. There is none other who could go down to such depths and be exalted to such heights; and He is the Ancient of Days. Even John's eyes could not look upon such glory as was there revealed in Him, nor could he stand upon his feet before Him. He says, "When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead." Nor would he have known Him as his beloved Lord if He had not laid His right hand upon him with a well-remembered tenderness, and in tones of compassion said, "Fear not; I am the first and the last; I am He that liveth and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell (hades) and of death" (Rev. 1: 12-18).

The keys of death and hades in His hand declared that He, the Son of Man, is the undisputed Master of the unseen world, even though His authority is challenged by living men. But He is coming to judge the living, for "out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword with which He would smite the nations" (Rev.1 and 19).

THE SWORD must precede the sceptre because of what men are. How strange is that popular delusion that the world is to be gradually converted by the gospel, or that the kingdom of God will be evolved by men's own efforts out of the world as it is. Hear what the Scripture says: "Behold He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and they also that pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him." Even so. Amen. A converted world would welcome Him with acclamation; a godless world will wail with terror at the sight of Him. The sword first and then the sceptre. That sword indicates resistless justice: the vengeance of God upon unrepentant, wicked men. It will compel every stubborn knee to bend and every rebellious lip to confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. "Gird Thy sword upon Thy thigh, O most mighty, with Thy glory and Thy majesty. And in Thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth and righteousness: and Thy right hand shall teach Thee terrible things" (Ps.45).

It seems almost an incredible thing that men should assemble together to make war on Him who is King of kings and Lord of lords, yet they will, and such is the delusion with which the devil will delude them that they will hope to achieve their purpose and keep Him for ever out of this world. So we read, "I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies gathered together to make war on Him that sat upon the horse, and against His army" (Rev. 19). They will stretch forth their hand against God, and strengthen themselves against the Almighty: and in their blind hatred they will run upon Him, "even upon the thick bosses of His buckler" (Job 14). But the battle will be swift and decisive, for the sword of the Son of Man shall prevail, and the blasphemous leaders of that vast host of men shall be seized by divine power and cast alive into the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, "And the remainder shall be slain with the sword of Him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of His mouth, and all the fowls of the air were filled with flesh" (Rev. 19).

THE SCEPTRE of the Son of Man will be an iron sceptre and for it He has been in great conflict. It has been the devil's purpose from the beginning to oppose His wielding it. He must have understood and taken to heart God's words to him in the Garden concerning the woman's Seed. "It shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise His heel," and he has spared no force or wile that he hoped would prevent this. He was not ignorant of the times, for the time of the Advent of the woman's Seed had been plainly told in Old Testament Scripture and when that time came, he "stood up before the woman (Israel) which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a man child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron" (Rev. 12). Failing in that first onslaught, he changed his tactics, and masked his guns and advanced with a flag of truce and terms of peace. We read, "The devil taketh Him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; and saith unto Him, All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me." But the Lord knew him for the adversary that he was, and answered, "Get thee hence, Satan; for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve" (Matt. 4).

He refused the short and easy way to the throne and sceptre that Satan offered Him at such a price, and took instead the way of obedience to the will of God, and God's will was the death of the cross. He showed Himself worthy to rule by complete subjection. "Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things that He suffered." He loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and the sceptre of His kingdom will be for ever a sceptre of righteousness. But He would take that sceptre neither from the devil nor men, but from the hand of God only. We learn this from Daniel's night visions. Said he, "I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man, came with the clouds of the heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. And there was given Him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations and languages should serve Him: His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed" (Dan. 7: 13, 14).

A corresponding scene to that is found in Revelation 5: "And I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne and the four beasts (living creatures) and in the midst of the elders stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. And He came and took the book out of the hand of Him that sat upon the throne." In John's vision He receives the sickle and the sword from the hand of God, and in Daniel's vision He receives the sceptre. The LORD had said unto Him, "Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession. Thou shall break them with a rod of iron; Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel" (Ps. 2). He would have nothing and take nothing except from the hand of God; in this He is in striking contrast to the first man, Adam, who grasped at something that God in His wisdom had withheld from him, and fell into disaster and death.

God intends that the proclamation of His coming kingdom of righteousness shall go out in testimony to the Gentiles. It was announced by Paul to the Athenians on Mars Hill, when He said, "God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent: because He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead" (Acts 17: 30, 31). He is the King that shall reign in righteousness and the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever (Isa. 32).

Marvel not that the sickle and sword and sceptre should be put into the hands of the Son of Man. He only of all men who have appeared on earth could wield them in undiminished righteousness and power. Every other man to whom power and authority had been given had failed; Adam, Noah, Moses, David, Solomon, Nebuchadnezzar, all broke down when tested, and have had to make way for the Son of Man. He has prevailed and will never fail, for in His absolute dependence upon God He has been upheld, and the word has been fulfilled and will yet be fulfilled. "Let Thy hand be upon the Man of Thy right hand, and upon THE SON OF MAN whom Thou madest strong for Thyself" (Ps. 80: 17). Again I quote His own words. "Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation" (John 5: 28, 29). "Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power." "But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished."

Then will come the final judgment, which John describes in awe-inspiring words. "And I saw a great white throne, AND HIM THAT SAT ON IT, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire" (Rev. 20).

He will lay aside the sickle when its work is done; He will lay aside the sword when its work is done, and when as Son of Man He has glorified God in His kingdom He will hand back to God the sceptre, for we read, "Then cometh the end, when He shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father when He shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. 15: 24-28).

Delivering Grace

Delivering Grace

as illustrated in the words and ways of the prophet Elisha.

J. T. Mawson

Foreword

Great words and wise were those that came last from the pen of Simon Peter for the flock of God that he loved so well. He was about to put off his tabernacle, for thus he described his coming martyrdom — what should he say to those who had still to face the many questions and difficulties that would arise in their personal experiences, and who had to go through the vicissitudes of life in the world of which Satan is the god? He had had an up and down experience himself. What had carried him through it and made him more than a conqueror at the end of it? Grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He could not separate the grace from the One in Whom it is, nor did he attempt it, so he wrote: "Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To Him be glory, both now and for ever. Amen. "He could add nothing to that. In that lay the secret of every spiritual deliverance and of all true victory and joy, and with that he closed his devoted life and service to the Lord and His flock. It is with the earnest hope that I may be able to help some at least of that blood-purchased flock to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that I issue these Talks on Elisha, the prophet of grace. J. T. M.

Contents

Chapter 1 — "and Elisha went over,"

How the Lord reached the throne of grace.

Chapter 2 — salt in a new cruse,

How those who are learning that in them

dwells no good thing may be delivered

Chapter 3 — "bring me a minstrel,"

How discordant lives may be put into tune

Chapter 4 — "make this valley full of ditches,"

How those who long for the blessing of God may secure it

Chapter 5 — "what hast thou in the house?"

How bankrupt sinners may be freed and enriched

Chapter 6 — a chamber for the man of God,

How the abiding presence of the lord may be gained

Chapter 7 — "is it well with thee?"

How broken hearts may find solace and blessing in sorrow

Chapter 8 — "a dearth in the land,"

How those who are troubled about it may discover the reason and the remedy

Chapter 9 — "there is death in the pot,"

How christians affect one another, and what to do when many suffer

Chapter 10 — "then bring meal,"

How the works of the flesh are rebuked, and how life may take the place of death

Chapter 11 — "go and wash,"

How a sin-stricken sinner may find healing and peace

Chapter 12 — "go in peace,"

How the healed one finds assurance

Chapter 13 — the axe-head did swim,

How those who are dead may have eternal life

Chapter 14 — "he saved himself, not once nor twice,

How to escape the snares of the devil

Chapter 15 — "horses and chariots of fire,"

How to be without fear of our foes

Chapter 16 — "shall I smite them?

How good may triumph over evil

Chapter 17 — "a day of good tidings,"

How the famine was changed to a feast

Chapter 18 — "they went after them unto Jordan,"

How those who believe are relieved by the true meaning of the cross of Christ

Chapter 19 — judgment without mercy,

How grace refused means certain judgment

Chapter 20 — the weeping king and the way of victory,

How victory may follow defeat

Chapter 21 — "Elisha died . . . and the man revived,"

How life springs out of death

Chapter 1

And Elisha Went Over

How the Lord reached the throne of grace.

"He took up also the mantle of Elijah, and went back and stood by the bank of Jordan. He took also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and smote the waters, and said, Where is the Lord God of Elijah? And when he had smitten the waters, they parted hither and thither, and Elisha went over. And when the sons of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him . . . They came to meet him, and bowed themselves to the ground before him" (2 Kings 2: 13-15).

A crowd of young men, fifty or more, stand eagerly watching a lone figure as he descends the steep bank of the river. They sorely feel their need of a leader and head, and this man may be he. They are not sure, but the way that he crosses that turbulent flood will decide them. It is a momentous time, a time of crisis both for them and for him. His way with the river is very simple: he does but smite it with his mantle and call upon God, and lo, the waters part hither and thither, and he passes over as one would tread a beaten highway. And that crowd to a man bow down to the ground before him. They recognise his power and own him as their lord and head and leader.

The man that they acknowledged was Elisha, the God-appointed prophet to Israel. His name means "God is Saviour," and he represented a Saviour-God, Who was full of grace for a needy and stricken people. Of all the men who served God in those Old Testament days, he stands out as the prophet of grace, and in that he was a foreshadow of our Lord Jesus Christ in His present place on the Throne of Grace in Heaven, the Administrator of the grace of God to men. Only a shadow, mark you, and not the very image of Him, and as the shadow is nothing and the Substance is everything, so Elisha is nothing, except as his thrilling story does pictorially set before us the all-sufficient grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that is something, and well worthy of our study, for who can do without the Saviour and His grace? Not I, nor you, my reader and friend, whom I greet in this little book. The procession of needy folk with their burdens and ills and problems and sorrows pass before Elisha in its pages. We watch them as they come and go, and recognise our own spiritual needs portrayed in them; but as Elisha was the man for them all, so is his great Antitype the Man for us. It is of Him I write, and I write joyfully, thankfully, and with a full assurance, for I have tasted and seen for myself that He is gracious.

Elisha's story is like the garden of God in a barren land, an oasis in the desert. It is enlightening to the mind and delightful to the heart. God was there with Elisha, who was justly called "the man of God." He was never baffled. He was master of every situation and equal to every demand. All sorts of people came to him — kings, captains, lepers, great women and bankrupt widows, and they were blest in coming. He met friends and foes, good and bad, Israelite and Gentile, and freely bestowed his benefits upon them all, for the grace of God cannot be confined within any limits of any nation or class. His life was a joyous and overflowing life, for to give and forgive, to relieve and to bless, is God's own joy, and His chosen vessels share in it. Almost every phase of human need gave way to Elisha's ministry. There were limits with him, of course, for he was a failing man, a feeble vessel, and but the shadow of the coming, all-sufficient, and eternally glorious and perfect Saviour. Only Jesus could say, "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." He has said it, and His deed is not less blessed than His word.

We notice that Elisha reached the place of his ministry through the river Jordan. God was with him when he came to that flood, and the waters were subdued before him, and not one drop of them wetted his sandalled feet. How different it was with Jesus when He came face to face with death, of which this Jordan was a figure. It was necessary that He should face death and endure it and pass through it if He was to be exalted to the Throne of Grace, "to be a Prince and a Saviour" there. He had to meet it in all its force. No miracle was wrought on His behalf in that great hour. No way was made through it for Him. Jordan overflowed all its banks when He came to it, and no helper could go through it with Him. In anticipation of it He breathed out His soul's deep agony in words that we cannot forget. "Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour: but for this cause came I to this hour. Father, glorify Thy Name." And again as He descended the banks of that river, and ere His feet touched its flowing waters, He prayed: "If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me." But it was not possible, and He had to cry, "The waters are come in unto My soul. I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow Me" (Ps. 69). "Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy waterspouts: all Thy waves and billows are gone over Me" (Ps. 42). His death was a necessity: apart from it "him that had the power of death, that is the Devil," could never have been annulled, and we could never have been delivered from his power. God's love could never have been known by us, for in no other way could it have been fully and righteously declared. But now "God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Apart from His death our sins could not have been forgiven, we could not have been blest and saved, and there would have been no salvation and grace for sinners; for though our Lord would still have had a throne, high above all, for He is God, it would not have been, and could not have been, a throne of grace.

This is the Gospel that has been preached to us: "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and was buried and was raised again the third day, according to the Scriptures." And the glorious story of redeeming love goes farther than that: "Let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made this same Jesus, Whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." He became "obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a Name that is above every name: that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow . . . and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

It is good for us to behold our Lord going down into the waters of death for us, as those sons of the prophets watched Elisha descend the banks of Jordan. It is good for us to behold Him coming out of death in resurrection, for of a truth a dead Saviour would have been no use to us, He would have been no Saviour at all if He had not come out of death, for "if Christ be not raised, ye are yet in your sins." If death had overwhelmed and defeated Him, we might have wondered at the love that made Him die for us, but we should have mourned Him for ever, and no hope, no joy, no song would ever have dispelled our sorrow and gloom, and God would have lost His Son, and we should have had no Saviour, no Lord, no Leader, no One to Whom we could carry our needs and cares, no One to make us rich and overflowing with His grace.

But now is Christ risen from the dead; He, and not death has triumphed. He appeared to His disciples, and said to them, "Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself." And this appearance has been recorded for us in God's Holy Scriptures, that we might grasp its meaning by faith, and fall at the feet of Jesus risen from the dead, and cry with Thomas, "My Lord and my God!"

Those young men who bowed before Elisha and owned him as their leader were right. It was God's will that they should acknowledge His chosen and anointed prophet in that way, and they were wise men when they did God's will. It is God's will that every tongue should confess Jesus as Lord. And "if thou shalt confess the Lord Jesus, and believe in thy heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Rom. 10: 9). Those who deny the Lord that bought them bring upon themselves swift destruction, but those who bow before Him and confess Him and cleave to Him with purpose of heart are enriched by the grace of which He is the Administrator, for the great title and place of Lord, which is His now, not only means that He is set in the place of supreme authority, but that He is the Administrator of all God's grace to men. And it is through Him who is even at the right hand of God, Who also maketh intercession for us, that we are more than conquerors.

Chapter 2

Salt in a New Cruse

How those who are learning that in them dwells no good thing, and are asking, "who shall deliver me?" may be delivered.

"He tarried at Jericho . . . and the men of the city said unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord seeth: but the water is naught, and the ground barren. And he said, Bring me a new cruse, and put salt therein. And they brought it to him. And he went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast the salt in there, and said, Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land. So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha which he spake" (2 Kings 2: 18-22).

It was a new era, and a happy one for Jericho, when Elisha went and abode there. Before it had been THE CITY OF DISAPPOINTMENT, for the situation of it was pleasant, but — and it was the men of the city that made the confession — the water was naught and the ground barren. From the time that the city had been founded on the ruins of its predecessor, a curse had been on it; its waters were tainted at the spring of them, and the land about it yielded only thorns for the labour of its people. It had not always been like that, for at one time it had been called "the city of the palm trees," but that was a matter of ancient history; and yet, with that fact on record, and the feeling that there was the possibility of better things in it, for its situation was pleasant, the inhabitants had hoped and laboured — but all in vain. It is more than likely that they had reached the point of despair when Elisha, the man of God, paid his memorable visit to them. And "he tarried there," and I am sure I am not far from the truth when I say that he did so because he desired to bless the city, and he dwelt among them until they were humble enough and honest enough to tell him the plight they were in.

Some of my readers have dwelt in the city of Jericho for a long time, expectation and disappointment have alternated in their experience. How eagerly they have hoped for better things, how sincerely they have vowed and resolved, how earnestly they have reached out after a better and more fruitful life than they have known, but they have missed it. Yet they feel that this ought not to be. Is not man's chief end to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever, and to be supremely happy and a blessing to others in doing it? Then why are the waters of their lives so bitter, and the land of them so barren? Let us see if we can discover the reason and find the remedy.

First — and please do not be afraid of a little doctrine, for we cannot understand the situation without it — when man was created in the image and likeness of God, he was unquestionably "the city of the palm trees;" fresh and beautiful, and with unimpaired powers, he was capable of bringing forth fruit for God, and of being a channel of blessing to all. But he fell from that high estate. Just as the city of Jericho set itself in defiance against God's will, so Adam deliberately and wilfully turned away from God's commandment, and in that day of folly he fell as surely as did Jericho.

It was only natural that the sons of Adam should have endeavoured to recover their lost position and powers, but they have endeavoured without God, and their labours have been in vain. The sentence of death lies upon the race, as it lay upon Hiel, the Bethelite, who rebuilt Jericho and lost his eldest son when he laid the foundation and his youngest when he finished the gates of it, his whole family under death — "for by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."

In Paul's masterly letter to the Christians in Rome, he stresses this great doctrine in Romans 5, but when he comes to Romans 7, he shows how it works out in the life of the individual who has been awakened to what is right and desires to be what he feels God would have him be. What a history it is! What struggles! How poignant is the experience! We can almost hear the gasps and sobs of the man's soul as he is learning the bitter lesson that "the water is naught, and the land barren," until at last, realising that his best efforts are defeated and his struggles all useless, he cries: "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" And with such an experience as this in their souls and such a cry upon their lips, some of my readers have lived for a long time.

Now a word as to Elisha, so rightly called the man of God. He was a great contrast to Elijah. Elijah represented the law and pressed its demands upon the people. He came to tell them that the Lord, He is God! And to urge His just claims, and to tell them what they ought to be and do, and because they did not yield to God His rights and were not what they ought to be, condemnation and judgment always accompanied his ministry among them. But Elisha came, not demanding, but giving. He showed out the goodness of God to a wretched people. He was a dispenser of grace and mercy, and all sorts of people were blest by him; nor did he turn away any who came to him acknowledging their need.

There was no hope for Israel in Elijah's ministry, and there is no hope in the law for us. It is "weak through the flesh," declares Paul, who knew it by experience. It cannot make us what we ought to be. It cannot change the barren land or sweeten the bitter waters; it can only expose and show up the barrenness and the bitterness, and condemn us. It has done so already; we lie under its sentence if we have invoked its aid. It is when we have reached that point in our soul-history, that we are ready for Elisha and the salt in the new cruse; we are ready for our Lord Jesus Christ, in His present glorious place as the Administrator of the grace of God. He is the Great Deliverer, Whose compassions reach down to men in their miseries.

I like the man who spoke for the delegation that waited on the prophet; there was a directness and brevity about his speech. He made no apology for their condition, and did not hide it; he stated the case in a few blunt words and waited. He did not even say what they would like the prophet to do. He felt that it was enough to tell him the need. It was enough, and his confidence in Elisha was met by an instant answer of grace and blessing. And, mark it well, it was Jericho, the one cursed city in the land, that got the blessing. Elijah had been to that city, and left it as he found it, and the inhabitants of it do not seem to have cared to appeal to him. But while Elisha tarried among them they must have been encouraged to approach him by his words and ways. He was the man, surely, to whom they could go, for he seemed so accessible, so sympathetic, so attractive.

There are no more blessed words in the Bible than those in John 1: 14-17: "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us . . . full of grace and truth . . . and of His fulness have all we received, and grace for (upon) grace. For the law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by (subsist in) Jesus Christ." Now, Jesus was Jehovah, Elisha's Lord, and whatever grace there was in Elisha was but as the light of the moon that is caught by it and reflected from the soon-to-rise sun. Jesus was the true Light, He was the Sun.

How wonderful was the love that brought Him down to us and to tarry with us in the barren lives and world in which we lived, not to demand from us and force the claims of the law upon us, or to condemn us for our iniquities and sins, but to save us. "For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." He came in grace; He was full of it. He came to give; we have no need to listen to another talking of Him in order to learn this, for He has told us Himself, "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give Me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water" (John 4: 10). "Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" (John 7: 37, 38). He came with the new cruse, which was grace. The truth in the old cruse, which was the law, and which came by Moses, could only condemn us, for the blessings of which it did speak could only be gained and held by absolute and continual obedience to its commands, and its curse rested upon all who continued not in all things that were written in it to do them; but the truth in the new cruse brought nothing but blessing, for it was the declaration that God is love, and that His love was bent upon blessing men.

No illustration, not even those that are divinely given, can nearly equal the truth, and these Old Testament stories were but the shadows of good things to come, and not the very image of them. The good things have come now, the substance has appeared, and that substance is Christ. He has done for us what Elisha never could have done for those men of Jericho, for "He hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." How great was the love that moved Him thus! And as we meditate on such a statement of the truth as this, do not we feel constrained to say, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, WHO LOVED ME AND GAVE HIMSELF FOR ME." And again, "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh," and this happened that there might be no more "death or barren land," but that "the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (Romans 8).

Yes, the truth (which is salt indeed) as to what we are and what God is, has been brought to us in surpassing grace. It is "the grace of God that brings salvation;" and as it comes into our souls we realise our own barrenness, and how utterly beyond all hope of improvement the flesh is, for in it good does not dwell, and we turn from it and cast ourselves completely upon Christ.

Then the truth that we have often read in the Word, but never received into our souls, becomes at last living to us and in us. The law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus makes us free from the law of sin and death (Rom. 8), and now deliverance from barrenness and death lies in cultivating the flesh no more, but in honestly confessing that there is no good thing in it, and in turning to Christ Who bore its condemnation for us when He was made a sacrifice for sin. We know that He was raised again from the dead, for it is part of the truth of the Gospel which we have believed, and for us this means justification from all our offences (Rom. 4. 25). It is grace that has justified us from the guilty past, but upon this absolutely sure and righteous basis, so that the question of our guilt will never be raised again. And that same grace transfers us from the old Adam life that lies under condemnation and death, and could bring forth no fruit, to Christ, our risen Saviour, and it is thus that where sin abounded grace does much more abound (Rom. 5. 20), that now being made free from sin, and having become the servants to God, we might have our fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life (Rom. 6. 22).

But that is not all, for we read: "It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, Who is even at the right hand of God Who also maketh intercession for us" (Rom. 8. 34). He died that we might be justified; He lives and intercedes that we might live as justified people. But it is all Himself — the truth is in Jesus. It has come to us in wonderful grace, and it is this that changes everything and enables us to close the chapter of earnest resolutions and bitter disappointments, and open the new one of perfect rest in our Lord Jesus Christ and fruitfulness to God, His Father, and blessing to others.

And the city of Jericho became "the city of the palm trees" once more (2 Chron. 28. 15), and there the naked were clothed and the hungry were fed, and the feeble were helped, and there long separated brethren were united again, and the people were obedient to the Word of God. So it shall be with every one of us who turn wholly to the Lord and cleave to Him with purpose of heart. The grace that began with our salvation will not fail us; it is sufficient for our whole lives in every phase of them. And while it teaches us to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present evil world, it assures us of a new life of liberty, fruitfulness, and blessing. And such a life must be as happy as it is new.

Chapter 3

Bring Me a Minstrel

How discordant lives may be put into tune

"So the king of Israel went, and the king of Judah, and the king of Edom; and they fetched a compass of seven days' journey: and there was no water for the host, and for the cattle that followed them. And the king of Israel said, Alas! that the Lord hath called these three kings together, to deliver them into the hand of Moab! But Jehoshaphat said, Is there not here a prophet of the Lord, that we may inquire of the Lord by him? And one of the king of Israel's servants answered and said, Here is Elisha, the son of Shaphat, which poured water on the hands of Elijah. And Jehoshaphat said, The Word of the Lord is with him. So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom went down to him. And Elisha said unto the king of Israel, What have I to do with thee? Get thee to the prophets of thy father, and to the prophets of thy mother. And the king of Israel said unto him, Nay; for the Lord hath called these three kings together, to deliver them into the hand of Moab. And Elisha said, As the Lord of hosts liveth, before Whom I stand, surely, were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, I would not look toward thee, nor see thee. But now bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass, when the minstrel played, the hand of the Lord came upon him." (2 Kings 3: 9-15).

Three kings: the heathen Edomite, the apostate Jehoram, and the godly Jehoshaphat: a strange alliance this, an alliance that pleased the Devil well, but that grieved the God of Abraham to the heart. No wonder that disaster, swift and sure, followed upon the campaign, for how could that prosper in which a child of God took part, which had been conceived and carried into execution without any reference to the Lord, and in association with those who hated Him?

So these kings went, and "they fetched a compass of seven days' journey: and there was no water for the host;" and it seemed as though the fears of Israel's monarch were to be realised. "Alas! that the Lord hath called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab."

Then turned the thoughts of Jehoshaphat to Jehovah; then desired he to know, for the first time in that ill-starred venture, what the Lord would say; and, wonderful mercy! even while he cried out for a prophet, Elisha, the man of God, stood before him.

Mark well this fact, for it will be a help to us in our exercises as we proceed with our subject. We learn from it, as from many other incidents in the Word, that the thoughts of God's saints never turn to Him in vain; no matter what their circumstances, or the cause of them, He is ready to answer even while they call. "They cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He bringeth them out of all their distresses." How great are the compassions of our God!

The discord of that unholy alliance distressed the prophet; it jarred upon his spirit, which had been tuned in communion with God, and he would have said nothing at all but for the fact that a saint of God in trouble stood before him. But ere he could speak the word of the Lord, the minstrel had to be brought. Harmony must take the place of discord.

Let us turn from the picture to the lesson. There are thousands of Christians bemoaning the lack of blessing. In spite of apparent diligent search, they do not find the waters of refreshment; their spiritual life is a desert, like unto "the wilderness of Edom." Their service and religious exercises have become a matter of routine; and in some cases a burden: and they wonder why!

In the majority of cases the reason is not far to seek; it is association with the world, unholy alliance with the godless for the pursuit of things which satisfy ungodly desires. In every case it is because the life is out of harmony with God.

A minstrel is needed, one who can take up the life and tune the chords of it, so that the discordant present may give place to the melody of a life in subjection to God. The Holy Ghost is the blessed Minstrel Who has come from Heaven with this purpose in view. But how easily and soon do Christians forget that the Holy Spirit of God dwells within them, how easily and soon do the vain things of this world and of man attract the mind and heart; then the heavenly Minstrel is grieved, the life drops out of harmony with God, and the waters neither spring up in praise nor flow out in blessing.

Christ is the key to which every note in our lives must be pitched, and we must know, and the Holy Ghost is here to teach us, where Christ is, and why He is there. He is on the Throne, crowns of God's approval shine upon His glorious head, and we gladly own the righteousness of this. But have we realised why He is there? He is there, of course, because the Father delights to honour Him; He is there, of course, because He is abundantly worthy of that place of pre-eminent glory; He is there, of course, because none other place in the universe but the right hand of the Majesty on high is suitable to the One Who fully carried out the will of God in making expiation for sin. But He is also there because the world rejected Him; He is there because the world cast Him out, nailing Him to a cross of shame. His exaltation in Heaven is God's glorious answer to the ignominy that was awarded Him by a world that hated Him.

Let us contemplate this great and solemn truth. Let us contemplate it in the presence of God, and give place in our souls for its meaning — for the meaning of the Cross of Christ. In Paul the Apostle we see a man in whose life the Cross held sway. "God forbid," said he, "that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (Gal. 6: 14). He could not play the traitor to his Lord by accepting honour from the world that crucified Him. And if he remained in it, it was only that he might win the hearts of men for the One Who filled his own with joy and worship, so that they might be, even as he was, "not of this world," even as Christ was not of it. Let us take this same road, and say to the One Who loved us and gave Himself for us:

"I bind Thy shame upon my brow,

Earth's only crown for me."

If our lives are concordant to the world, they are discordant to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and if they are discordant to God, everything else must be wrong. The Scripture, which carries with it all the authority of God, shows clearly that there can be no harmony between God and the world, and it will allow no compromise with the world on the part of those who are God's. Paul asks: "What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? . . . Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing" (2 Cor. 6: 14-17). John tells us that "if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 John 2: 15). James is stronger than all, for he says, "Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity against God? Whosoever then will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God" (James 4: 4). These words need no comment, they are self-explanatory, and if by any subtle reasoning by "the god of this world," we have been led into compromise with the world, our unfaithfulness in this respect is the cause of the low spiritual tone in the soul. All such unfaithfulness is sin, and the way of restoration is by confession. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1: 8).

Other things than worldliness also spoil the music and grieve the Holy Spirit — selfish living, hard thoughts and harsh words about our fellow-Christians, an unforgiving spirit, indifference to the claims of Christ. Each one knows for himself wherein he fails, and where failure is there repentance must be. But how blessed it is to know that the Lord stands near us in unchanging love.

"How sweet 'tis to discover,

If clouds have dimmed my sight,

When passed, Eternal Lover,

Towards me as e'er Thou'rt bright."

But He will have truth in the inward parts, and there must be the confessing and the forsaking of what is not of God.

Where there is confession there will be restoration to communion with God, and the Holy Ghost will bring us into harmony with God by making Christ all in all to us. If He has His way with us He will bring us into full accord with Christ in glory, and keep us right as regards the world, and make every chord in our being sound out its full-souled praise to God.

And every word of God will then be sweet to us, and the waters of refreshing will flow into our souls from the Living Fountain of all good, making our lives to yield fruit for God, and blessing for men.

Chapter 4

Make this Valley full of Ditches

How those who long for the blessing of God may secure it.

"And he said, Thus saith the Lord, Make this valley full of ditches. For thus saith the Lord, Ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see rain; yet that valley shall be filled with water, that ye may drink, both ye, and your cattle, and your beasts. And this is but a light thing in the sight of the Lord: He will deliver the Moabites also into your hand. And ye shall smite every fenced city, and every choice city, and shall fell every great tree, and stop all wells of water, and mar every good piece of land with stones. And it came to pass in the morning when the meat offering was offered, that, behold, there came water by the way of Edom, and the country was filled with water" (2 Kings 3: 16-20).

That great army in the wilderness of Edom was in most desperate peril. They had no water, and their enemies the Moabites were gathering to the attack. No water meant disaster, defeat, destruction. They could gain no victory without water, and for it they had searched without success. God only could supply it; they had no hope but in Him. But they were a backslidden people. Would God think of them? Yes, He pitied them, and as He had often intervened for their deliverance before, so now through His prophet, who spoke for Him, He gave then what they needed, and they returned from the fight victorious and enriched.

That waterless army is a vivid picture of a vast number of those who profess to be God's people to-day — of Christendom, in fact they have no water, and without water — the living water in this case — they are a defeated people, for no waterless Christian ever overcame the Moabite, who is the outstanding figure in the Old Testament of the evil flesh with its self-pleasing and godless desires.

It is as plain as can be that this waterless and defeated condition is the prevalent condition, and the tragedy is ten times worse, because so few seem to feel it. There is no living water in Ritualism, of course, yet multitudes are turning to it in the hope of finding some soul-satisfaction; it cannot give that; it may gratify the senses, but it most surely deadens the conscience, for it fills the mind with rites and ceremonies instead of God. And Modernism is the way of the wilderness in which there are no springs; it is worse, if that were possible, than Ritualism, for it puffs up the mind with a barren pride, and robs men of what sense of need they have, and makes them despise the Gospel of the grace of God. It is a broad road that leads to destruction, and many there are that go in it. But there are others who turn away from these popular phases of present-day religion, who are orthodox, and have true faith, and yet have no freshness or spiritual vigour in their lives. Like the God-fearing Jehoshaphat, they have been lured into the wilderness of Edom, they are backsliders, and they know it and feel it.

There are others who are not exactly backsliders, who are not happy. Their faith in Christ has not brought them the liberty and victory and joy of which the Bible speaks. The fact is, they have not come into the fulness of the blessing that there is in Christ for them. It is to these joyless Christians that I address my words, and what I have to say will help them if they will hear, no matter what the cause of their unsatisfactory and unsatisfied lives may be.

Elisha promised that thirst-stricken host abundance of water, and Jesus our Lord offers to you an overflowing abundance of Living Water. There are things said about Him by those who knew Him that are very wonderful. Take the words of the beloved disciple in the first chapter of his Gospel: "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth . . . and of His fulness have all we received and grace upon grace." The thought is of the mighty sea flowing in wave upon wave upon the shore, filling every inlet and crevice and cave. Is the grace of Jesus like that? It must be, for so this Holy Ghost-inspired man described it, and he described what he had known in his own experience. But hear the Lord's own words: "He that drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life" (John 4). And again: "If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" (John 7). Am I wrong in describing these sayings as amongst the most arresting and magnificent that God has ever made to men? It is not here a question of the forgiveness of sins, great as that grace is, nor of Heaven, when life on earth is done; we bless Him for that, but it is the more abundant life, springing up in joyous worship and flowing out in constant good. Is it possible? It must be so, for the words are the words of Jesus, and He is God, Who cannot lie.

It is the fulness flowing in to the life, wave after wave, and flowing out again in rivers; flowing in for continual blessing, flowing out in victorious life and service, flowing into a hitherto barren life, and flowing out into a weary, polluted, sin-burdened and Devil-oppressed world, and healing, comforting, fertilising wherever it flows. I know your heart longs for it, it may be you feel that you must have it. May that feeling be deepened, for the deeper your desire the greater will be your satisfaction. But how can it be?

Turn again to our story. Said the man of God: "Make this valley full of ditches." It is clear that that meant make room for the water. It is not difficult to realise the stir that the prophet's command would make in that host. Not a man would be idle, every pick and spade would be busy, and everything that would hinder the flowing of the longed-for water would be removed. That is the secret. Are you ready to dig? First of all ponder the words of your Lord and Master. Do not let the fact that you have never realised the truth of them affect you. Your failure in the past and the failure of others does not alter the truth of them. There they stand in all their stupendous simplicity, describing what there is in Him for us, and what contact with Him will do for us. "This spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified." He is glorified now, the highest place in Heaven has been given to Him Who died for us and rose again, hence there is no hindrance to the flowing of these waters on His side. The hindrance is on your side. In the Name of your Lord, and by the grace that He gives, arise and dig. Make the valley full of ditches. Make room for the blessing. Nay, in this case, make room for the Holy Spirit to work. If you have believed the Gospel of your salvation, the good news of Him Who died for your sins and was buried and rose again, you have no need to ask for the Spirit, for He has already sealed you, as saith the Scriptures (Eph. 1: 13, 14). But you must make room in your life for His work and the blessing that He brings.

It was in the valley that the digging had to be done. It is when a man descends from the mountain of his pride, and humbled before God, confesses his need, that he is ready to dig. You have longed for the blessing; have you longed for it enough to dig the ditches and to cast aside all that could hinder the flowing of the waters? You know what the hindrances are, and if you don't, God will show you, if you will go to Him with David's prayer on your lips, "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Psalm 139).

But it is not your digging that brings the water. All you can do only makes room for that which God has for you in Christ and it cannot be separated from Him. God has bound up the blessing of all men who are blest with the glory of His beloved Son, and no man, be he saint or sinner, will ever be blest apart from Him. For mark it well, "It came to pass in the morning, when the meal offering was offered, that behold, there came water by the way of Edom, and the country was filled with water." That morning oblation was a type of the preciousness of Christ to God. If offered in faith it represented the offerer's appreciation of Him, the Coming One. To take it out of the type and bring it down to present reality, it means that the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord is a real thing to us. We delight in the One in Whom God delights.

And it is only as we delight in Christ that we are prepared to surrender things for Him, to dig the ditches. Philippians 2 very blessedly sets before us our Lord as the anti-type of the morning oblation, and in chapter 3 Paul says: "What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea, doubt less, and I count all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord: for Whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ." How thoroughly he had dug the ditches, and how great was the compensation.

The man who stands in any measure where Paul stood, into whose soul the waters have flowed, will certainly overcome the Moabite, for the flesh can have no power over the Christ-absorbed and Holy Ghost-filled man. He walks in the Spirit, and he does not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. He says, "Not I, but Christ." He is more than a conqueror through Him that loved him, and he becomes the open channel of blessing to others.

No longer will his life be like the way of the wilderness of Edom, but wherever he is the waters will flow, in home, office, or factory; in the Gospel service or Sunday school class, at home or abroad, in life and testimony, day by day and hour by hour, rivers of living water!

It is thus that Revival will come, whether in our lives as individual Christians, or in the Church generally, and in no other way. God does not withhold the blessing, the hindrance is not on His side, but on ours; we are so slow to make room for it, we cling so much to our thoughts and ways and importance, to self and self interests, and these are the hindrances. Let us make the valley full of ditches. In the Name of our Lord arise and dig!

Chapter 5

"What hast thou in the House"

How bankrupt sinners may be freed and enriched

How those who are troubled about their sins may have peace with God

"Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant my husband is dead: and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord; and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen. And Elisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee? Tell me, what has thou in the house? And she said, Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house, save a pot of oil. Then he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbours, even empty vessels, borrow not a few. And when thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and shalt pour out into all those vessels; and thou shalt set aside that which is full. So she went from him, and shut the door upon her and upon her sons, who brought the vessels to her; and she poured out. And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a vessel more. And the oil stayed. Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children on the rest" (2 Kings 4: 1 -7).

A moving story is this of the widow and the way that Elisha met her need. We see the need first of all, then the grace that met the need. It is a picture in which the dark background of the sinner's need throws into bright relief the wondrous grace that is in Christ for him. A widow in the Scriptures is a figure of perfect helplessness and an object for pity, and this widow was a bankrupt; her case was doubly sad, but it portrays the case of every sinner out of Christ. I want you to look at this picture, whoever you may be that know not the Saviour and His grace, and see yourselves in it. You are a bankrupt sinner, and you cannot relieve yourself of your liabilities, you are "without strength." The Lord Jesus Christ, Who always spoke the truth, propounded a parable in the Pharisee's house, in which He spoke of a certain creditor who had two debtors, who could pay him not a cent. God is that Creditor, and we are those debtors. You may not be the five hundred pence debtor, but a debtor you most surely are, and you have nothing to pay.

The widow awoke to her serious position when THE CREDITOR CAME TO PUT IN HIS CLAIM. Thank God, He, the Creditor, is not putting in His claim to-day. Instead, He is offering to relieve sinners of their debts, He is proclaiming forgiveness to all. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, (when He came into the world), not imputing their transgressions unto them, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation" People in their pride refuse to own that they are sinners before God, they do not like to go down and confess the truth. They delude themselves with the thought that there is something in them that God can accept, and that they may be able to gain His favour by their works. The day is coming when they will be terribly undeceived, the scales will fall from their eyes, and they will see how they stand before God. When will that day be? It will be when the Creditor puts in His claim. I address myself to those whose eyes are still closed. You are drawing near to a terrible hour in your history. You say, What hour? The hour of your death. The clock of time is ticking out your days, and every swing of its ceaseless pendulum is bringing you nearer to that hour when you will step out of time into eternity. What is it that makes men who do not know God afraid of death? It is what comes after death. "After this the judgment." When you pass out of this world, you will meet God, and His judgment on your life. Some tell us that there is mercy after death, but God's Word does not say so. We believe in mercy with all our hearts, for God is rich in mercy, and He offers it to all — but not after death. "After death," God says, "the judgment" — the Creditor will put in His claim then, for "every one of us must give an account of himself to God." Then you who have refused to submit to God and own the truth about yourself will discover that you are bankrupt indeed, with nothing to pay. Then will it be justice — judgment without mercy!

This widow woman in her need turned to the man of God. There was one person in the land to whom she could go, and to him she went, and found that he was prepared most graciously to listen to her. So gracious was he that I can understand her telling him the whole story without reserve. He would encourage her to keep nothing back; the full amount of the debt, and how long it had been standing against her, and how it was contracted. He said to her, and there was grace in the words he uttered and the way he uttered them, "What shall I do for thee? Tell me, what hast thou in the house?"

Our hearts warm to the man of God as we read his words, but how shall I describe to you the grace of Jesus? I can tell you how He treated me. I came to Him as a needy sinner, and He made me feel that He was glad to see me. I felt that He was my Friend — the Friend of sinners, and that I could tell to Him what I could tell to no other. As He treated me, He will treat you. If you feel your need, go to Jesus, and you will find that He is the blessed Man of God, of Whom Elisha was but a feeble foreshadowing. You will find Him ready and able to take up your case and meet your utmost need.

Said Elisha to the woman, "What shall I do for thee? What hast thou in the house?" And she said, "Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house save a pot of oil." House-proud she may have been at one time, but piece by piece her household goods had gone, and now nothing was left but a pot of oil, of little or no value in her eyes. Yet that simple pot of oil, unheeded, unvalued, was all that was needed. It is even so with you. There is close at hand that which would have met your need long ago, if only you had turned to the Saviour — it is that of which the pot of oil speaks, as in a parable — it is THE GRACE OF GOD THAT BRINGETH SALVATION.

This was olive oil that was so near to the widow's hand, for the olive tree abounded in that land. Have you not read in the Psalms, words that could only be true of the Lord Jesus Christ: "I am like a green olive tree in the house of My God?" To obtain the oil from the olive tree its fruit must be crushed in the oil press and subjected to great heat. Before the precious oil of God's grace could flow for us, this blessed Person Who was the tender green olive tree growing in a dry and barren world had to be crushed in an unparalleled agony and sustain the fire of God's holy wrath against sin. He had to suffer beneath the stroke of God's justice when He became the sinner's substitute, for righteousness had to be satisfied, and only at the Cross of Christ do we see everlasting righteousness vindicated and satisfied. There He was made sin for us, He was delivered for our offences, He died for the ungodly. He paid the great price when He gave Himself for us, and as a result of His great sacrifice the grace of God is flowing freely for sinners to-day.

Then said the prophet of God, "Go, borrow thee vessels of all thy neighbours, EVEN EMPTY VESSELS — BORROW NOT A FEW, and bring them into the house, and shut the door upon thee and thy sons, and pour out into all those vessels." Away went the widow, believing the word of the prophet, and gathered into the house empty vessels, and when the house was full of them, and the doors shut, she took the oil, and to her astonishment it ran and poured and flowed, until every empty vessel was full. Those vessels were probably different in size, shape, and material — there would be among them some small and some large, some beautiful in shape and others rude and rough in appearance; some of costly material and others of no value at all; but they were all alike in this respect — they were all empty vessels. What is an empty vessel? An empty vessel is a vessel out of which you can get absolutely nothing, but into which you can put exactly what you please. And into such vessels as these the oil poured. Are you prepared to go to the Lord and tell Him that you are an empty vessel, that you have nothing to give Him, that you are a bankrupt sinner, with nothing to pay? Will you say to Him:

"I am an empty vessel,

Not one thought or look of love to Thee I ever brought,

Yet I may come, and come at once, to Thee,

With this, the empty sinner's plea, Thou lovest me!"

No two sinners are exactly alike as to external appearance, character, or circumstance; some are rich, others poor; some are learned, some ignorant; some are religious, and others profane; these things do not matter, but this does matter, they must be empty vessels. This is essential to blessing. I press it upon you, you must lift empty hands to God if you would have His blessing. You can pay nothing and do nothing on your own behalf.

"You have nought to plead,

Save God's rich grace

And your exceeding need."

The oil flowed and poured until all the vessels were full, and there was not a vessel left, and WHEN THE LAST VESSEL WAS FILLED, THE OIL STAYED. That is a serious consideration. If you refuse to take the place of an empty vessel before God, you will surely miss the blessing, for the day is coming when the grace of God will cease to flow, or you will be beyond the reach of it. In the New Testament we read that "the door was shut." Those who had got the oil in their vessels went in to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Those who had not got the oil went to buy it, and they found that it could not be obtained. They were too late, for the saving grace of God, the oil no longer flowed, they had neglected this great salvation, and were shut out of the marriage feast.

"Make haste! make haste! the blessing is for thee;

The cup of everlasting love is free."

When all the vessels were filled, the widow hastened away to the man of God, and told him what had happened. What joy must have filled her soul, when Elisha said, "GO AND SELL THE OIL AND PAY THY DEBT." Was there sufficient oil to pay the debt? There was sufficient. Is there sufficient grace to clear away your debt? Is there forgiveness for you? Yes, even for you; for where sin abounds, grace doth much more abound. The grace of God is sufficient to pardon your sins and to justify a guilty sinner like you. God can justify you freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Then you will look back on the dark past and say, "The debt is paid, the past is all wiped out. God Himself has nothing against me. He has justified even me."

In Romans 8 we read: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." If God justifies a man, he is justified, and cannot be condemned, for God's verdict must stand. He must have the last word about everything. Those who are justified are not so blessed because of what they are, nor because of what they have done, but because of what God is, and because of what Christ has done. It is what God is that is set forth in His great salvation. He is the God of all grace, and He has got a righteous basis for thus blessing men, and that basis is the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. The work of Christ has given God a right to justify those who believe in Jesus, and if you will believe in Jesus God will justify you. It is "to him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted to him for righteousness." Can you refuse to believe in a God like that? A God Whom we see set forth at Calvary?

But that is not all. The man of God said to the widow, "Pay thy debt, and LIVE THOU AND THY CHILDREN ON THE REST. There was a superabundance, enough to keep this woman and her children until the end of the story. So you will find it with the grace of God. The grace of God is not exhausted when it pardons our sins — nor when it justifies us. There is the rest of the grace, and it is at our disposal until the end.

The grace that is in our Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient for every need. There is no circumstance in which any of us can be found, allowed by the will of the Lord, but the grace of the Lord is sufficient. There is no circumstance into which any Christian can be led by his own folly, out of which the grace of God cannot bring blessing to him. There is grace to restore us when we fall, there is grace to keep us from falling.

Elisha said, "Live thou and thy children on the rest," and when the man of God said live, he meant it. To live means to enjoy life — and it is life that God wants us to enjoy. He wants us to live as those who have eternal life, to live as His children ought to live. He wants us to bask in the sunshine of His blessed love. God Himself is the source and fountain of life to us, and Christ is the way the waters flow. If we have received it and given Him thanks for it, now let us show our gratitude by still drawing upon His inexhaustible stores of grace, so that we may truly live, and show forth His praises, Who has called us out of darkness into His marvellous light.

Chapter 6

A Chamber for the Man of God

How the abiding presence of the Lord may be gained.

"And it fell on a day that Elisha passed to Shunem, where was a great woman; and she constrained him to eat bread. And so it was, that as oft as he passed by, he turned in thither to eat bread. And she said to her husband, Behold, now, I perceive that this is an holy man of God, which passeth by us continually. Let us make a little chamber, I pray thee, on the wall; and let us set for him there a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a candlestick; and it shall be, when he cometh to us, that he shall turn in hither. And it fell on a day that he came thither, and he turned into the chamber, and lay there" (2 Kings 4: 8-11).

The figure changes; the once bankrupt widow, now forgiven and free, gives place to a great woman with great possessions. And this unfolds to us a great truth. Christians, we who were once bankrupt sinners, are now a great people through the grace of God. We are the children of God, by faith in Christ Jesus. I hope we are not great in our own eyes, and I hope that we do not desire to be great in the eyes of the world; yet we are great in the eyes of Heaven. Hear the words of Holy Scripture: "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirits that we are the children of God, and IF CHILDREN THEN HEIRS; HEIRS OF GOD, AND JOINT-HEIRS WITH CHRIST; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together" (Rom. 8). No angel has so high a place as this, nor can any claim so great a destiny.

I saw crowds of people waiting in the streets the other day, and learnt that the king's son was expected to pass, and when he did appear he was given a respectful and loyal welcome by the crowds, and perfectly right — honour to whom honour — he is a great person in the land, and the people acknowledged it. As you and I walk in the streets nobody notices us; we have no honour in this world, for we are nobodies in its estimation; but the day is coming when we shall enter our own land, the golden gates of the Father's house will be thrown back for us, and in that day the angels of God will line the shining way and welcome us home — the sons of God brought to glory by redeeming blood. This is the dignity that God has put upon us; may our ways be consistent with it. Let us live as the children of God should, as those who have great resources and a great destiny.

We owe everything to our Lord, and it is right that we should consider Him and His desires. What does He desire? Above all things He wants our company. His love, so true and tender, can be satisfied with nothing less from us.

Notice in our picture that THE MAN OF GOD PASSED BY THE HOUSE OF THE GREAT WOMAN CONTINUALLY. It is thus that our Lord acts. He seeks for a place within our hearts and lives. And the Holy Ghost has come to take of the things of Christ and show them to us, and thus He passes by us continually to win a place for Himself in our hearts. It is thus that we see Him in Revelation 3: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock," He says. "If any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with Me." The man of God did not force himself upon this woman's hospitality, but when she constrained him he went in and ate bread with her. It has been said, and truly said, that "we get as much of the company of the Lord as we desire." If we constrain Him He will not deny us His company; it is this that His heart yearns for, and it is a joy to Him when a responsive yearning awakens in our hearts.

I gather that these occasional visits of Elisha to the Shunammite's house were wonderful times for her, insomuch that she determined to have him there not as an occasional visitor, but as one of her household, a constant guest. And we, have we not known seasons of joy, when we admitted the Lord to our hearts? In sorrow we have sought Him, and He has blest us with His own comfort; in times of depression He has cheered us, and turned our mourning into songs of praise. He has touched our hearts with His love, and we have been ashamed of our neglect of Him, but rejoiced in His grace that abides ever the same. These seasons may not have lasted long, but they were wonderful while they did last. He gave them to us that we might long after Him more, and do what this great woman did for Elisha.

She said to her husband, "Behold, now I perceive that this is a holy man of God, which passeth by us continually. Let us make a little chamber on the wall . . . and it shall be when he cometh to us that he shall turn in thither." Her perception was right — she was a wise woman. Oh, that we may be all like her in regard to Christ; but if we are to be, as she prepared a chamber for Elisha, so we must prepare a chamber for Christ. The heart is the chamber — your heart, dear Christian. It may not be very large, but it may be the guest-chamber of the King of glory. But how can the heart be prepared for Him? Let us learn the lesson that the story of this wise woman teaches.

She was a practical, thorough kind of woman, and I have no doubt that the first thing she did was to use the broom and clear out the cobwebs that were hidden in the dark corners, and sweep out of the chamber all that was unsuited to the desired guest. Test yourself here, dear Christian. Are there lurking in your heart things that you cherish that keep the Lord out of it? Ah, if you do but see Him passing by, and get one glimpse of His glory, these cherished things will be filth and rubbish to you; you will feel them to be out of place, occupying time and space that the Lord would fill, and you will want to be rid of them. Do you say, "I have tried often to give up habits and things that I know are wrong, but have only failed, until I have almost despaired?"

Yes, I know that experience, and I know what you need — a true sight of the Cross upon which Jesus gave Himself for you to redeem you from all that iniquity that holds you, and to purify you unto Himself, to be His own peculiar treasure. You need that backward look to the Cross, and then an upward look to the glory into which He has gone, and the Holy Ghost Who dwells in you can give you both, and the Holy Ghost will be the power within you to bring you into conformity to Christ. It is in the presence of the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the power of the Spirit that we are enabled to condemn and turn out of our lives what is contrary to Christ, and, best of all, and most needful of all, to judge and turn from sinful self.

The Lord Himself will come to our aid if we place ourselves without reserve in His hands, and we may take up David's words and say to Him, "Search me, O God, and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me." Lord, take Thy candle and go through every chamber of my life from its topmost turret down to its deepest vault. Light up with Thine own light the dark recesses in it, and show me things as they appear to Thee!

Now comes the furnishing of the chamber. Into the one that she prepared for Elisha, the great woman put A BED, A TABLE, A STOOL, AND A CANDLESTICK. The bed is the place of rest. You remember the words, "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest to your souls." The yoke of the Lord means submission to His holy will, and His will is good and perfect and acceptable. It is not against us but for us, and when we yield ourselves to it the inward conflict and restlessness give place to quietness and rest. And as we learn of Him Who is meek and lowly in heart, the envyings and jealousy and ambitions of men that make them fret and fume do not trouble us; we can leave ourselves and our concerns in God's hand, and in confidence in Him find rest. This is the first thing; we have no chamber fit for the Lord to dwell in if this is absent, but in such a heart He will find His pleasure.

Then follows the table, and this speaks of communion. "I will sup with him and he with Me," said the Lord. He desires to enter into our things, our joys and sorrows, for He loves us and is interested in us as our dearest and truest Friend, and He desires to bring to us His own comfort and grace in all that may cause us grief, but He would also lead us into His things, for He wants us to sup with Him, to have communion with Him in His things as His friends. A heart that is at rest from itself and consequently free to hold communion with Him is a heart that is delightful to Him.

The stool comes next, and we must not overlook this. Mary understood the need and blessedness of the stool, for she sat at Jesus' feet and heard His word, and we can only be maintained in communion with Him as we sit at His feet and learn of Him. The old restlessness will reassert itself if we neglect this; but as we sit at His feet we shall abide in Him and His words will abide in us, and we shall ask what we will, for hearing His word and speaking to Him in prayer go together. At His feet we learn of Him, and the more we know of Him the more we love Him, and He has said, "If any man love Me he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him." The chamber will not be tenantless if we show our love to the Lord by hearing and keeping His word.

Then the candlestick will be there. Our bodies will be full of light, having no part dark; sincerity and truth will mark us, and we shall shine for Him Who dwells within our hearts. The light that has shone in will shine out.

Into this chamber swept and furnished the man of God came, and lay there, and the Shunammite was a happy and honoured woman. May the spiritual reality pictured in this Old Testament story be true in every one of our lives!

Chapter 7

"Is it well with thee?"

How broken hearts may find solace and blessing through sorrow.

"And when the child was grown, it fell on a day, that he went out to his father to the reapers. And he said unto his father, My head, my head. And he said to a lad, Carry him to his mother. And when he had taken him and brought him to his mother, he sat on her knees till noon, and then died. And she went up, and laid him on the bed of the man of God, and shut the door upon him, and went out. And she called unto her husband, and said, Send me, I pray thee, one of the young men, and one of the asses, that I may run to the man of God, and come again. And he said, Wherefore wilt thou go to him to-day? it is neither new moon, nor sabbath. And she said, It shall be well. . . . And when Elisha was come into the house, behold, the child was dead, and laid upon his bed. He went in therefore, and shut the door upon them twain, and prayed unto the LORD. And he went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands: and he stretched himself upon the child; and the flesh of the child waxed warm. Then he returned, and walked in the house to and fro; and went up, and stretched himself upon him: and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes. And he called Gehazi, and said, Call this Shunammite. So he called her. And when she was come in unto him, he said, Take up thy son. Then she went in, and fell at his feet, and bowed herself to the ground, and took up her son, and went out" (2 Kings 4: 18-23 and 32-37).

Sunlit hills and shady valleys have their place in the earth as well as fertile plains and sun-scorched deserts, and God has made it so, for He is the God of diversity, as all His works declare. And our lives are like that. They are not on one dead level, we have our ups and downs, our laughter and our tears, the hill-tops and the valleys, and sometimes the deep, dark gorges from which it seems impossible that the feet that tread them could ever emerge.

Some have strange views of life, warped and limited; they would restrict the laughter or restrain the tears; but it is legality that does the one, and pride that attempts the other; and legality is of the flesh, and pride is of the Devil. There are those who imagine that there is no joy in the Christian life, and others who wonder why there should be any sorrow in it. The faith of the one has never grasped the fact that God gives us all things richly to enjoy, the others do not understand that He watches us with a Father's unwearying eye, and may sometimes see that it is necessary to chasten and reprove us lest we revel in earthly good and despise or forget the deeper and eternal things, and drift away from Him Who is the Giver of all good.

See how these two things are figured for us in the experiences of the great woman of Shunem. She was a great woman, the lady of the manor, but she was morally great also, as was evident when she declined to ask for any honour for herself or her husband. "I dwell among mine own people," she said. She was a contented woman, and what could the King or the Captain of the host do for her? A contented person is morally great, and this all God's children should be. The popular notion is that he is great who has great possessions, but "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth," but "godliness with contentment is great gain." That man is godly who walks in the fear of God, and has the Lord abiding with him, as this woman had Elisha dwelling with her, and he only is contented and able to refuse the preferments and prizes of the world that attract so many but satisfy none.

But Elisha represented a great and giving God, Who will reward even a cup of cold water that is given to one of His servants, and this woman of Shunem had been exceedingly careful for His prophet's comfort, and recompensed she must be. So the one earthly joy that she lacked was given to her. In the course of time this childless woman embraced a son, God's gift to her. Did He intend her to enjoy His gift? Most certainly He did. How strange it is that people should imagine that God does not want them to be happy in the gifts He gives them! How poor is their knowledge of Him. I have met Christians who thought that it was God's will to check and thwart them, and to take good things from them lest they should enjoy them over much, and they have been afraid, because of this, to trust themselves and their treasures wholly to Him. They were not happy Christians, and were no testimony for Him.

How different from this false notion is the way the Bible speaks of God. There we read that He does good and showers His blessings upon us, filling our hearts with food and gladness (Acts 14: 17). And it is undoubtedly His will that His children should enjoy those natural relationships that are His own ordination, if they are received with thanksgiving and sanctified by the Word of God and prayer (1 Timothy 4).

We are sure that this woman's home at Shunem was a happy one, but as the years rolled by, did she become absorbed with her domestic happiness and less careful for the man of God? It seems almost wrong to suggest it, yet during those years while she watched the development of her son no visit of the man of God to her home is recorded, though his chamber and his bed were still there. One thing is certain, she had more lessons to learn, and these are recorded for our admonition. She had learnt that the man of God was better than her possessions, and that he could bring greater blessing into her life and home than ever she had known. She had learnt that if she delighted herself in the Lord, He would give her the desire of her heart (Ps. 37). Now she had to learn that God's representative was her one resource in sorrow, and in the grace and power of God greater than death. She had to walk in the shadows as she had walked in the sunshine, and discover that the man of God was the same in both. The heart that has learnt these things in regard to Christ has been enriched with a knowledge that far exceeds all earthly joy, and can say, as Paul said: "I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content . . . Both to abound and suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me" (Phil. 4: 11-13).

There is here a striking commentary on the transitoriness of the choicest things in this life. The child has grown, it was harvest time and noon when he died on his mother's knees. When the promise of that young life was brightest, in the fulness of the year when the earth yielded up her wealth to the sickle, and at the zenith of the day the blow fell, and the mother's arms, the mother's love could not protect her child from it. Death smote him, and in smiting him it smote her and broke her heart.

The story of the crashing of that great woman's hopes, and the sight of her sitting alone with her dead son in her arms, brings vividly home to us the fact that no circle or sphere beneath the sun is immune from sorrow, or impregnable to death. If we have not learnt this lesson, and what it means to us, either by a sore experience or in communion with God, we have not advanced far in our Christian knowledge, nor have we understood the greatness of our Saviour and the tenderness of His heart. Death is here. Do we know to whom to turn when we feel it? "Death has passed upon all men." Do we know where life abides? Nothing we possess in the natural sphere of life can we retain. Are our affections set on things above, where Christ sitteth and where death can never come?

It is a sore lesson, but it must be learnt: death is here. It must be learnt either in communion with God or through such an experience as this woman passed through. Of every man it is true as regards himself that the outward man perisheth, and the most cherished object of a man's heart may at any moment be severed from him. He may stand up to resist the advancing foe, but death heeds him not. He may gather all his treasures and pour them out and pile them up, he may offer himself instead: it is useless, it avails him nothing; death cannot be beaten off or bribed, nor will he accept a substitute. Human love is impotent, baffled, beaten, when death claims what is devoted to it, and the unhearing ears, the closed, unseeing eyes, the still, unresponsive heart all witness to the completeness of the breach. What would we do if such an experience were ours?

Let us consider the ways of this great woman, for she was as great in her sorrow as she was in her prosperity and joy. First she laid her son upon the prophet's bed. What a burden she carried into that chamber, where the prophet had lived and lain. We see her enter it with bowed head and weeping eyes, bruised, buffeted, bewildered. Did she bow in lowly prayer there? I believe she did, for she came forth submissive and calm, with one word in her heart and lips with which to meet all questions: "It is well."

She knew that no one would understand her sorrow like the man of God, who had given her the joy that she had lost. She must go to him, and if she could bring him back to that chamber which was his, he would find her sorrow there. Ah, there are many hearts that were once filled with the joy of the presence of the Lord upon which now a great sorrow is laid. It may be the sorrow of departure from the Lord, or it may be something that answers to the sorrow of this bereaved mother. Anyhow, it is death, moral, spiritual, or actual death, and the cry of the heart is, "Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation."

Her sorrow did not rob her of her decision of character, and indeed in this matter there was no time to be lost, and this is so in all matters of lost joy and blessing, for sorrow can harden as well as soften; indeed it will most surely harden if the presence and sympathy of the Lord are not known, and the spirit that becomes absorbed with sorrow becomes strangely dulled, insensitive, and self-centred. "I will rise now and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways will I seek him whom my soul loveth," said the bride in the Canticles who had been indifferent to her lover and had lost the joy of his company. "I will run to the man of God, and come again," was this woman's determined purpose, and to her servant she said "Drive, and go forward; slack not thy riding for me, except I bid thee."

Do not think that I am confounding two things that differ, that I am mixing up the sorrow of a heart bereaved by death, and the sorrow of a heart that once knew the joy of the Lord's presence. I am not. If the Man of God is not dwelling in the prepared chamber, if Christ is not in the heart, it matters little what the reason for it may be, the great necessity is to seek Him, to recall Him without delay. It was this that this woman was set upon. Her husband does not seem to have had any deep spiritual feeling or discernment. He could not understand what use the man of God could be on any day but the Sabbath, or perhaps at the new moon, like so many whose irksome religion is but a matter of form and ceremony, a one-day-a-week affair, and who have no consciousness of all that need that some of us feel of an every day acquaintance with our living Lord. Anyhow, this lady of Shunem had neither the heart nor the time to argue the point. Her relations with the man of God were not formal; she felt that none but he could understand her sorrow, and she must pour it out at his feet that day. Yet her haste was not the result of panic or hysteria, as her noble answer to husband proved. What confidence she had in God and His prophet when she said, "It is well!"

The man of God saw her afar off, and we may be sure that the Lord knows well and sees the first move towards Himself on the part of any of His own, no matter how far off they may be from Him. From Elisha had been hidden the cause of her coming to him, but nothing is hidden from our living Lord. Blessed be His Name! As she had refused to discuss her sorrow with her unsympathetic husband, so now she refuses to discuss it with Gehazi. Her answer, "It is well," showed how thoroughly she had realised that not the servant, but his master only, could meet her deep need. And so she bends at his feet and pours out her sorrow there. And she will not be diverted from him, even when it seemed as though Gehazi was commissioned to raise up the child. She must have the man of God. "As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee," she says. His presence had become the one necessity of her life.

This is plainly the way for hearts, whether broken or backslidden. No mere servant will suffice. Only personal contact with Christ and His company will do. He must take afresh the place that was once His in the heart. He must deal with sorrow and sin. He is greater than both. In the power of the Lord, Elisha brought back the dead child to life again and gave him to his mother, and she bowed again before him, not now in sorrow but in glad worship to the God Whom he served.

It is not the Lord's way to restore the dead to life in these days. Those who die in the Lord are with Him, which is far better; but He can and does make life spring out of death for us. He can and does turn our greatest sorrows into our greatest blessings, but He does this by drawing near to us Himself, and filling up our empty hearts.

Chapter 8

A Dearth in the Land

How those who are troubled about it may discover the reason and the remedy.

"And Elisha came again to Gilgal; and there was a dearth in the land; and the sons of the prophets were sitting before him; and he said unto his servant, Set on the great pot, and seethe pottage for the sons of the prophets" (2 Kings 4. 38).

"A dearth in the land!" How that would please the Devil. For would not the godless nations that hated Israel say with scornful utterance: "Is that all the Jehovah in Whom you have boasted can do for you? You came to this land when it flowed with milk and honey, and behold it now, dry as a sunbaked or rainless desert, and you, the chosen people, beloved of the Lord, hungry and dying. Our gods are better than yours." But Israel only was to blame; they were suffering because they had broken the commandments of the Lord, and because they were suffering the Devil was delighted, the tender heart of God was grieved, and His Name was blasphemed among the Gentiles.

"A dearth in the land!" How often we hear the sad tale told by saints of God who mourn the fact that error has usurped the place of truth; that their souls are not fed as in former days; that when they ask for bread they are given the stones of man's vain imagination, stones that no power can turn into bread but which are the Devil's imitation of it, his invention with which he mocks the craving of the soul. They read of the days when Christ was ministered in the power of the Holy Spirit, and the churches edified; and when with hearts on fire the Christians witnessed for Christ and looked and longed for His Coming again. They can remember the time when even their hearts were greatly cheered and made happy by ministry which was according to the Word of God — which in these days has become unpopular, and has been superseded by that which feeds the fleshly mind, and by amusements galore. For it is said: "Must we not provide something bright and attractive for the people; must not they have entertainment and recreation? And is not this the Church's mission?" And the saints of God are suffering, and the heart of the Lord is grieved, and His Name blasphemed by those who love Him not, for they say: "Then has your Lord failed you? Is your Christianity played out? Does it no longer satisfy? Then welcome to our board. Let us cater for you. Eat of our fare, for it is better than yours." And the world, the flesh, and the Devil preside at the feast; and love to Christ grows cold, and spirituality wanes, and Christian life is sickly and ready to die; and the world, while it patronises and flatters and smiles, can barely conceal its contempt of a seduced and faithless Church.

It would be an easy matter to fill volumes with an exposure of this condition of things, but those for whom we write do not need such an exposure; they know it and deeply feel it, and some of them go from their Sunday services to weep and pray before the Lord about it all. The questions they are asking are: What is the cause of this dearth in the land? and, Why are the people of God not fed? and, Is there any remedy? These questions I desire to answer.

This condition of things has undoubtedly resulted from the fact that the professed followers of the Lord have left their first love, and have grown indifferent to His Word and careless as to His Name. Like Israel of old, they have become slack concerning His will. They have given ears to those who first questioned and then denied the Word of God, until they know not what God has spoken, or whether He has spoken at all; they have no guide for their feet and no lamp for their path. They are like a ship at sea without compass or chart, being driven by false winds to certain wreck. Moreover, they have broken down the barriers that separated them from the world that crucified their Lord, as Israel mixed herself with the nations, and the foul weeds that are native to the world have shed their seeds in the fair garden of the Lord, and now grow rankly there. Indifference to the Word of God and association with the world are the result of the loss of first love to the Lord, and are the great devastators, and they are most certainly some of the reasons for the wide-spread dearth.

Elisha came to Gilgal, and there the dearth was, and the sons of the prophets were hungry. Now Gilgal was the last place at which you would have looked for dearth. It was nigh to the city of the palm trees on the banks of the life-giving Jordan. It was there that the Israelites first celebrated the Passover feast, and ate the old corn of the land. It was a place of happy memories, and those sons of the prophets would know all about its history, and sadly recall the good days long since past.

What a change the presence of Elisha made to those sons of the prophets. He was sent to them because God pitied them in their poverty, and he carried to them grace and power enough to relieve them of all their necessities. It is because of this that I say he stands as a type of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is good to have the Lord Jesus Christ to turn to, for He is full of grace and truth, and all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hid in Him. No problem or difficulty, no circumstance or crisis in which either individual saint or company of Christians can find themselves, can be too great for Him. He is equal to every test, and His grace is all-sufficient. "In Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." Wonderful, most blessedly wonderful, and for ever adorable Saviour! He stands near to meet to the uttermost the needs of all who turn wholly to Him.

There is one way, and only one, in which His grace and power and wisdom may be ours. It is at our disposal, at the disposal of every individual saint, and of every company of God's people the wide earth over. But we must turn to Him for it, and in turning to Him acknowledge Him as Lord. He must be supreme. Surely He has a right to be supreme in His Church. Did He not love it and give Himself for it, that He might "present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it might be holy and without blame?" Are not the saints of God bought with a price, a price that never can be priced — that precious Blood? And if so, has He not the right to control and command, to be absolute in the affections and ways of His people? Who will dare to challenge His right? And to whom shall He be accountable? And yet as Israel once cast Him out of His own vineyard, so now is He cast out by a large proportion of His professing Church. He stands outside a closed door, as at the Laodicean Church. His Word has not been kept, His Name has been denied. This is, above all things, the cause of the great dearth.

The only remedy is to go back to first things. "Thou hast left thy first love. . . . Remember from whence thou art fallen, and repent and do the first works," There must be a return to the beginning, and in the beginning Christ was everything. His will was paramount. He alone was "honoured, loved, adored."

Let the saints of God who mourn the dearth give the Lord His rightful place in their midst, and if any are in religious associations where this is impossible, let them at once and for ever sever themselves from those associations, let them do it for the glory of His Name, and for the good of their own souls. Let none be satisfied with anything short of the absolute assurance that He has the supreme place in the midst of their gathering together, that He controls and not men. Then shall they be able to count upon those mighty resources that dwell in Him, and He will sustain them in the freshness and vigour of true Christian life.

We may not expect things to be as great as they were in former days, but there is no reason why they should not be as bright. And yet they will not be small, for no grace that the Lord bestows, or blessing that His presence gives, can be small. "Set on the GREAT pot, and seethe pottage for the sons of the prophets," said Elisha. They must be fed. So the Lord can feed His saints, as He fed Israel in the wilderness when He rained down bread from Heaven for them. Look not to men of learning, lean not upon the servants of the Lord, let not your hope be in conferences, conventions, or Bible schools, but turn directly and completely to Him, the living Lord, who nourishes and cherishes His Church. Own His supremacy, and do His will simply and whole-heartedly, and leave every difficulty and all the consequences in perfect trust to Him.

Chapter 9

There is Death in the Pot

How Christians affect one another, and what to do when many suffer.

"And one went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine, and gathered thereof wild gourds his lap full, and came and shred them into the pot of pottage for they knew them not. So they poured out for the men to eat. And it came to pass, as they were eating of the pottage, that they cried out, and said, O thou man of God, there is death in the pot. And they could not eat thereof" (2 Kings 4: 39, 40).

When we go back to the beginning, we learn that the first thing in Christianity is the acknowledgment of the lordship and headship of Christ, and then, that believers, indwelt by the Holy Spirit and forming Christ's body, are necessary to each other; that they are all dependent one upon another, and that each contributes to the prosperity or harm of the whole. This truth is solemnly taught in 1 Corinthians 12. 12-27. The help we render to each other is also most blessedly shown in Ephesians 4, the chapter in which the Lord's glorious supremacy over all things is declared. We read there: "But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the Head, even Christ, from which the whole Body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the Body UNTO THE EDIFYING OF ITSELF IN LOVE" (verses 15, 16).

The harm we may do to each other is illustrated in our story. They went out, these sons of the prophets, to gather herbs for the meal that Elisha had commanded. And one gathered wild gourds — his lap full — and came and shred them into the pot of pottage. His ignorance and folly almost resulted in the whole company being poisoned. There was death in the pot.

It was from a wild vine that he gathered his gourds, from a plant that had not come under cultivation — fit figure of the evil flesh. Of it we read: "The carnal (fleshly) mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Rom. 8: 7). It is that which has not and will not come under God's cultivation. And it always brings forth death and corruption, "for to be carnally minded is death" (Rom. 8: 6), and "he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption" (Gal. 6: 8).

Now, every believer is either walking in the Spirit or in the flesh; each one is pursuing the things of the Spirit or the things of the flesh, and whether we will or not, what we are, and how we live, and what we pursue, and that of which the heart is full affects all with whom we associate.

Suppose by way of illustration that envious feelings or a hard and unforgiving spirit is allowed or cultivated in the heart of any believer towards any of his brethren; or suppose one brother becomes jealous of another because he seems to have more honour than himself — these are bitter roots from which will spring "hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, and strife" — works of the flesh, and most deadly in their effects wherever they show themselves. How often have we seen happy Christian companies blighted and broken by "bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, and evil speaking;" or as a result of one or more who ought to have served all in love, lording it over the Lord's heritage. Our associations with all the saints of God is a Divinely formed association, and we must not, we cannot ignore it. The spiritual prosperity of one is a help to all, and the works of the flesh in any means harm to all. We can no longer live as though we alone are affected by our living, for if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it."

It was a happy thing for those sons of the prophets that Elisha was at hand, and that they had sufficient wisdom to refer the case to him. It is a most blessed and comforting thing to know that we may cry to the Lord, even when things are at their worst. He is our resource when death instead of life is in the pot. How different would things have been in the Church of God if the saints of God had had enough wisdom to do this, instead of trying themselves to put things right when they have gone wrong. How many a disaster might have been averted if instead of officious meddling there had been a lowly and brokenhearted crying to the Lord, if that which has proved beyond our skill to put right had been simply carried to Him; if we had said to the Lord, as the sons of the prophets said to Elisha, "O thou man of God, there is death in the pot."

There has been much failure in this respect, but He fails not, and we may count upon His deep and tender interest in His own, and counting upon this we shall not be disappointed. Moreover, He has the means where by the sorrow may be turned into joy, and spiritual health recovered to those who are sick.

Chapter 10

Then Bring Meal

How the works of the flesh are rebuked, and how life may take the place of death.

"And one went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine, and gathered thereof wild gourds his lap full, and came and shred them into the pot of pottage: for they knew them not. So they poured out for the men to eat. And it came to pass, as they were eating of the pottage, that they cried out and said, O thou man of God, there is death in the pot. And they could not eat thereof. But he said, Then bring meal. And he cast it into the pot, and he said, Pour out for the people that they may eat. And there was no harm in the pot" (2 Kings 4: 39-41)

It is so easy for us to think that we have only ourselves to please, and that we can do as we choose without regard to any other person. It is upon this most pernicious principle that the evil flesh that is within us acts, and it is thus that it serves the law of sin, for it is not only indifferent to the welfare of others, but it is also insubject to God. It is enmity against God; "for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Rom. 8: 7). As we have already shown, the flesh is like the wild vine from which one of these ignorant sons of the prophets gathered wild gourds his lap full; if we tolerate or cultivate it, our laps will also be filled with sorrow and shame of its deadly fruits. And how terrible these fruits are! Some of them are enumerated in Galatians 5: 19-21: "Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and the like." These things may not all appear equally heinous in our sight, but they are all the works of the flesh. Yes, variance, strife, and envyings are as truly works of the flesh as adultery, heresies, and murder. Corruption and death always follow in their wake, not only for the individual who gathers any one of them, and who, to change the figure of that most solemn one given by the Holy Ghost, must reap what he has sown, for God is not mocked (Gal. 6: 70); but for many others also, who are associated with him as a member of Christ's Body. It is because this is so that we are exhorted to "follow peace with all men, and HOLINESS, without which no man shall see the Lord; looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, AND THEREBY MANY BE DEFILED" (Heb. 12: 14, 15).

These sons of the prophets had they all been wise might have had the honour of contributing to the common good, but, through the ignorance of one and the folly of all, the meal that was intended for their nourishment threatened to do incalculable harm to every one of them. They brought in the poison and spoilt the feast, but they had no antidote for the harm that they had done. But at this point their wisdom returned to them, and they cried to Elisha, the man of God, and in doing this they laid their distress down in the presence of the power of God, which worked through him on their behalf.

Here is clearly indicated for us the way of wisdom in times of difficulty and sorrow. The Lord is our resource in every trouble. If we think of the responsibility of the saints of God to maintain the truth of God and to edify one another, these days are not better than any that have gone before. From the beginning and throughout the centuries carnality and failure have marked the Church's course. If the Church's history were written for us by the finger of God, what sad reading it would be. There have been times when the flesh has broken out outrageously, shocking even the natural conscience, but this, whenever and wherever it happens, is but a symptom of the general condition; fruit of the wild vine allowed to flourish in the very garden of God, and the common shame of all. We ought to have learned lessons from the past, but history repeats itself in our day, and our failure is less excusable than any that has gone before.

Yet the Lord has not changed, and He cannot fail. He has always been the resource of His saints when they have fallen upon evil days, and He is to-day. But the failure must be owned and the need confessed, and this means the humbling of our pride. We have often thought, when we felt that there was death in the pot, that we, by the application of some so-called principle in which we have boasted, could turn it into life; that we could straighten and correct that which was crooked and wrong by some ecclesiastical action of our own devising, perhaps; and it was often flesh correcting flesh, because it was not the peculiar kind of flesh that we favoured; and confusion has been made worse confounded and the evil increased tenfold. We have saved ourselves, probably from the deep heart-searching that should have been ours, and preserved our pride and boasting, but have failed to reach the root, and have it all out and confessed and judged. May the Lord give us grace to feel this if it is so, and to confess it so that we may be cleansed from all unrighteousness, and may He preserve us from growing indifferent to the condition of things amongst His saints; and may we never fall into that fatalistic state of mind which says, "What is, must be; the Lord has allowed it, there is no remedy." May we be honest enough to make no attempt to hide our need from the eyes of the Lord, but instead, lay it all before Him, and say, as we feel it deeply and with tears, "Oh, Thou Man of God, there is death in the pot."

Elisha's remedy is not far to seek, for He said, "Then bring meal. And he cast it into the pot, and he said, Pour out for the people, that they may eat. And there was no harm in the pot." We have no wish to be fanciful in our application of this story to our present need, but it strikes us as being remarkable that Elisha called for meal and used it as the means of healing the pottage, and not salt as in the case of the waters of Jericho (chap. 2). And our thoughts are carried back to the Levitical offerings, one of which was the meat or meal offering (Lev. 2). This offering was made of fine flour, and typified the life of the Lord Jesus here upon earth.

Every heavenly grace shone out in perfection in Him in manhood, for He was everything that the heart of God desired that man should be. But there are two traits that seem to be specially made prominent by the Holy Ghost for our help: they are His humility and obedience. They are set before us in the wonderful passage in Philippians 2: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross."

This is Christ as the meal offering, and He is presented to us in this character that we might admire, adore, and imitate. Think of His humility:

"Heaven's arches rang as the angels sang,

Proclaiming His royal degree:

But of lowly birth came the Lord to earth,

And in great humility."

Though He were in His own Person the everlasting God, yet He did not disdain the Virgin's womb and that lowly birth in the stable at Bethlehem. Though He were Lord of all, He accepted without resentment the despising of the people, and continued unweariedly to serve them. When His disciples contended who amongst them should be greatest of all, He, their Lord and Master, bent low to wash their feet. He sought no honour, no name for Himself; His joy was to do His Father's will, and to serve the weakest and the worst. And this path led only to the Cross, with its degradation and unparalleled shame. He knew from the beginning that this would be the end, yet He murmured not. It was obedience that led Him along that road, but His humility was as perfect as His obedience, so that no thought of His own reputation, or question as to the rightness of the path entered His thoughts. It was the will of God, and in that He delighted.

At Philippi the wild vine of the flesh was beginning to produce its bitter fruits of pride and division. These had not developed as much as in some of the churches to which Paul wrote; but death was working there, and his keen eye detected it, and to arrest the growth of these pernicious things and antidote their deadly effects he brought Christ before them in this way. The meal was cast into the pot.

This is the great remedy. By this is discovered the hatefulness of every carnal work. All fleshly pride stands rebuked in the presence of that lowly life so meekly lived, and if this mind that was in Christ Jesus be in us, we shall walk in grace toward each other and in obedience to God; we shall with lowliness of mind esteem each other more excellent than ourselves, and in humility and obedience work out our own salvation. What place could strife and envy have amongst the saints of God if this mind were in us? Yet this is only possible as the meal is cast into the pot. As we feed upon this life-sustaining food,

"We wonder at Thy lowly mind,

And fain would like Thee be;

And all our rest and pleasure find

In learning, Lord, of Thee."

Evil cannot be ignored where it appears, and the works of the flesh must not go unjudged. But no true judgment can be arrived at save in the presence of the perfection of Christ and His Cross. There evil does not appear less evil, but we see it, not only as it spoils our own spiritual good, but how it appears before God; then how great is the relief to turn from it to Christ.

The Holy Spirit is ever ready to fill our thoughts with Christ, and since He is true food for every saint, we find practical unity and fellowship as we feed upon Him. And not only fellowship with each other, but with God also, for He is the Bread of God. "And there was no harm in the pot."

Now mark the next "link" in the chain: "There came a man from Baal-shalisha, and brought the man of God bread of the first fruits, twenty loaves of barley, and full ears of corn in the husks thereof." It is deeply interesting that this incident should follow the elimination of the poison and death from the great pot,and it is as instructive as it is interesting. The first fruits were God's portion, but a backslidden Israel forgot His claim and flouted His law (Leviticus 23). This was indeed the chief cause of the dearth in the land. But the man of Baal-shalisha did not forget it, as his present to the man of God proved. The offering of the first fruits of the earth which God claimed spoke typically of that which is of unspeakable value in His account, "the sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His Name" (Hebrews 13: 15). But these spiritual sacrifices will be surely lacking where the life is poisoned by the evil things of the flesh — by the wild gourds, of which I have spoken. If any saint of God, or any company of saints, is to render to God these precious spiritual sacrifices, the flesh must give way to the meekness and gentleness of Christ. It is only when "all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour and evil speaking are put away, and bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering, forbearance and forgiveness take their place that the Lord gets His place and portion. It is then that we are free to consider Him, and the Holy Spirit is free to fill us with worship and adoration to Him. Then filled with the Spirit, we can speak to ourselves in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in our hearts to the Lord: giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 5: 18, 19, 20).

But there is yet another link in this chain which shows us the heart of our Lord. "And Elisha said, Give unto the people, that they may eat. And his servitor said, What, shall I set this before a hundred men? He said again, Give the people that they may eat: for thus saith the Lord, They shall eat, and shall leave thereof. So he set it before them, and they did eat, and left thereof, according to the Word of the Lord." Whatever we bring to the Lord in the way of worship and praise He gives back to us in richest blessing, which abounds unto many. If we give to Him what is surely His due — the overflow of glad and worshipping hearts, our souls will be most surely fed and nourished, our very praise which honours Him will edify us. It must be so, even as the men who sat before Elisha were fed with the first fruits that had been presented to him. The servitor did not think much of these first fruits, they would make a poor meal, he thought, for a crowd of hungry men. And it is a common thing, alas, to think little of what is due to the Lord. The popular thought is that the people must be catered for, they must be attracted, and so music and eloquence and ornate services are the order of the day, and that which the Lord prizes is of very little account. "Organised Christianity" is chiefly occupied in pleasing the people, instead of keeping the Lord's Word and not denying His Name, and the Holy Spirit is quenched and grieved and God's household is not fed with meat in due season.

But where the rights of Christ are considered, and He is loved and honoured and adored, the Object of the hearts of His saints and the theme of their praise, the soul-hunger of His people will be met. This shall be, though unspiritual and carnal minded men despise these things that are precious to Christ. He multiplies the provision; His people eat and have enough and to spare. Their souls are fed, and out of full hearts they are able to carry something to others, as did those happy early disciples who went everywhere preaching the Gospel.

Chapter 11

"Go and Wash"

How a sin-stricken sinner may find healing and peace.

"Now Naaman, the captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, and honourable, because by him the Lord had given deliverance unto Syria; he was also a mighty man in valour, but he was a leper. And the Syrians had gone out by companies, and had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little maid; and she waited on Naaman's wife. And she said unto her mistress, Would God my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria; for he would recover him of his leprosy. And one went in, and told his lord, saying, Thus and thus saith the maid that is of the land of Israel. And the king of Syria said, Go to, go, and I will send a letter unto the king of Israel. And he departed, and took with him ten talents of silver, and six thousand pieces of gold, and ten changes of raiment. And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, saying, Now, when this letter is come unto thee, behold, I have therewith sent Naaman my servant to thee, that thou mayest recover him of his leprosy. And it came to pass, when the king of Israel had read the letter, that he rent his clothes, and said, Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy? Wherefore consider, I pray you, and see how he seeketh a quarrel against me. And it was so, when Elisha, the man of God, had heard that the king of Israel had rent his clothes, that he sent to the king, saying, Wherefore hast thou rent thy clothes? let him come now to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel. So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean. But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the Name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash and be clean? Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God; and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean (2 Kings 5: 1-14).

A Leper is not a pleasant person to meet. He is an offence both to the eyes and the nostrils, and Naaman was a leper. In many respects he was a great man. He was a successful soldier, and a wise administrator, and Syria had risen to a foremost place among the nations under his leadership. He was valued and honoured by the king, and popular with the people, but he was a leper. He may have done his best to hide the tragic fact from the multitude, but the king knew of it, his own household knew of it, it was talked about by the servants, and what a man's servants talk about the man in the street surely knows, and he knew of it himself. What pleasure could he find in his medals and decorations, his honours, renown, and wealth, or the admiration and the envy of others, when this foul thing was sapping his life and hurrying him on to a loathsome death?

God uses the dreaded disease as a figure of sin in His Word — of SIN. He wants us all to understand how obnoxious sin is to Him, and how corrupting and menacing it is to us and our fellows, and He would teach us by this foul and incurable disease. We speak of this man or that woman being a moral leper. We mean that their lives are gross and offensive, and they are people to be shunned, but every unrepentant, unwashed sinner is a moral leper, let him hide it or camouflage it as he may. Every life that has not God as its centre and object is a sinful life, a leprous life; it is corrupt in its source and outflow, and those who know themselves the best are the readiest to admit it.

A celebrated American writer was offered £10,000 for his autobiography. He replied (I give his exact words): "A man cannot tell the whole truth about himself, even if convinced that what he writes will never be seen by others. I have personally satisfied myself of that, and have got others to test it also. You cannot make bare your private soul and look at it, you are too ashamed, it is too disgusting. For that reason I confine myself to drawing the portraits of others."

Have you felt like that? It may be so, and you have been trying to improve your condition and life, honestly, sincerely; but it has been in vain, the foul water has broken out from the corrupted spring within you when you least wanted or expected it, and your life is a record of broken resolutions and frustrated hopes. What will you do? It is worse than useless to hide the truth from yourself, that would be self-deception, and you cannot deceive others, for they know you by what they know of themselves, or they think they do; least of all can you deceive God. Keep not silent as to this matter before Him, tell your inward grief to God, lay bare your soul before Him, even though the very thought of its corruption disgusts you. David, the great king, said: "When I kept silence, my bones waxed old, through my roaring all the day long; my moisture was turned into the drought of summer." But he saw how foolish he was in that, and he did the right thing at last, for he added: "I acknowledged my transgression, and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin." Happy David!

Yes, Naaman was a leper. Fix your eye upon him, for in this respect he is a figure of you as you now appear before God, and it may be that in his story you may learn the way of cleansing and healing.

In Naaman's household there was a little captive maid. Torn from her home by the ruthless Syrians, she shone as a light in her strange and heathen surroundings. Not hatred but compassion filled her young soul, and she was intelligent, too. She knew of the power of the man of God, the prophet in Israel, and so confident of this was she that she bore testimony to it unwaveringly. She knew also the great need in her master's life, and she yearned to bring these two together — the prophet with his power and grace, and the leper with his corruption and misery. Hear her words: "Would God my master were with the prophet that is in Samaria, he would recover him of his leprosy." She was a great evangelist, for of a truth the evangelist needs only to know these two things that she knew — and to know them with conviction and with soul-yearning that others should know them too — the need and the Man Who can meet it.

About a century ago there lived an Irish gentleman named Gideon Ouseley, who was greatly used of God in the blessing of many in his native Ireland, and this was his equipment for the work. In a dream one night he thought he heard the Lord say to him, "Gideon, I want you to preach the Gospel;" and he answered, "Lord, I cannot preach." But the Lord replied, "You know what is wrong with men." "Yes, Lord, I know that," he answered; "they are sinners as I was." "And you know the remedy, don't you?" "Oh, yes, blessed be Thy Name, I know the remedy; it is Thyself and Thy Blood." Then said the Lord, "You know the disease and the remedy. Go and tell them of both."

This little maid must have been as consistent as she was compassionate and confident, for her word was believed, and what she said reached the ears of the king, and he, like his great servant, was a man of decision. There was no time to be lost. Naaman must go at once, with all the pomp and parade that befitted his fame, and with a fee large enough to satisfy the most grasping of healers. Naaman was a great man, and Syria was a great country, and now was the time to impress this upon their poor and despised Israelitish neighbours. When Naaman moved out of Damascus with his imposing retinue, most of the people, dazzled by the splendour of it all, would forget the chief fact of all, that Naaman was a leper, and probably that is how he wished it to be. How pride makes men push their sinfulness into the background and parade their wealth and works, their goodness and their charity, their amiability and their religion, the high place they hold in the estimation of their friends or the higher place that they hold in their own. None of these things really count in this supreme question, the great outstanding fact for every unregenerate man is that he is a sinner, as Naaman was a leper. Splendid externals cannot alter that fact.

"And facts are chiels that winna ding,

And daurna be disputed."

And this is the most obstinate, unbeatable, and least to be disputed fact of all: You are a sinner!

We pass over the folly of the king in sending the leper to the wrong person. He only did what thousands are doing to-day. His folly was that of inattention and ignorance, and perhaps pride. He had not given sufficient heed to the words of the little maid, and this was inexcusable in such a grave matter. Yet it is a common fault. We preach Christ and Him crucified as the one Hope of sinners. We tell them plainly, and the Word of God is our authority, that there is no salvation in any other, that none other Name is given under Heaven whereby they must be saved, and they appear to agree with us, and yet go off to other ways and seek through other names the blessing they need. The prophet was little known and perhaps less respected in those days, and the Name of Jesus is not honoured to-day, He is still despised and rejected of men. They think they can do without Him, and win their way to salvation by other means. This is the popular way, alas! the way that seems right to men; but the end thereof are the ways of death. But the king's mistake served to bring into striking evidence the only hope for lepers. "Am I God, to kill and to make alive?" cried the king of Israel, when he read the letter from the king of Syria. But he ought to have known the way, he ought to have been able to instruct this heathen soldier in the way of truth. It was a shame to the king of the land that he knew less than the little captive maid. "Wherefore hast thou rent thy clothes?" said Elisha; "LET HIM COME NOW TO ME, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel." Enemy of God's land and people though he has been, pagan though he is, let the poor dying leper come to me, and he shall know! How forcibly we are reminded of the words of our Lord. "Come unto Me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

So Naaman came with his horses and his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. What a sensation his coming must have caused in that neighbourhood, but Elisha was not elated. He may have thought that the prophet would have felt highly honoured to have such a visitor at his door, and he certainly expected a great deal of ceremony, but he had to learn that his thoughts were all wrong, and that it was only as a leper that Elisha would deal with him. He would have nothing to say to the great soldier, his honours were of no account in his eyes; but if he would stand forth stripped of all his trappings, a leper, dependent entirely upon the grace and mercy of God, then he would heal him and bless him. It was a hard lesson for a proud man to learn, almost too hard a lesson for Naaman. He resented the prophet's message. "Go and wash in Jordan seven times." In his own land there were nobler rivers, according to his estimation of things, than all the waters of Israel, if to wash was the way of cleansing, he would wash in them and be clean. He was enraged. Up to that day he had always been treated as a great man, and never as a leper. It was unbearable; the insult should be avenged. So he turned away to go back to his own land, with his pride, his gold and silver and raiment and his leprosy

But God seems to give an angry man another chance. It was so with Cain, and in the case of the elder brother in the story of the prodigal. Here the servants of Naaman, who surely loved their master, pleaded with him with rare tact, and prevailed. Naaman, a humbler and a wiser man, obeyed the word of the prophet, and went down into Jordan seven times, and his flesh became as the flesh of a child. He was cleansed and healed.

Now, where do you stand? I address myself to those who have sincerely hoped that their "works of righteousness" would cover their leprosy, who have thought that they could cover their soul-sickness by their endeavours and religion, or who have thought that because the disease of their souls is not so manifest as in some others, they would pass muster at last. Where do you now stand? You do not deny that you are a sinner, but does the word, "Go and wash," offend you? Be assured, there is no other way. If God had bid you do some great thing you would have done it. But nothing you can do can heal your soul or cleanse your sin. "Go and wash" is the word and the way. It is the way for all, and no matter how much a man may resent it in his pride, God can make no exception in His case, for there is no difference in His sight, all have sinned. But where can a sinner wash and be clean? Jordan, as we have already learnt, figures for us death. And it is only through death — Christ's death that any can have healing and cleansing. Have you not read those great words: "By His stripes we are healed" (Isa. 53: 5), and those others in the New Testament: "The Blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth from all sin" (1 John 1: 7)?

Chapter 12

"Go in Peace"

How the healed one finds assurance.

"And he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and came, and stood before him: and he said, Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel; now therefore, I pray thee, take a blessing of thy servant. But he said, As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand, I will receive none. And he urged him to take it, but he refused. And Naaman said, Shall there not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant two mules' burden of earth? for thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering not sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the Lord. In this thing the Lord pardon thy servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon: when I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy servant in this thing. And he said unto him, Go in peace. So he departed from him a little way" (2 Kings 5: 15-19).

The leper was cleansed, and he returned to God's prophet a humbled and grateful man. There is nothing humbles a man like grace, for grace simply means, what God is for us in Christ, and not what we are for Him; it is what He can do for us, and not what we can do for Him, and it was this lesson that the thankful Syrian had now to learn. He had abandoned his own false thoughts, and he spoke as a man speaks out of whose mind all doubts had been cast. "Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel." The word "know" is a great and triumphant word in the Christian's vocabulary, and he has a right to use it, for God Himself puts it into his mouth. When the light of the Gospel breaks into a man's heart, all agnosticism and doubts are driven out, and a full assurance takes possession of it that finds its expression in an unwavering confidence in God and the Word of His grace. Looking upon the past, he can say, "One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see." Thinking of the present, he can read with rejoicing, "These things have I written unto you that believe on the Name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life" (1 John 5: 13). And if thoughts arise in the mind as to those sins that stained his soul, he can get assurance as to that matter from the same infallible Word: "Ye know that He was manifested to take away our sins; and in Him was no sin" (1 John 3: 5). And again, "I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His Name's sake" (1 John 2: 12). And as to the future, what triumphant confidence rings in the words: "We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Cor. 5: 1); and, more glorious even than that, "We know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is" (1 John 3: 2).

How different is this Christian language to the wail of the agnostic as he gropes his darkened way to the grave. He says:

"Is there beyond the silent night a day?

Is death a door that leads to light?

We cannot say.

The tongueless secret locked in fate,

We do not know,

We hope and wait."

And this confidence is not presumption, any more than was Naaman's. He had proved in his own happy experience what the God of Israel could do for a hopeless leper who would obey Him, and every man who has believed the Gospel of God's salvation, the Good News concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, knows the delivering, peace-giving power of God, and can speak with confidence about it. Yet this confidence does not rest in his experience, blessed as that may have been, but upon the Word of the living God, Who cannot lie. We thank God for the Holy Bible, His sure and unchanging Word. It is there that the Christian finds reliable authority on which to base his confidence. And all the blessing that he enjoys and the peace of true Christian knowledge lie in great facts that other statements of that same Word reveal to us. "We know that the Son of God is come" (1 John 5: 20). "We have known and believed the love that God hath to us: GOD IS LOVE" (1 John 4: 16). The blessing that Naaman got through Elisha revealed to him the true God, the blessing that we have received through Jesus our Saviour has revealed to us that God is love. "For herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4: 10).

It was natural that Naaman should wish to recompense his benefactor, for, being what he was, he could not understand receiving a great blessing, without money and without price. He felt that he was able to pay for it, and he would do so handsomely. He had to learn that God would not sell His blessing. He was convinced as to the power of God. He had now to learn what His grace was. How emphatic were the words of Elisha: "As the Lord liveth, before Whom I stand, I will receive none." This is a hard lesson for a proud man to learn. "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God" (Mark 10: 23); whether those riches be in money, or fame, or self-righteousness. Are these of no value? asks their possessor. Well, Naaman possessed an abundance of these sorts of wealth, but they did not and could not cure his leprosy. And it is certain that they cannot atone for a sinner's sins, they cannot save his soul. I am sure that Naaman learnt the great lesson as he stood before Elisha, that God will not sell His blessing, and for two reasons: Naaman, with all his wealth, was too poor to buy it, and God was too rich to sell it. It was all of grace, the free giving of God to one who could not merit His gift. There is no more needed lesson than that for any man to learn.

But let no one suppose that this grace that pardons the sinner and justifies him from all things means that sin is a small thing, and that God can pass over it lightly. No, He cannot do that, and here I quote some invaluable words. "Grace supposes sin to be so horribly bad that God cannot tolerate it. Were it in the power of man, after being unrighteous and evil, to patch up his ways and mend himself so as to stand before God, there would be no need of grace. The very fact of the Lord being gracious shows sin to be so evil a thing, that man, being a sinner, his state is utterly ruined and hopeless, and that nothing but free grace will do for him — it only can meet his need. . . . The moment I understand that I am a sinful man, and yet that it was because the Lord knew the full extent of my sin, and what its hatefulness was, that He came to me, I understand what grace is. Faith makes me see that God is greater than my sin, and not that my sin is greater than God." Grace is God's intervention in love on behalf of those who had no power to save themselves, and who were His enemies.

I have no doubt that that great soldier, whose leprous flesh had become like that of a little child, now bowed in a childlike spirit before the man of God, realising that the benefit he had received was beyond all price, and yet that it claimed him henceforward. He most surely belonged to the God Who had given him this new life, and this he must own in the dark land to which he had to return. And so he asks, "Shall there not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant two mules' burden of earth? For thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the Lord." He would raise his altar to God, and confess His Name and worship Him alone. Nothing other than that could be right, and Naaman's vow indicates where lies the Christian's true life and privilege. He has a sacrifice to offer, not for his salvation for by the offering of Jesus Christ once for all he has been perfected for ever, as Hebrews 10 tells us, and because of that perfect offering his sins and iniquities are to be remembered no more — but because he is saved and belongs to his Saviour. Clear and blessed are the words of Romans 12: "I beseech, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service;" and the one who is saved by grace and knows it will answer such an appeal with a glad response.

Yet Naaman had a fear as he looked into the future. He would be expected to conform to the practices of his idolatrous king and country. "In this thing," he pleaded, "the Lord pardon His servant." The prophet's answer was a very brief one. "Go in peace," was all that he had to say. Did this mean that a confessor of the true God could compromise with idolatry, and be conformed to the world? Surely not. It means, Leave that with God. The God Who has healed you can keep you. Leave your future in His hands, go in peace. "For God is faithful, Who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way of escape, that ye may be able to bear it" (1 Cor. 10: 13). It may be that there is one among my readers who is trembling on the very threshold of the Christian life, feeling that a whole-hearted yielding of his life is the only right answer to the grace so rich and free that has saved him, yet fearing the consequences, and most of all his own weakness in circumstances that seem too difficult for him. Here are great words and comforting for him: "Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus" (Phil. 4: 6, 7). With words like these in the heart, the saved and happy, trusting soul may "Go in peace."

Chapter 13

The Axe-Head did Swim

How those who are dead may have eternal life.

"And the sons of the prophets said unto Elisha, Behold, now, the place where we dwell with thee is too strait for us. Let us go, we pray thee, unto Jordan, and take thence every man a beam, and let us make a place there, where we may dwell, And he answered, Go ye. And one said, Be content, I pray thee, and go with thy servants. And he answered, I will go. So he went with them. And when they came to Jordan, they cut down wood. But as one was felling a beam, the axe-head fell into the water, and he cried, and said, Alas! master! for it was borrowed. And the man of God said, Where fell it? And he showed him the place. And he cut down a stick, and cast it in thither; and the iron did swim. Therefore said he, Take it up to thee. And he put out his hand and took it" (2 Kings 6: 1-7).

What highly favoured men these sons of the prophets were in being the companions and disciples of Elisha. His words must have been good to listen to, and it is no wonder that they crowded to hear him until the place where they dwelt with him could not contain them, and they felt that they needed more room. It was a healthy sign, and their desire for enlargement had the full approval of the prophet.

Are we dwelling with our Lord as those sons of the prophets dwelt with Elisha? "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee," He has said, and He will not deny His own Word. But are we consciously dwelling with Him? We often quote His words: "Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them;" but are they mere words to us, or a living reality? If we are dwelling with the Lord and learning of Him, we are growing; we are being enlarged in our souls, and we shall want to move on in the more abundant life that is ours.

This question of growth is a vital one. A father would be seriously concerned if his children ceased to develop in mind and body, and God is our Father — does He not care whether His children are growing in grace or not? He certainly does. Let us not be indifferent to this matter, for growth and strength go together, and we cannot be strong in the face of the foe if we do not grow and move on in the knowledge of the Lord; we shall not be more than conquerors if we stagnate and are stunted in growth. To the Church at Corinth Paul wrote: "O ye Corinthians, our mouth is opened unto you, our heart is enlarged. Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels. Now for a recompense in the same (I speak as unto my children), BE YE ALSO ENLARGED" (2 Cor. 6: 11-13).

What was it that had straitened and stunted those Christians? The world and the evil things that are in it. They had forgotten that the Gospel of their salvation had called them out of the world to brighter and better things, and that they had been united to Christ, Who is not of the world, by the Holy Ghost from Heaven. They had formed associations which made it impossible for them to expand in the greatness of the Christian life and service — they were fettered and not free, and they needed the command, "Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers. . . . Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, And touch not the unclean thing." We cannot love and cleave to the world and abide in Christ at the same time. To dwell as His disciples with Him means separation from the world, and there can be no spiritual growth apart from this.

It was to JORDAN that these young men went for the material with which to build their larger dwelling, and there is no place like Jordan for enlargement of soul, for Jordan is a figure of death. Death is a great and effectual teacher; it teaches how great is the fall of man, for death is the measure of it, and it teaches us how great is the love of God, for "He commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Death shows us the way that God has taken to recover His fallen creature for Himself, and to bring him into larger blessing than was possible for him before he fell.

The incident of the loss and recovery of the borrowed axe-head shall illustrate these things for us. I do not think that I am giving it a fanciful interpretation in so using it; if my readers think so, let them forget the illustration and consider the truth that I am pressing. The axe-head fell from the handle of it, and sank beneath the waters of Jordan. The wielder of it was a careless man, for the axe was borrowed, it was not his to lose, but it was lost nevertheless. Thus carelessly did Adam become a lost soul; and it was to God that he was lost, as is clearly proved by God's cry in the Garden, "Adam, where art thou?"

By that one act of disobedience death entered into the world. So we read in Romans 5: 12: "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; AND SO DEATH PASSED UPON ALL MEN: FOR THAT ALL HAVE SINNED." Yes, the waters of Jordan roll over the whole race of sinners as a result of the first man"s disobedience, a disobedience in which all his progeny have shared, for they have all been as wilful as he. Adam had no right to cast away his soul, for it belonged to God Who had created it and given it to him. When he fell, the whole race of which he was the progenitor fell with him. All Scripture as well as all history teaches this solemn truth, but nowhere is it stated more emphatically than in the fifth chapter of Romans. Verse 15 says: "Through the offence of one many be dead;" verse 17: "By one man's offence death reigned by one;" verse 18: "By the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation;" verse 19: "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners."

That is not a popular doctrine. The foolish theory of Evolution suits the modern mind better than the solemn truth. Men want to get rid of the thought that they are responsible to God and must give account to Him. And this is why the fact of the Fall is refused; and this is why the fiction of Evolution is embraced; it is more pleasant to believe that man is rising up, becoming greater and grander as the ages pass by, than to own that he is sinful, fallen and lost. But the latter is the truth. Just as the nature of the axe-head was to sink and not swim, to go down, with no power in itself to rise up, so man's nature as a sinful, fallen creature is to go farther and farther from God; his course is ever downward, as is plainly shown to us in Romans 1: 19-32, which solemn Scripture my readers should seriously ponder. Nothing but the truth will satisfy a fully awakened conscience, and the truth is clearly stated in these Scriptures that I have quoted. Blessed is the man who will own it before God.

This son of a prophet was conscious of his loss, and he felt it the more because the axe was borrowed; but he was wise in that he did not waste his time in vain efforts to recover what he had lost, but cried to the man of God, "Alas, master!" And here is a fine example for sinful men. The first step to recovery and blessing is to realise the need and the loss, but some who have taken this step are seeking sincerely and earnestly to right what is wrong by their own efforts. They are endeavouring by their works to save themselves, when the Scripture states expressly "Not of works, lest any man should boast."

The man of God was equal to the situation. And in this he did faintly foreshadow the all-sufficiency of Christ, Who came into the world to destroy the power of death and set us free. "Where fell it?" asked the man of God. Then cutting down a branch of a tree, he cast it into the water, and lo! the iron did swim! Do you perceive in this incident the Gospel story? And does that story thrill your soul? How wonderful it is! It tells of Jesus, Who went into death for us that we might pass out of death into life. Yet the question might well arise, "If death has passed upon all men, if all are dead in trespasses and sins, so that none can deliver either himself or his brother, what was there in Jesus that made Him different to others? Who was He?" He was the only begotten Son of God, He was the Word, the Creator of all things, and He became flesh and dwelt among us. He became flesh — a man, as truly man as Adam was, or as any man is to-day — but the SINLESS MAN, and in this He differed from all others. In becoming man He did not cease to be the only-begotten, eternal Son of God. This great truth we must hold fast in the face of modern infidelity. He Who was in the form of God was found in the likeness of men. He had become a man that He might die for men. Yet as a man death had no claim upon Him, for He was holy. Yes, He was just as holy as He trod the dusty roads of Galilee as when He sat upon the Throne of His glory and created the hosts of Heaven. Because He was holy, the one sinless Man, death had no claim upon Him. He could have walked victoriously upon death's fiercest billows, just as He trod upon the waves of the Sea of Galilee at midnight. But He came to die. This commandment He had received from His Father, and just as the branch of the tree — the nature of which was to swim — was cast into the waters by Elisha, that the iron the nature of which was to sink — might swim, so Jesus, upon Whom death had no claim, went down into death that we, whom death held in its power, might pass out of death into life, that we might live in Him Who died for us and rose again.

This is God's way of salvation, the way that His great love has found, and as we consider it we are greatly enlarged; we are delivered from bondage and set free by the truth, for the truth is that "GOD IS LOVE," and "in this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him."

"Take it up to thee," said the prophet, and he put out his hand and took it, a grateful and wondering man, as well he might be. I desire that we might understand better those words of the Lord: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life" (John 5: 24). If we have heard the words of this glorious Gospel, which first began to be spoken by our Lord, and have believed on God the Father Who sent Him to tell them to us, this eternal life is ours; we have put forth the hand of faith and taken it; our souls are saved, we are recovered from death, and now we live. But how shall we live, and to whom? There is only one right answer, and it is a Scriptural one: "The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if One died for all, then were all dead: and that He died for all, that THEY WHICH LIVE SHOULD NOT HENCEFORTH LIVE UNTO THEMSELVES, BUT UNTO HIM WHICH DIED FOR THEM AND ROSE AGAIN" (2 Cor. 5: 14, 15). We could have no better commentary on our Old Testament story than that Scripture, and every redeemed heart and conscience says "That is right." The life that is lived unto Christ is the victorious life; in it we are more than conquerors and in no other. In it our souls will be enlarged in the knowledge of God and of Christ.

Chapter 14

"He Saved Himself, not Once nor Twice"

How to escape the snares of the devil.

"Then the king of Syria warred against Israel, and took counsel with his servants, saying, In such and such a place shall be my camp. And the man of God sent unto the king of Israel, saying, Beware that thou pass not such a place; for thither the Syrians are come down. And the king of Israel sent to the place which the man of God told him, and warned him of, and saved himself there, not once nor twice. Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was sore troubled for this thing; and he called his servants, and said unto them, Will ye not show me which of us is for the king of Israel? And one of his servants said, None, my lord, O king; but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber" (2 Kings 6: 8-12).

A master of strategy was this king of Syria, and carefully and well he prepared his plan of campaign. An ambush here, another there, and still a third, and surely the unsuspecting king of Israel would be trapped and his kingdom fall into the hands of his conqueror. But he failed; all his plans went wrong; the king of Israel saved himself, not once nor twice. And this Syrian strategist, so sure of success, was a baffled and puzzled man. He could only account for it in one way: there must be a traitor in his camp, a Judas in his war council. But it wasn't that. He hadn't taken into his consideration the fact that there was a God in Israel and that He was represented there by His prophet. But now the secret comes out, for one of his servants knew it. "Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber." That was it. All his secrets were known to the prophet, and the king of Israel was in contact with the prophet, and he hearkened to his word and obeyed it, and so he saved himself from the snares of his adversary. In the simple and arresting words of Scripture, "HE SAVED HIMSELF, NOT ONCE NOR TWICE."

This story was written for our learning, as were all the others in these Old Testament Scriptures, and in spite of our weakness we'll be a wise and happy people if we pay heed to its lesson. The Syrian king is a picture of Satan, and in him we have a subtle foe. "Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat," said the Lord to Simon. And he is not dead or decrepit, nor any less malicious or alert now. This great adversary of the saints of God is ever on the outlook to catch them alive, and he lays his snares for them with all the subtlety of that old serpent that ensnared the first woman and man in Eden.

We read in the New Testament of some who had fallen into the snare of the Devil and were taken captive by him at his will. He has made a careful study of every one of us; he knows our propensities and weaknesses, and he lays his snares for us with consummate skill. We must not underrate our foe; we are no match for him. If we meet him in our own strength and wisdom, we shall be as fools in the hands of a sharper. How, then, can we save ourselves not once nor twice from his traps?

If the king of Syria shows us what Satan and his ways are, Elisha is a figure of our living Lord, our ever watchful and all-wise Saviour. The Devil is neither omnipotent nor omniscient; he does not possess fore-knowledge; these are Divine attributes, and they dwell in our Lord. The Devil never got ahead of our Lord, all his plans for ensnaring our feet and destroying our faith are foreseen and anticipated. "I have prayed for thee," He said to Simon, and if that self-confident disciple had but heeded the word of his Master he would have saved himself from his foe, and the Devil would have registered a great failure, as indeed he did afterwards, when Simon, having escaped by the grace and prayer of the Lord, in the power of the Holy Ghost, made a mighty onslaught on his kingdom and delivered three thousand souls from his power.

Our safety lies in cleaving to the Lord with purpose of heart; we must keep in continual communication with Him. He watches us even more closely than the Devil does, for His love for us is greater than even the Devil's hatred for us. He cares for us with a constant and enduring love, and this should keep us close to His side.

"With foes and snares around us,

And lusts and fears within,

The grace that sought and found us,

Alone can keep us clean."

If we are close to Him, He will minister His Word to us as we need it, and we shall be able to say: "By the words of Thy lips I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer. Hold up my goings in Thy paths, that my footsteps slip not" (Psalm 17: 4, 5).

Here is illustrated for us those words that are a puzzle to some: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." This cannot be done apart from obedience to the Word of the Lord. By that Word we are forewarned and forearmed, and the man who gives heed to its teaching will save both himself and those that hear him (1 Tim. 4: 16) "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed according to Thy Word" (Ps. 119: 9). But the words of Scripture can only be rightly understood and obeyed as we are near to the Lord; it is when we are near to Him that they become indeed His communications to us, we are stimulated by them to spiritual alertness, and Satan does not get an advantage against us, and we are not ignorant of his wiles (2 Cor. 2: 11).

What a thankful man the king of Israel must have been. We do not know how he treated Elisha, but we know how he ought to have treated him. He ought to have said to him, "Be my friend and counsellor at all times, guide me in all my ways, correct me, preserve me from folly, and bless me. Live with me, never leave me nor forsake me, for thou art indispensable to my safety and well-being." Is it thus we address our Lord? Let us hear what He says to us. "If a man love Me, he will keep My words, and My Father will love him, and We will come and make Our abode with him" (John 14: 23). And how safe from all the snares of the Devil all such must be.

"How blest are they who still abide,

Close sheltered by His watchful side;

Who life and strength from Him receive,

And with Him move, and in Him live."

Chapter 15

Horses and Chariots of Fire

How to be without fear of our foes.

"And he said, Go and spy where he is, that I may send and fetch him. And it was told him, saying, Behold, he is in Dothan. Therefore sent he thither horses and chariots, and a great host: and they came by night, and compassed the city about. And when the servant of the man of God was risen early and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do? And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. And Elisha prayed and said, Lord, I pray Thee, open his eyes that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha" (2 Kings 6: 13-17).

If the Devil cannot ensnare you with his wiles, he will change his tactics, he will stop his beguiling, and begin to buffet you; he will show himself to be your implacable adversary, for his name "Satan" means "the adversary." John Bunyan, who knew his ways if ever a man did, tells us in thrilling words of his effort to scare the Pilgrim to the Celestial City from his purpose. He says: "He straddled quite across the whole breadth of the way," and said to Christian, "I sware by my infernal den that thou shalt go no farther: here will I spill thy blood."

That is his way. He will do his desperate worst to make you feel that a life of faith is beset with dangers and insurmountable difficulties, in the hope of shaking your faith in God. This is plainly illustrated in our story.

The city where Elisha lodged was surrounded in the night by a great force of Syrian warriors, and when the servant of the man of God awoke he was filled with fear. The foe was entrenched at every gate, there was no way of escape, and he began to feel that for all his trust in Elisha he was on the losing side. He was wise in running to his master, but his cry, "Alas, my master, how shall we do?" plainly showed how shaken he was by the sight of the enemy's power.

Have you ever felt like that? It may be that even now some of my readers are finding that their confession of Christ has brought them up against difficulties that they never anticipated, and with which they feel utterly unable to cope. Are you surprised? "In the world ye shall have tribulation," and if that were all you might well consider whether you were wise in standing against the force of the foe for Christ's sake, but Jesus added to those words: "But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." And the way of escape is not in lowering the standard and compromising with the foe, and being less of a Christian in the hope of some relief, but in turning afresh to the Lord, even if it is with the almost despairing cry of Elisha's servant. He is the great Overcomer. He died, but He lives again, and He ever liveth to make intercession for you, and herein lies the way of confidence and victory for you. Let us consider it.

First notice that Elisha prayed for his terrified servant, and his intercession prevailed to quieten his fears. Your great Intercessor prays for you, and He is never deceived by the Devil; let him scheme and rage as he will, your Lord is always ahead of him, and He ever liveth to make intercession for you. And here is a theme that might well occupy volumes printed in gold, but how little understood! If you have not considered it, do so now; deliverance from all fear of the enemy depends entirely upon the grace and mercy that you may receive through the intercession of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He is our Great High Priest, the Son of God. Does not your heart swell with holy exultation at the thought of His greatness? The service to which He devotes Himself in this character is that of bearing up His warring pilgrims in intercession before God, and He does this with truest compassion and deepest sympathy. He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities — marvellous thought!

You may not be able to understand it; you are not asked to do so, it is too great for your small mind; but He asks you to believe it, and if you don't you will grieve that heart that loves above all things to be trusted. He would have you to believe that He is serving you every hour because He loves you; yes, loves you with the same love that led Him to Calvary for you. The birth pangs do not exhaust the mother's love for her babe; she would be willing to lay down her life for it at any time.

"Yet she may forgetful prove,

He will never cease to love."

How could He cease to love? He is Jesus. And what does that Name mean to us? It tells us of the love that brought Him from the Eternal Throne to Bethlehem's manger; it tells us of a life of suffering-service that led through sorrow and shame and loss to the Cross of Calvary; it tells us how His love declared itself there. The waves of death uplifted their awful crests and rolled upon Him to engulf Him; the billows of Satan's power roared about Him to destroy Him, and He went down beneath the deep waters of God's judgment against sin on our behalf. But though He stood for us where all the seas met upon Him, yet was not His love quenched. It burned with a fervent flame amidst the fierce waters, and shed its wondrous light in the darkness of that awful hour, and there it triumphed. Now the Lord is risen: He lives upon the Throne of God for us:

"And we stand beyond the doom

Of all our sins through Jesus' empty tomb."

His love has not changed one whit; it is as deeply interested in your welfare to-day as it was when it bore your sins on the tree. Were it otherwise, Jesus would no longer bear that precious Name for us, and we should have neither Saviour, Priest, nor Defender.

But Jesus is the Son of God, for so the Word presents Him, and while "Jesus" carries us in thought down to the very depths of the humiliation into which His love carried Him, "THE SON OF GOD" presents His glory, His magnificent greatness, the unmeasured splendour of His Person and inheritance. But there are other thoughts than these in the bringing together of these names and titles that should talk eloquently to our hearts. "Jesus" tells us of His preciousness to us. "The Son of God" tells us of His preciousness to God. "JESUS" TELLS US THAT, SINCE HE LOVES US SO WELL, THERE IS NOTHING THAT WOULD BE GOOD FOR US THAT HE WILL NOT ASK FOR US WHEN HE INTERCEDES BEFORE GOD FOR US; AND "SON OF GOD" TELLS US THAT GOD WILL NOT DENY HIM ANY REQUEST THAT HE MAKES. So that the fact of Jesus, the Son of God, being our Great High Priest, means that we are put into contact with the eternal and inexhaustible grace and power of God, and infinite love sets these resources in motion for us, for God loves His Son, and Jesus loves us, and Jesus is the Son of God. Who would fear the Devil who knows the blessedness of this?

Our limited space forbids that we should enlarge upon this most blessed theme, but we would urge upon our readers, and especially those who are passing through trial and sorrow, who are confronted with difficulties and opposition to their faith that make them afraid, to consider the High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus. He it is Who intercedes for you and Who can and will sustain you. He has passed through the heavens from the very lowest point of suffering and shame; He has gone to the highest point in glory, and no watchful sentry rang out the challenge, "Halt!" for every gate was thrown open wide for Him to pass triumphantly through, and He is our Forerunner in the glory as well as our Priest. There is not a difficulty or hostile power that He has not met in the way that we travel as we follow Him. He was tempted in all points as we are, apart from sin. And now He lives in glory to succour us with gracious help from thence.

But Elisha not only prayed for the young man, he spoke to him, and what assuring words they were. "Fear not," he said, "for they that be with us are more than they that be with them." And the word of Elisha opened his eyes, and lo! the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. How safe he was in the company of his master. With his eyes opened he might well have shouted with triumph, "If God be for us, who can be against us?" And that is just where we stand through grace. God is round about us, why should we be afraid?

"E'en friends may pass and perish, Thou, God, wilt not remove;

No hatred of the devil can part me from Thy love;

No hungering, nor thirsting, no poverty nor care,

No wrath of mighty princes can reach my shelter there.

No angel and no demon, no throne, nor power, nor might,

No love, no tribulation, no danger, fear nor fight,

No height, no depth, no creature that has been or can be,

Can drive me from Thy bosom, can sever me from Thee."

Let the assuring words of our Saviour sing their sweet melody to our hearts: "The Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved Me;" "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

God never abandoned a man who stood for Him. "Our fathers trusted in Thee and were delivered." The Hebrew youths in the furnace of fire, Daniel in the den of lions, Elisha and his servant in Dothan, proclaim the fact for us that God stands by those who are true to Him. To us the Lord has said, "I will not leave thee, neither will I forsake thee." So that taking courage we may say, "The Lord is my helper, and I will not be afraid; what will men do unto me?" (Heb. 13. 5, 6). The Devil is just as powerless as men if the Lord is with us.

It is a great day in our spiritual history when we learn that God has bound us up with the interests and fortunes of His dear Son, and that He is not against us but for us. If God were against us, we could not but despair; but He is for us, and if God be for us, who can be against us? That is a great triumphant challenge! "I am thy shield," He said to Abraham. He is ours also, to stand between us and every foe, to answer every charge, and to drive away all fear of the foe from our breast. Having given His Son for us, will He withhold any good? And if He allows us to suffer, to be killed all the day long for Christ's sake, in these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. The enemy may take a Christian's possession from him, and even his life, if God permit it, but he cannot destroy his faith or separate him from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is in the knowledge that God is for us that we are delivered from all fear in the path of faith, and this knowledge will ever be real to us if we keep in the company of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Chapter 16

"Shall I smite them?"

How good may triumph over evil.

"And it came to pass, when they were come into Samaria, that Elisha said, Lord, open the eyes of these men, that they may see. And the Lord opened their eyes, and they saw, and behold, they were in the midst of Samaria. And the king of Israel said unto Elisha when he saw them, My father, shall I smite them? shall I smite them? And he answered, Thou shalt not smite them: wouldest thou smite those whom thou hast taken captive with thy sword and with thy bow? Set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink and go to their master. And he prepared great provision for them, and when they had eaten and drunk, he sent them away, and they went to their master. So the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel" (2 Kings 6: 20-23).

The would-be captors were taken captive; for all their show of might they were helpless prisoners when the Lord displayed Himself on the behalf of His servant. If we have been kept and sustained by the great fact that God is for us, and are fearless when foes threaten us, because of this we may well triumph, but now comes the need of special watchfulness. If the wiles and might of the Devil both fail to turn us from the Lord and the life of faith, he will endeavour to incite the flesh within us and make us act in times of testing on our natural impulses. The danger that lies here is illustrated for us in the king of Israel's feelings towards these captive Syrians. They were his enemies; much trouble they had given him, and many sleepless nights and anxious days; they had plotted his overthrow, and would have accomplished their purpose if he had not kept in constant communication with the man of God; and now they were in his power, he could repay them for all the evil they had done him, he could avenge himself of them now, his turn had come. His hand flew to his sword hilt, and he cried to the man of God, with more enthusiasm than he showed in most things: "My father, shall I smite them? Shall I smite them?"

It is not difficult to picture his eagerness, and we can understand it well. This king was very human, so very like ourselves; we feel that our impulse would have been just what his was if we had been in his place. Indeed, I have no doubt that a feeling of shame begins to rise within our hearts as we see ourselves in this rash king. We have been wronged by some one who ought to have known better, and we made up our minds that when the opportunity came we would smite, we would avenge ourselves. We knew the feeling was wrong, and we lost our joy and peace by nursing it; but there it was, revenge is sweet to the flesh, and revenged we would be. How often the Devil has laughed in his triumph over the children of God when they have cultivated and displayed this spirit.

We have to learn that if God had retaliated upon us because of our sins we should have perished for ever. But He did not. He overcame our evil by His good, and He saved us by His grace. Though we had been His enemies, yet He forgave us for Christ's sake. We are not now in the flesh but in the Spirit (Rom. 8), and the fruits of the Spirit and not the works of the flesh are to be manifested in us. The life of Jesus has now to be seen in us; we are to be like Him. His enemies were merciless and implacable; they pursued Him with their bitter hatred throughout His life, and were not satisfied until they had nailed Him to a cross, and what did He do when they had done their worst? He prayed: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

But it is not easy to forgive. He was so unkind to you, and the things he said were so false, and you were so deeply wounded; and she has been so unreasonable and persistent in her enmity that you feel you cannot forgive! No, you cannot! But you will if you are near enough to the Lord, just as the king of Israel forgave through being near to Elisha. Elisha was the prophet of grace, and this was an opportunity for the display of grace; these Syrians must go back to their master persuaded that there was a temper in Israel that was not known in Syria, and so Elisha said, "Thou shalt not smite them. . . . Set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink, and go to their master." It does not appear to have been hard for the king of Israel to do this. He seems to have caught Elisha's spirit and acted on it with a very good will, for HE PREPARED GREAT PROVISION FOR THEM; and when they had eaten and drunk, he sent them away, and they went to their master. And the king gained a greater victory by his kindness than he could have gained by his prowess upon the battlefield, for the bands of Syrians troubled him no more.

This is the way of victory, to suffer and bear it patiently, to overcome evil with good, to meet enmity with the spirit of grace and forgiveness; this was the Lord's way with His foes, and He has left us an example that we should thus follow in His steps: "Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth: Who when He was reviled, reviled not again: when He suffered He threatened not: but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously: Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness, by Whose stripes we are healed." And we only live unto righteousness as His own life and grace show themselves in us.

And if this grace must be shown to those that are without, what about our brethren? How often must we forgive them? It was a generous impulse that moved the heart of Peter, when his long association with his Lord made him suggest that he might go the length of forgiving his brother seven times! And what a glow of satisfaction would pervade his soul as he made the suggestion. Surely the Lord would praise him and hold him up as an example of grace to the other disciples.

But what said the Lord? "I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but until seventy times seven."

We can almost hear Peter's gasp of astonishment, and see his jaw drop. How mean were his ideas of forgiveness and grace really, when brought to the true standard, and yet he was far ahead of many Christians. When Peter got over the shock of these wonderful words, we can understand him saying, "But, Master, that is impossible; human nature could not do it. You are asking too much of me." How patiently, how tenderly, the Lord would reply, "That is the way I am treating you, Peter; I only ask and expect you to treat others as I am treating you." It is the deep soul-knowledge of this unlimited grace of our Lord which we can only know as we are near to Him that will make us ready to fulfil the Lord's words. We shall say, "Lord, we obey Thy Word, we obey it gladly, we can do no other." And we shall find that the joy of forgiving is an unspeakable joy. It is the very joy of God that He permits us to share with Him.

But there is more than this in the great revelation of God's grace and purposes towards us in Christ Jesus. God has forgiven us for Christ's sake, and this is given as the reason why we should be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another (Eph. 4: 32). But in the Colossian Epistle an inconceivable grace is unfolded to us. We learn in heart-moving words that we are united to Christ. He is the Head in Heaven, and we, His Blood-bought and Holy Ghost-sealed saints, are His Body on earth. We learn the great fact that the life of the Head in Heaven is in His Body on earth, and that now in the very world where Christ was crucified and where Satan stirred up men to destroy the temple of His body, He has a Body in which His life and the graces of it are being displayed, and forgiveness has a prominent place in this life. Consider the passage which shows this. "Put on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye." What a wonderful standard that is. Christ's forgiveness is complete and eternal, for He has made us members of His own Body, but in doing that He has made us members one of another; as we remember that we shall bear no grudge against any Christian. "As Christ forgave you, so also do ye," will be our measure and our way.

Then Satan's efforts to stir up our hearts to anger and wrath and malice against those who do not treat us well will fail, and instead of being overcome by these fleshly feelings, we shall manifest the grace of our Lord and Head, and even in these things be more than conquerors through Him that loved us.

Chapter 17

A Day of Good Tidings

How the famine was changed to a feast.

"And it came to pass after this, that Ben-hadad, king of Syria, gathered all his host, and went up and besieged Samaria. And there was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they besieged it, until an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of doves' dung for five pieces of silver. And as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, there cried a woman unto him, saying, Help, my lord, O king. And he said, If the Lord do not help thee, whence shall I help thee? out of the barn floor, or out of the winepress? And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him; and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him; and she hath hid her son. And it came to pass, when the king heard the words of the woman, that he rent his clothes; and he passed by upon the wall, and the people looked, and behold, he had sackcloth within upon his flesh. Then he said, God do so and more also to me, if the head of Elisha, the son of Shaphat, shall stand on him this day. . . . Then Elisha said, Hear ye the word of the Lord: Thus saith the Lord, To-morrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria. Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned, answered the man of God, and said, Behold, if the Lord would make windows in Heaven, might this thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof. And there were four leprous men at the entering in of the gate: and they said one to another, Why sit we here until we die? If we say, We will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there; and if we sit still here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us fall into the host of the Syrians: if they save us alive we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die. And they rose up in the twilight to go unto the camp of the Syrians, and when they were come to the uttermost part of the camp of Syria, behold, there was no man there. For the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host: and they said one to another, Lo, the king of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us. Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents, and their horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was, and fled for their life. And when these lepers came to the uttermost part of the camp, they went into one tent, and did eat and drink, and carried thence silver and gold and raiment, and went and hid it; and came again, and entered into another tent, and carried thence also, and went and hid it. Then they said one to another, We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace; if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king's household. . . . They took therefore two chariot horses, and the king sent after the host of the Syrians, saying, Go and see. And they went after them unto Jordan; and lo, all the way was full of garments and vessels, which the Syrians had cast away in their haste. And the messengers returned and told the king. And the people went out, and spoiled the tents of the Syrians. So a measure of fine flour was sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, according to the word of the Lord" (2 Kings 6: 24-31; 7: 1-9; 14-16).

Never was there a city in a worse case than this Samaria. The strong foe outside, and the sore famine inside had most surely brought them to the verge of despair. So reduced were they that mothers were boiling and eating their children, and if that seems an incredible thing, my answer is, it was but the fulfilment of the Word of God. These Israelites were great sinners. They had ignored the commandments of their God, and done their own wicked wills, and He had warned them long ago as to what the consequences of such rebellion against Him would be. In Deuteronomy 28 we read: "The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil . . . toward her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall bear; for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the seige and straightness wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates. If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this Book." Now it had turned out as the Word had predicted, undeniable evidence that the Word of God must be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one jot or tittle of His Word can fail, and it will be well with those who take heed to those words. But did this great chastisement change the hearts of the people? No, it did not, for we conclude that they were truly represented by their king, and he, when he heard this gruesome tale, did not cry out to God for mercy. He did not say, "O God, we have sinned against Thee, and Thy judgment is just, but now pardon Thy people and deliver them." No, he swore an oath, saying, "God, do so, and more also, to me, if the head of Elisha, the son of Shaphat, shall stand upon him this day." He set out to murder the only one who could bless them. It was a strange thing, for this surely was the same king who had been delivered in former days by Elisha, yet now his one desire was to murder the man who had been his most faithful friend. But let no one suppose that this king was singular in his wickedness. He is only a sample of what the heart of man is capable, and not the worst sample either.

When Elisha's Lord came in flesh and dwelt among men full of grace and truth, the great test came to men. What a Friend was Jesus to them! He went about doing good, healing the sick, blessing the children, cleansing the lepers, feeding the hungry, and weeping over them, so greatly did He love them. But they cried, "Away with Him! Crucify Him!" and leading Him out of their city to Golgotha, they murdered Him there. It was not the ignorant and degraded rabble that did it, but "the princes of the world crucified the Lord of Glory" (1 Cor. 2). It was then and there that the sin of man rose up to Heaven, challenging the very supremacy of God, and crying for an answer of surrender to them on His part, or swift and exterminating judgment. But what was God's answer? Let us see what His answer to the wickedness of Jehoram by the mouth of Elisha was.

"Hear ye the Word of the Lord: Thus saith the Lord, To-morrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria." It was an answer of grace through the very man whom the king would have destroyed; it was God's intervention on behalf of the afflicted people who had come to their wits' end. And here is illustrated God's answer to the challenge of man's sin at the Cross of Jesus. A feeble illustration, I admit, but there it is, like beams of grace shining in the twilight.

The Cross will be for ever the awful monument of the wickedness of men, yet it was also the great revelation of the love of God. God answered man's challenge, and declared His supremacy, but it was the supremacy of love, and where sin abounded grace did much more abound.

"The very spear that pierced His side

Drew forth the Blood to save."

"Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise again from the dead the third day. And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His Name among all nations, BEGINNING AT JERUSALEM."

"O who would not boast in such love,

And count all man's glory but dross."

It seemed impossible that the word of Elisha could be fulfilled, and the lord on whose hand the king leaned, as godless a man as his master, scoffed at the prophet's words. He did not believe them. "Behold, if the Lord should make windows in Heaven, might this thing be?" he asked. Can God pour wheat and barley from Heaven? So he poured the scorning of an infidel upon the Word of the Lord, and showed that he knew nothing of the grace of God's heart, the power of His hand, and the infallibility of His Word.

This Samaria, foe-beleaguered and famine-stricken, is a vivid picture of sinful men in this world, of all, in fact, who have not been saved by grace. I have met people who have been startled by that statement, and who have asked: "What do you mean?" My answer has been, "You are besieged by a great army of enemies, who are seeking the destruction of your soul." And this is true of you, my unsaved reader. Do you say that you were not aware that you had a single enemy in the world? Well, you must have forgotten your sins, for your sins are your enemies! And death and the Devil, these are foes in whose eyes there is no pity, and who can show no mercy. And beyond all these there is the righteous judgment of God, for He will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, and will render unto every man according to his deeds, and there is no respect of persons with God.

There are many, and I am one of them, who are full of gratitude to God that we discovered that we were beset with many enemies. And we had none more terrible than our SINS!

At the gate of the city were four leprous men, their dire condition had sharpened their wits and brought them to their senses and to a wise decision. "Why sit we here until we die?" they ask. We must do something. Shall we go into the city? No, that won't relieve us, for the famine is in the city, and we shall die there also. There is only one hope, and that is that our foes may be merciful, but if not, well, we had better face the situation courageously and at once, and leave the issue to God. It was on those lines that I reasoned when I awoke to my need, and it is after this manner that I invite my readers who do not yet know the saving grace of God to reason. You must do something, for you cannot save your own soul, nor can you satisfy your own heart's hunger, and the world cannot save and bless you; if you go to the world for salvation and satisfaction, you will find neither. The world passeth away and the lust thereof.

"Its grand fete days,

And fashions and ways,

Are all but perishing things."

One of its most brilliant and enthusiastic votaries laid bare his empty heart when he wrote:

"Where is the world?...

I looked for it — 'tis gone!

A globe of glass,

Cracked, shivered, vanished,

Scarce gazed upon ere a silent power

Dissolved the glittering mass."

And how weary of it all he must have been when he wailed:

"I fly like a bird of the air,

In search of a home and a rest;

A balm for the sickness of care,

A bliss for a bosom unblest."

There is no hope in the world for sinners; its pleasures cannot satisfy the hungry heart, its religion cannot save the guilty soul.

The one way of blessing is to face the grave questions of sin and death, of Satan's power, and of judgment to come, to be honest with yourself, and with God, to own the truth of your lost condition, and your need of a Deliverer. It is thus I interpret the story for you, and to take this way will issue in a great blessing, as the way of the leprous men did for them. They arose in the twilight and came to the camp of the Syrians, and did not find a single enemy there, for the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear the noise of chariots and the noise of horses, even the noise of a great host. . . . Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents and their horses and their asses, even the camp as it was, and fled for their life."

It was a great deliverance, but only a feeble picture of one that is infinitely greater. The foes of the one who believes have not been scared from the field to which they might return when the scare was past, they have been confronted by the sinner's Champion and Substitute, and they have been put to utter rout. It was at Calvary that this great fight was fought and this great victory gained, and Jesus was the One Who stood there for us.

"Alone He bare the Cross,

Alone its grief sustained;

His was the shame and loss,

And He the victory gained.

The mighty work was all His own,

Though we shall share His glorious Throne."

And when these lepers came to the uttermost part of the camp, they went into one tent, and did eat and drink, and carried thence silver and gold and raiment, and went and hid it. Where they expected foes they found the feast, and were greatly enriched. And this is the experience of all who come to God through Christ. They come full of fear, believing that God is against them, a hard master, reaping where He had never sown, and instead they find that God is for them and against their enemies, that He has Himself secured salvation for them from the foes that threatend their souls, and has spread a feast for their starving souls. So the prodigal found it to be when he returned to his father, and so every soul finds it to be that turns to God.

These men were not content with what they found in the first tent, they went from tent to tent, enriching themselves as they went. In this they were a fine example for Christians of this day. How often do these rest content with their first knowledge of God and His blessing. The forgiveness of sins and the assurance of Heaven seem to be all that they desire to know, when there are the unsearchable riches of Christ for their enjoyment. We must go from tent to tent; we must grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, or we shall not know the extent of our wealth in Him. We must not neglect His grace. How beautifully it is put in that well-known verse, "For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich." But if we are to know this grace that has enriched us in its true blessedness, we must go in for it, we must go from tent to tent.

Then said these men one to another: "THIS IS A DAY OF GOOD TIDINGS, and we do not well to hold our peace. . . . Come, therefore, now, that we may go and tell the king's household." It would have been a selfish and inhuman thing to have kept those good tidings to themselves. The blessing that they had found was for all the famished citizens of Samaria, and they were rightly moved when they said, "COME, THAT WE MAY GO AND TELL." These were good and evangelical words and should be in the hearts and mouths of all believing souls.

"Go and tell to all the world around,

What a dear Saviour we have found."

So they came to the city, and told the porters at the gate of it, and they, convinced by the enthusiasm of the men and the treasures they showed, which witnessed to the truth of their words, aroused His Majesty from his sleep. First he made a confession: "They know that we be hungry." And that confession, if not on the lips is in the hearts of the multitudes that throng the world's pleasure haunts: "WE BE HUNGRY." It is written on their faces, it is heard in their hollow laughter, it shows itself in the frenzied rush for pleasure. Their appetites were never so considered as now, and never catered for with such abundance for the gratification of every lust and sense, and they were never so hungry.

Then the king jumped to a conclusion: "They have gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the field," said he; "and when we come out of the city they will catch us alive and get into the city." Which meant: "It's too good to be true." But one of his servants was a wise man, and proposed that at least they might send and see. "Let some take, I pray thee, five of the horses that remain in the city, and let us send and see." No one could question the wisdom of the proposal, and I would take it up and press it upon those who have doubts in their minds as to the blessedness of knowing the Lord. I would take up David's words and say, "O taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man that trusteth in Him." "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." And those who have tasted say with united voice, "The Lord is gracious."

The advice was good, and they took therefore two chariot horses, and the king sent after the host of the Syrians, saying, "Go and see. AND THEY WENT AFTER THEM UNTO JORDAN, and lo, all the way was full of garments and vessels, which the Syrians had cast away in their haste. And the messengers returned and told the king."

The people went out and spoiled the tents of the Syrians. God fulfilled His own promise of deliverance and plenty, and all the famished inhabitants of the city rejoiced that day, but one man, and that man was the unbeliever. "Thou shalt see it with thine eyes," the prophet had said to him, "but thou shalt not taste thereof." And so it fell out unto him; for the people trod upon him in the gate, AND HE DIED. Twice over in the story do these words occur, as though to emphasise the doom of the unbeliever, and they bring to the mind those words that came from the lips of the Lord Himself: "He that believeth not shall be damned."

The rich man lifted up his eyes and saw Lazarus in the place of blessing; he saw it with his eyes, but he could not share in that blessing, for between him and it there was a great and impassable gulf fixed. They are unpopular words, but there they stand in God's Word, in which warnings are mingled with entreaties, and are all a proof of God's desire for the blessing of men.

Chapter 18

"They went after them unto Jordan"

How those who believe are relieved by the true meaning of the cross of Christ.

"They took therefore two chariot horses, and the king sent after the host of the Syrians, saying, Go and see. And they went after them unto Jordan; and lo, all the way was full of garments and vessels which the Syrians had cast away in their haste. And the messengers returned and told the king" (2 Kings 7: 14, 15).

What a relief it must have been to those starving Samaritans to find that Jordan was the end of their strong and remorseless foes. Traces of them there were every step of the way to that famous river, for the whole way was full of garments and vessels which the Syrians had cast away in their haste; but them they found not. With what eager steps would those messengers return to tell the king! What good news their report would be to the multitudes in the city. And, set free from fear of those terrible Syrians, with what relish they would turn to the feast so suddenly and so unexpectedly given them, according to the word of the man of God. And the silver and gold and raiment; the horses and the asses! It requires no vivid imagination to picture how quickly these would be appropriated by those astonished and triumphant Israelites.

Such is the end of the story so strikingly told, and so well worthy of being read, in 2 Kings 7. Story of deep interest, yet of important instruction, telling in pictorial language of "the better things" which the Gospel of God proclaims to us.

The Jordan typifies the death of Christ. Have we traced our foes to it and found it to be the death of them all? Every believer in that precious Saviour may do so, and rejoice in a complete and everlasting deliverance.

We had no foes more terrible than our SINS. How the guilt of them oppressed us! What a burden it was upon our consciences and souls as we staggered beneath the load of it to destruction! And the sins themselves — some of them went before us to judgment, proclaiming in trumpet tones as they went that rebels against God were coming that way, and others followed after, stealthy and sure, like a pack of sleuth hounds upon the trail of a fugitive, or an unerring detective on the track of the criminal, and ready to witness against us in the great Judgment Day! But whether they went before or after, the thought of them made us shudder with fear, for we were sure that our sins would find us out. Before, behind, and on every side of us they gathered like a strong host besieging a doomed city.

What a relief it was to us when we heard the Gospel when we heard how the Son of God, whose precious Name is JESUS, had come to save us from our sins, and when, by faith, we saw Him bearing His Cross to Calvary as the Lamb of God Who beareth away the sin of the world! How great was the load that was laid upon Him there, for the Scripture saith, "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all" (Isa. 53: 6), and "Who Himself bare our sins in His own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2: 24). Because of our sins He suffered; "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed" (Isa. 53: 5). As the scapegoat in Israel's history carried away, in figure, the sins of that nation into a land where no man dwelt, so in His death, when the waves of judgment rolled over Him, did our Scapegoat carry away our sins. They are cast into the depths of the sea (Micah 7: 19); they are to be remembered no more (Heb. 10: 17); He was delivered for our offences that we might be justified from them all (Rom. 4: 25; Acts 13: 29). How blessed for us to see Him, the Omnipotent Redeemer, going down into the dark waters of judgment with all our sins upon Him; to trace our sins to that sacred spot, and to see the mighty flood roll over them and HIM. Then on the third day, to see Him rise up without them, having made expiation for them, and be able to say to us, "Peace be unto you," and to know that now there is no condemnation for any who are in Him. In the death of Christ our sins were overwhelmed, and we are free.

And DEATH also, and him that had the power of it, what merciless foes were these! No kindness throbs in the bosom of the King of Terrors, no pity in the heart of the Devil; this we knew well, and how the thought of it made us dread the future — the last unavailing struggle, the silent grave and that which lies beyond! But the Gospel has brought a wonderful peace to our souls, for it has told us the tidings of Him Who partook of flesh and blood that, through death, He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the Devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage (Heb. 2: 14, 15). As David laid the giant in the dust of Pas-dammin, and delivered Israel from the dread of him, so has our Lord delivered us; He has taken the sting out of death, and robbed the grave of its victory. We can trace our foes to His death, and find in that death the end of them all.

There were other foes also — our own evil selves — the flesh; the world with its allurements and snares; sin as a master, and many others; but the death of Christ is the way of deliverance from them all, whatsoever they be. And being set free, we may now feast upon the provision of God's grace for us, for where sin abounded grace does much more abound, and the gold, silver, and raiment, the wheat and the barley, all have their counterpart in blessed spiritual realities in Christianity. These are "the exceeding riches of God's grace," "the unsearchable riches of Christ," "the love of Christ which passeth knowledge," and "all the fulness of God."

Yes, when we come to Christ the famine is turned into a feast, and where we expected foes and feared to meet them, there we find a full deliverance and God's plenteous provision for our need, and exceedingly abundantly more than we are able to ask or think.

Chapter 19

Judgment without Mercy

How grace refused means certain judgment.

"And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald-head; go up, thou bald-head. And he turned back and looked on them, and cursed them in the Name of the Lord. And there came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them. And he went from thence to Mount Carmel, and from thence he returned to Samaria" (2 Kings 2: 23-25).

"But Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, said, Behold, my master hath spared Naaman this Syrian, in not receiving at his hands that which he brought: but, as the Lord liveth, I will run after him, and take somewhat of him. So Gehazi followed after Naaman. And when Naaman saw him running after him, he lighted down from the chariot to meet him, and said, Is all well? And he said, All is well. My master hath sent me, saying, Behold, even now there be come to me from mount Ephraim two young men of the sons of the prophets: give them, I pray thee, a talent of silver, and two changes of garments" (2 Kings 5: 20-22).

"And that lord answered the man of God, and said, Now, behold, if the Lord should make windows in heaven, might such a thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof. And so it fell out unto him: for the people trode upon him in the gate, and he died" (2 Kings 7: 19, 20).

There are three cases of summary judgment in the ministry of Elisha. On first reading these we are surprised and perhaps a little shocked to find curses intermingled with blessings, and swift retribution running with longsuffering and compassion. But a careful consideration of them will convince us that they were just and right, and solemn warnings to us.

The first of these incidents occurred at the very beginning of the ministry of grace, and immediately after the healing of the waters at Jericho. The people ought to have been impressed by that miracle, but at Bethel they were not. Bethel had great traditions. Its meaning is "the house of God," and it was there that Jacob first met God. Above all places in the land the man of God ought to have had a welcome there, but instead the very children mocked him, and children by their public conduct show what their home training has been. I have no doubt that these children had heard their parents mock the prophet in private, they had grown up under an evil and godless influence. They were not "little children" in our meaning of the word, but youths and maidens, probably youths only, for the same word is used in chapter 4: "when the child was grown," and on several occasions in the Old Testament it is translated "young men." These children had reached the age of responsibility, and were accountable for their own actions. They made their choice, and rejected the man of grace. The judgment that came upon them was not only a judgment on their parents and the profane society in which they had been reared, but upon themselves also.

Their mocking words were not mere youthful rudeness. "Go up, thou bald-head, Go up, thou bald-head," meant more than that. It was their deliberate rejection of God's representative. It meant, "We do not want God in any way. Elijah has gone up, at least so it is reported, you go, too, and leave us in peace." The same spirit was shown by the men of the Lord's generation. "Wherewith shall I liken the men of this generation, and to what are they like?" He said, "They are like unto children sitting in the market place, and calling one to another and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not wept. For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and ye say, He hath a devil. The Son of Man is come eating and drinking, and ye say, Behold, a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners." Elijah and John came on the same ground; they pressed the claims of God upon the people, and exposed their sinful rebellion against Him, and had their ministry been heeded their hearers would have welcomed the grace that followed in Elisha, and above all in the Lord. But the people of Bethel hated the ministry of Elijah, they did not want to hear of God's rights or their rebellion, and they were glad when he took his departure for Heaven, and they wanted Elisha to go, too; they did not want to hear of the goodness of God; it was just as distasteful to them as His righteous claims. They did not want God in any way. What is there left for men if they cannot meet God's claims and won't have His grace? Nothing but judgment. This solemn fact is taught very early in man's history. To Cain God said, "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin, or a sin-offering, lieth at the door." If Cain had been a righteous man, doing God's will and answering to all His holy and kindly claims, he would have been accepted on his own merits; but he was a sinner, and could claim nothing on that ground; but God had ordained a way by which sinful men could be justified and saved. He had provided the Sin-Offering, and in this His grace was displayed. It is all clearly taught in Romans 3: 19-26. Cain rejected God's way of blessing for him, there was nothing left but God's judgment.

These youths were glad to be rid of Elijah, who pressed the claims; and they would not have Elisha, who brought the grace; and when grace is rejected judgment must act. It does not always act as swiftly as at Bethel, for God is longsuffering and very pitiful; but act it must, for what can God do with those who cannot meet His claims and will not have His pardoning grace in Christ? I know that eternal punishment is a most unpopular truth, but nothing else remains for those who reject God's salvation. God has done His best, His wisdom, power, and love are displayed in their Divine perfection in Jesus the Saviour, and there is no other salvation. Men cannot devise one, and God cannot provide another.

The second incident is that of Gehazi. He was a man of great knowledge and extraordinary privilege. He ought to have been a contented man, for he served the man of God, who could command God's resources in every time of need. But when the testing-time came, it found him out. All he seemed to care about was his own enrichment, and he schemed to turn the goodness of God to his own advantage. He was cursed with a covetous heart. He said, "Behold, my master hath spared Naaman the Syrian. . . . As the Lord liveth I will run after him and take somewhat of him." He could not understand Elisha's desire that Naaman should not only know that there was a God in Israel, but that he should know the character of that God, that he should know that He freely gave that which was beyond all price. He did not rejoice in grace, he would have made Elisha and his God as grasping as himself.

How swift of foot his avarice made him that day, and Naaman, still wondering at the manner of the man of God, saw him running, and like the humbled and grateful man he was, he lighted down from his chariot to meet him. He met a liar and a covetous man, a man unchanged in heart in spite of all the grace of Elisha, a man who turned the grace of God into lasciviousness. He gave to him freely, and Gehazi became a richer man than his evil heart had hoped; but he spoilt the grace and clouded the revelation that the Syrian had received of God that day.

Poor wretch, he did not enjoy his ill-gotten gains for long. Elisha knew, his heart had gone with his unregenerated servant, sadly he had seen the whole transaction. "Is it a time to receive money, and to receive garments, and olive yards, and vineyards, and sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and maidservants?" Must we belie this grace of God that is so freely flowing out to needy men, and enrich ourselves by it, and reduce it to a commercial transaction? It is the sin of the Church in these last days, a sin in which it shamelessly boasts, "I am rich and increased in goods," it says, "and have need of nothing." "I know thy works," says the Lord, "I will spue thee out of My mouth" (Rev. 3). Terrible was the retribution. "The leprosy of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed for ever. And he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow." Such was the judgment of God that fell upon the man who turned the grace of God into lasciviousness. We read of men of this type in the short Epistle of Jude: "For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ."

The third incident is that of the lord on whose hand the king of Samaria leaned. He was a scoffer. When Elisha announced deliverance and plenty for the famine-stricken people of Samaria, he made a jest of it. This was his great sin, and it sprang up from the unbelief that was in his heart. "Behold," said he, "if the Lord should make windows in Heaven, might such a thing be." His words meant, "Elisha, we don't believe you." There are many incidents in these Old Testament records that show us that God cannot be trifled with, and that His Word must come true, but none more dramatic and striking than this: "Behold," said Elisha to him, "thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not eat thereof." And so it fell out unto him, for to him was given the charge of the gate when the great supplies were brought into the city from the Syrian camp, and the people trod on him in the gate, and he died, as the man of God had said. Twice is the fact recorded, and it closes the story. The three solemn words, "And he died," ring in our ears and remain in our thoughts when we have closed the Book. They are there for our admonition and as a solemn warning against unbelief. "He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; He that believeth not shall be damned," are words that answer to them in the New Testament. Words not spoken by an angel, or even by an apostle, but by the Lord Himself. They are wise people who hear His words and take heed to them.

Then we have these three cases of judgment recorded for our learning, teaching us that God is not mocked, that every man must give an account of himself to God, and that if grace is rejected nothing remains but judgment. May none of my readers reject the grace of God, or turn it into lasciviousness, or refuse to credit it, for those who do these things must share a common doom. "For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thess. 2: 11, 12).

Chapter 20

The Weeping King and the Way of Victory

How victory may follow defeat.

"And Jehoahaz besought the Lord, and the Lord hearkened unto him: for He saw the oppression of Israel, because the king of Syria oppressed them. And the Lord gave Israel a Saviour, so that they went out from under the hand of the Syrians; and the children of Israel dwelt in their tents as beforetime. . . . Neither did he leave of the people to Jehoahaz, but fifty horsemen and ten chariots, and ten thousand footmen; for the king of Syria had destroyed them, and had made them like the dust by threshing. . . . Now Elisha was fallen sick of his sickness whereof he died. And Joash, the king of Israel, came down unto him, and wept over his face, and said, O my father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof. And Elisha said unto him, Take bow and arrows. And he took unto him bow and arrows. And he said to the king of Israel, Put thine hand upon the bow. And he put his hand upon it; and Elisha put his hands upon the king's hands. And he said, Open the window eastward. And he opened it. Then Elisha said, Shoot. And he shot. And he said, The arrow of the Lord's deliverance, and the arrow of deliverance from Syria: for thou shalt smite the Syrians in Apheck, till thou have consumed them. And he said, Take the arrows. And he took them. And he said unto the king of Israel, Smite upon the ground. And he smote thrice and stayed. And the man of God was wroth with him, and said, Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it: whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice" (2 Kings 13: 4, 5, 7, 14-19).

The last incident in Elisha's life is not less instructive than the rest of his story. The chapter in which is it given shows the misery and poverty of the people in a few terse words: "The king of Syria had oppressed them, and had destroyed them, and had made them like the dust of the threshing." They were a backslidden people. They had turned their backs upon God, and gone their self-willed way after idols, and were but reaping what they had sown. Then King Jehoahaz besought the Lord, and we know that that was always the last resort of these children of Jacob; it had ever been a proof that they were at their wits' end. Yet the Lord hearkened to his cry, and this was evidence of the longsuffering of their God and ours. He is a God ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy. Hence we read: "He was gracious unto them, and had compassion on them, and gave them a Saviour, so that they went out from under the hand of the Syrians, and dwelt in their tents as aforetime," which means that they were free and safe and happy, as God always wished them to be.

But how reduced they were from the time when they followed the victorious Joshua into their God-given land, and what a change from the prosperous days of David and Solomon. It was their sins that had brought them so low, it was God's mercy that had preserved them from extinction.

There is surely an analogy between the decline of these children of Jacob and the Church on earth. We read of the days when "the churches had rest and were edified and walking in the fear of the Lord, and the comfort of the Holy Ghost were multiplied" that "the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Ghost;" and that "the Word of God grew and multiplied." Those were great days, when with one heart and one mind Christians strove together for the Faith, and had "joy unspeakable and full of glory" "rivers of living water" flowed from them, and "from them sounded out the Word of the Lord, and in every place their faith Godward was spread abroad." We are conscious that things are different now, that we have reached the days in which "evil men and seducers have waxed worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived," and that in Christendom and in the Name of Christ sound doctrine is not endured, but, having itching ears, men heap to themselves teachers of their own sort, who will preach fables to them, and not the truth. Not all are like this; there are some who are aggressively orthodox, but with no heart for Christ. They have a Name to live, but are dead. Others again have sincerely desired to walk in the truth. They have cast off all authority but the Word of God, and yet how they have blundered and failed, and those who are nearest to God will feel it the most. And for those who feel it, is there any remedy, any hope of recovery? Yes, thank God there is, and this hope lies first in the longsuffering love and unfailing compassion of our God. He is the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, and as He gave to impoverished Israel a Saviour, who without doubt was Elisha, so will He still deliver His people. Elisha's presence in the land seems to have been forgotten for forty years, and yet he was there, ready to show the kindness of God to the people whenever they turned to Him. We know that he speaks to us of Christ, Who is our great Deliverer right through to the end. In Christ there is hope, for He dieth no more, as did Elisha; "He ever liveth to make intercession for us."

God never did and never will turn away from the cry of His people, for He loves them with an unchanging love, and while He must often chasten them because of their waywardness, for "whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son that He receiveth," yet He will not give them up. It was of these wilful children of Jacob that He said: "I have loved thee with an everlasting love, and with loving-kindness will I draw thee," and again, "can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have engraved thee upon the palms of my hands." And if His love to Israel was so great and faithful, and if they always proved it to be so when they turned from their backsliding to Him, how much more shall we prove it in these "more abundant" days of Gospel grace. He has brought us into His family, all who have believed in the Son of His love are His children, and they form His Church in which He is to have glory in Christ Jesus unto all the generations of the age of ages.

It is in the Epistle which unfolds for us the favour and joy of our relationship to God as our Father that we read: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1: 9). And wherever there has been backsliding this is the way of restoration, and restoration to communion with our God and Father and our Lord Jesus Christ means deliverance from oppression and defeat, and spiritual revival. We come out from under the hand of the Syrian, and dwell in our tents as aforetime. We enjoy our blessings and live as God's children should.

Now we come to God's last deliverance of Israel through Elisha. The prophet was dying, and the king hastened to his side. His tears indicated that his heart was sorely burdened, and his cry, "My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof," showed that he realised that without Elisha they would be an orphaned people, nor could they hope for any victories over their foes. If only that people had realised that continually what a different history theirs would have been! But here comes a challenge to every one of us. Do we realise how indispensable the Lord Jesus is to us? What should we do without Him? If He had ceased to be the Administrator of God's grace to us, where should we be? The very thought is an appalling one. Not for worlds would we be cut off from Him. Then let us appreciate Him with a greater fervour, and make use of Him with a larger faith. Let us consider Him in this twofold character. "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord." He cares for us with a tender and constant care, and He is our protector from every enemy. These two sides of the truth have been illustrated by the wings of the mother bird. The soft down in which the young birds nestle tells of the tender care of our Lord, the strong quills that protect them from the enemy tell of the protection we have in Him against our foes. We may well take up the words of this weeping king, and say to our Lord with a greater and more spiritual intelligence, "My Father-my Father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof." And we can take up this cry without tears, except for our own foolish backsliding, and for this and the impoverished condition of the Church we might well weep; but we can take it up with joy, for our Saviour dieth no more. He has said, "I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore;" and again, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." So that we may boldly say, "The Lord is my Helper. I will not fear what men shall do unto me." And He is our Leader, the Captain of our salvation.

And now we learn in a new way the way of victory, when all human hope is dying. "Open the window eastward," said the prophet. Surely a word to us to keep our faces towards the sunrising. We must not be occupied with the failure or grow depressed in the dying dispensation. It may be true, and it is, that the day is far spent, but we look for the Saviour. Hope of the glory yet to come is a great tonic for the drooping spirit; it is salvation to those who have it. They can lift up their heads, for this hope is a helmet to them.

"Our hearts beat high,

The dawn is nigh

Which ends our pilgrim story

In His appointed glory."

This outlook is important, and in this closing chapter of our book we would give it emphasis. It is the outward and upward look that revives the soul. And the sure word of promise constrains us to this steadfast look. Light springs up anew for the soul that faces the sunrising. It is renewal of strength for those who wait upon the Lord.

Then upon the hands of the king the prophet placed his hands. Here there was the surrender of the king's strength. Elisha's hand was to guide that arrow in its flight. The king was a passive instrument, and yet so identified with Elisha's strength in his surrender to him, that the act of shooting was his. It is only thus that the bow of any servant of the Lord can abide in strength. It was so with Joseph. He was the target of his enemies, then "the arms of his hands were made strong by the hand of the mighty God of Jacob, and from thence is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel" (Gen. 49). POWER, PRESERVATION, PERMANENCE. The might of God to direct us in our warfare, the Shepherd of Israel to preserve us in every danger, and the unmoveable Rock upon which we are sure-based all are there for the one who abandons any strength that he has thought he possessed, and yielded himself wholly to God.

God is always greater than our faith. Our faith is feeble and limited. His supplies are boundless and inexhaustible. "Ye have not because ye ask not," and often we dishonour God and miss much because we ask and expect so little. So Joash struck three times, and stayed when he might have struck five or six times. Indeed, he ought to have continued striking until Elisha told him to stop. "When will you cease asking favours of me?" asked a great monarch of a persistent courtier. "When your Majesty ceases to give," was the shrewd reply. "ASK, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full," said the Lord. "For the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved Me, and have believed that I came out from God."

It is our desire to be more than conquerors through Him that loved us. This is the way, to have our hands yielded up to His, and to ask and to expect. To smite at His bidding, and to continue to smite, that "the world, the flesh, and the Devil" may indeed be smitten and defeated foes. If any man is to be an overcomer in his own life, and a helper and deliverer of others, this is the only way. The story of King Joash and the aged prophet was surely written that we might be admonished to this end.

Chapter 21

"And Elisha died . . . and the Man Revived"

How life springs out of death

"And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year. And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood up on his feet" (2 Kings 13: 20, 21).

The death of Elisha was the snapping of the last link of Israel with God; after it they fell into complete apostasy, joined with an alien power to fight against their brethren of Judah, and were finally carried away into a captivity from which they have not been recovered unto this day. As a people these ten tribes, and indeed the whole race of Israel, are dead indeed, morally and spiritually dead. But here comes in an amazing thing. The corpse of a dead man cast into the sepulchre of Elisha, and coming into contact with his bones, sprang into life. The miracle is a great prophecy. It tells of the resurrection, restoration, and final blessing of that dead nation. "All Israel shall be saved" (Rom. 11: 26). This is a necessity for the glory of God and for our sakes also; for the integrity of God's Word depends upon it. He has spoken great things of Israel's future under the sway of great David's greater Son, and if His Word cannot be fulfilled, what guarantee have we that His Word to us will hold good? But not one jot or tittle of His Word can fail, and "the gifts and calling of God are without repentance," and this is most conclusively proved in Romans 9: 10, 11. Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones (Ezek. 37), is to have a wonderful fulfilment, and "many that sleep in the dust shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt" (Dan. 12).

But by what means and upon what righteous basis will God bring this about? God has only one basis upon which He can bless them, and bring them out of death into life, and that is the basis upon which all are blest who are blest at all — THE DEATH OF CHRIST. Upon this basis He can be a just God and a Saviour. In that death His righteousness was manifest, and the effect of that righteousness is peace for all who believe now, as it will be peace for Israel when they are raised up out of the moral and spiritual death in which they lie.

We delight in Isaiah 53. What a wonderful chapter it is. Much joy and blessing have we drawn from it, for Christ and His suffering love and His great sacrifice for sin are its theme. Yet in the first place it belongs to Israel. In the day when through sore tribulation they shall be brought to deep repentance, they will say, "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed." They will realise that He was cut off out of the land of the living for their transgressions, and that when He poured out His soul unto death, they were the transgressors for which He made His prayer. And they will see Him Whom they pierced, and will say, "What are these wounds in Thine hands?" And then shall they mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn (Zech. 12: 13). They will realise that only through His death could they have life. They will come thus into vital contact with His death, and just as Thomas, the unbeliever, cried out when he beheld the wounded body of his Lord, "My Lord and my God," so will they say when they see the Lord, "Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us; this is the Lord; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation" (Isa. 25). It will be true then: "Thy dead men shall live together, with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust" (Isa. 26. 19). But all this blessing will come to them because their Messiah suffered for them. His soul was made an offering for sin on their behalf. He died for them. Even the godless Sadducee, Caiaphas, was compelled to speak of this when he and his confreres in wickedness plotted the murder of Jesus. "Ye know nothing at all," said he, "nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not. And this spake he not of himself; but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation: and not for that nation only, but that He should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad" (John 11).

Every lover of the Lord Jesus will rejoice to know that He is yet to see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied in regard to Israel. Yes, this people who thrust Him from them, when He came full of grace and truth to them, and cried, "Away with Him! Crucify Him!" and joined hands with the pagan Romans in His murder, and by their own act apostatised from God and forfeited all claim upon Him, are yet to learn that God hath raised up Him Whom they took and by wicked hands crucified and slew, and that through Him and His very death that they brought about they may be pardoned and blest, and restored to favour in their own promised land.

He has said: "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely." And no more will the Lord have to weep over them as He did when He looked on their city, and said: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens beneath her wings, and ye would not;" but to them it shall be said, "The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save; He will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest in His love, He will joy over thee with singing" (Zeph. 3: 1).

As it will be with Israel in that coming day of Millennial glory, so it is now. There is no life for any sinner except through the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ crucified is a stumbling-block to the Jew, and to the Greek foolishness; but to those who are saved He is the power of God and the wisdom of God, and God's love is commended to us in Him. Happy are all those who can say, "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." And "the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were they all dead; and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again" (2 Cor. 5).

.   .   .   .   .

Elisha is introduced to us first as a servant with a heart of love in his breast, and a great readiness to obey, and a care for those about him. For when Elijah called him, he was serving with a team of oxen, and in becoming servant to Elijah he did not forget his father and mother, or the needs of his poor neighbours, for he slew his oxen and boiled their flesh, and gave unto the people, and they did eat. Then he arose and followed Elijah, and ministered unto him (1 Kings 19). And by this first incident in his life we are reminded of the words of our Lord: "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister." He was the servant of His Father's will, and the Servant of man's need, and then He added, "To give His life a ransom for many." "Being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a Name that is above every name: that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2: 8-11). And a multitude that no man can number will owe the eternal life that they will enjoy to His death, and will adore Him for ever as the Lamb that was slain.

Emmanuel

Emmanuel

which being interpreted is God with us. Matthew 1: 23.

J. T. Mawson.

Contents.

Part 1. His Deity and Incarnation.

Emmanuel. God's Sign to Men

God with us

"He Dwelt among us"

"My Lord and my God"

The Light and the Truth

What the Gospels Prove

The Necessity of the Deity of Jesus

Part 2. His All-sufficiency for Our Need.

The Friend of Sinners

The Lord and the Home Life

The Lord of Winds and Waves

Held up on the Waves

The Good Shepherd

Part 3. His Suffering and Death.

On both sides of the Sea

"About a stone's cast"

Love that suffered all the Sorrow

That Terrible Hour

"He was numbered with the transgressors"

The Victory of Love

Part 4. His Resurrection and Glory.

"Fear not ye"

"Woman, why weepest thou?"

Power and Grace

Jesus showing Himself to His Disciples

Entering His Glory

The Great High Priest

Hallelujah!

Conclusion.

Part 1.

His Deity and Incarnation.

"But thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting" (Micah 5: 2).

"Christ, who is over all, GOD BLESSED FOR EVER. Amen" (Rom. 9: 5).

"Fairer than all the earth-born race,

Perfect in comeliness Thou art;

Replenished are Thy lips with grace

And full of love Thy tender heart.

God ever blest, we bow the knee

And own all fulness dwells in Thee." (C. Wesley.)

"Lord of the heavens, Sovereign, Son for ever!

Lord of the earth, Creator, Increate!

Come in the likeness of our flesh, but never

Tarnished by taint of sin, inviolate.

Come to destroy the power of death, and sever

Man from its terror in His mercy great;

O let us kneel before Him! let us own Him

King of our hearts, and on that throne enthrone Him." (J. Boyd.)

Emmanuel.

God's Sign to Men

"The Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" (Isa. 7: 14).

The condition of the nation of Israel as it was in Isaiah's day is described in one vivid statement; "The whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it: but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores; they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment." History is repeating itself, and the state of humanity could not be more truly described to-day. As it was then, so it is now. The profiteer was busy (Isa. 5: 8); men and women piped and danced, eagerly following their pagan pleasure without a thought of God, or fear of His just judgments (Isa. 5: 11, 12); crime abounded, for men had grown fearless in their godlessness, and gave rein to their wilful passions, sinning "as it were with a cart rope" (Isa. 5: 18); blinded by the god of this world, they called evil good, and good evil; they put darkness for light, and light for darkness; bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter (Isa. 5: 20), which thing the advocates of spiritism are doing to-day; men thought themselves wiser than God: wise and prudent in their own eyes, like those who dare to criticize His Word, and substitute their own thoughts for His (Isa. 5: 21); and there were those who were so corrupt themselves that their whole business in life was to corrupt others, hating all righteousness and loving only wickedness (Isa. 5: 23, 24).

There were reformers without end; reconstructors; politicians with many promises of better days to come, until men were weary of them; there was a great pretence at honouring God, but the heart was far from Him; and God Himself was weary of their pretentious hypocrisy (Isa. 7: 13). Then it was that He proclaimed that He would intervene; for it was evident that apart from His intervention there could be no blessing or rest for men, or glory to His name from men.

God's intervention was to be entirely of Himself: men were to have no part in it at all, except to receive the good that would result from it. Men cried out for a man, and still cry out for a man, and God replied, I will give you a Man, but He shall be one who owes nothing to man, whose very presence in the world shall be independent of man, for "a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son." This was the sign. It was the sign of man's utter impotency for his own redemption; it was the sign that there was no balm in Gilead, and no physician there. It was the sign that when there was no hope for men in themselves then God would undertake their cause; but it was also the sign that this should proceed from Himself alone and not from men — "a virgin shall conceive." Impossible! cries the critic of God's ways, and the poor blind infidel, wise in his own sight. Yes, it is impossible with men; that is the very lesson that God would teach by the manner of His intervention. It is impossible that men should devise or evolve any scheme or system of redemption, or deliver and uplift themselves from the damning effects of sin, or make themselves what they ought to be before the God who justly claims their fear. Their young men might see visions and their old men dream dreams, but dreams and visions cannot help them; they cannot set themselves free from the law of sin and death. With men it is impossible, but not with God.

He stepped into the scene of man's utter ruin, and said, "Stand still, stand aside, and see the salvation of God": and so in due time, Mary brought forth her firstborn Son, and he [Joseph] called His name JESUS.

"Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise; When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife; for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call His name JESUS; for He shall save His people from their sins."

"Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us" (Matt. 1: 22, 23).

"And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger" (Luke 2: 8-16).

Thus came Emmanuel, not only apart from all the power of men, but also outside the abodes of men, lying in a manger. For the solemn fact had to come clearly into evidence, that (1) men could not produce the great Redeemer, in whom only rest for men and glory to God could be found, but (2) they did not want Him when He came.

Yes, but the virgin's Son, lying upon the straw of a stable, was Emmanuel — God with us. He was "God manifest in the flesh, seen of angels" (1 Tim. 3: 16). And from the lips of God went forth the command, "Let all the angels of God worship Him" (Heb. 1: 6).

Angels worshipped Him, but men were indifferent. Only a few, such as those dusky sages from the far off East and the lowly shepherds from the hills near by, were moved by this great event. The blind unbelief of the multitude could not recognize the sign that God had given; Emmanuel was no more to them than "the carpenter's son," and they were as good or better than He.

"He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not" (John 1: 10, 11).

God saw the contempt with which His Only Begotten was treated and spoke out from His eternal throne in consequence: "I will declare the decree," we read; "the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten Thee. Ask of Me, and I shall give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Ps. 2: 7, 8).

But not then did He ask for the universal throne; or power to break the rebellious with a rod of iron; instead He dwelt among men full of grace. Emmanuel had come to reconcile the world to God, but His mission seemed to be a failure. He appeared in Jerusalem which He loved, riding upon the colt of an ass, "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughters of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting on an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass" (Matt. 21). But that city, grown hoary in its presumptuous pride, despised the meekness of its true Messiah, and asked contemptuously, Who is this? Then He said, "I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought." And the Lord, whose servant He had come to be, answered Him, for we read: "And now, saith the Lord that formed me from the womb to be His servant, to bring Jacob again to Him, Though Israel be not gathered yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength. And He said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be My salvation unto the end of the earth" (Isa. 49: 5, 6).

And Israel will answer, too, in the day of His power, and will say: "Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this" (Isa. 9: 6, 7).

And the nations also shall own Him. "And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths; for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (Isa. 2: 3, 4). His degradation by men was absolute; He sounded the depths of contumely and shame; but His glory will be as great as His humiliation, and every man that is saved will owe it to Him, for "there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved." Every problem will be settled by His wisdom, every wrong righted, and the groaning creation shall reach the end of its travail and rejoice in the power and presence of EMMANUEL.

God with us.

As Moses kept the sheep of Jethro, the Midianite, in the back side of the desert, he came to Horeb, the mountain of God, and there he beheld a strange thing. Upon the rugged sides of that notable mountain there burned a bush with fire, but in spite of the fierce flames that enwrapped it that bush was not consumed. Wonder at this great sight moved Moses to turn aside to discover why this should be, when the voice of God arrested him, and he found that he was in the immediate presence of the great I AM.

Out of that bush God spoke to Moses, and told him of salvation for His people — free, great, and full. He revealed Himself as the Almighty Deliverer.

The rationalistic critic declares that for a bush to burn with fire and not be consumed is a physical impossibility, and so relegates this story, along with many another in Holy Writ, to the realm of legend and myth. But that which moves to ridicule the blind but presumptuous "wise and prudent" of the earth yields the most precious lessons to those who love God and His Word. In that burning bush there was foreshadowed the most extraordinary event that could happen in the history of time.

The flame of fire tells us of God; "For our God is a consuming fire" (Heb. 12: 29). And the bush tells us of men, poor, sinful rebellious men — dry, withered, and useless, by whom no fruit was yielded to God. If God, who is a consuming fire, and who must judge all iniquity, should at any time come down into the midst of the dry and fruitless bush of humanity (and He has a right to do this whenever He pleases), what shall the result be? Why, there can be but one result, we should say; the bush will be consumed. Such is the natural thought of men, and hence the desire to keep God at a distance. And in this thought we seem to be confirmed as we read the record of Sinai. There at that awesome mount, the same at which Moses had had his first interview with God, the law of God was given, and out from its cloud crested summit the lightnings flamed forth, and the thunders boomed and rolled, and as God spoke to the people they feared exceedingly and begged that they might not hear that majestic voice again, but that Moses would become a mediator for them.

Yes, it would seem to us, as we contemplate that sight, that men must be consumed if God comes into the midst of them. But such a thought is false, fundamentally and absolutely false, for God who is light is also love, as His "due time" has proved.

That due time arrived when the virgin daughter of David's royal house brought forth her firstborn Son and "laid Him in a manger, because there was no room in the inn." Here was a sight for the angels of God, a sight that moved the whole multitude of them to rapturous praise, for the name of that Babe was called EMMANUEL, which, being interpreted, is, "God with us." The Babe in Bethlehem's manger was the great antitype of the burning bush. "God was manifest in the flesh and seen of angels." God was in the midst of men and they were not consumed.

But for what purpose was God in the midst of men? There could be only one reason for this great event. If He had desired to send some message of warning, entreaty, or command, a servant like unto the prophets would have served the purpose, for at sundry times and in divers manners He thus addressed the fathers of old. If He had intended to make an example of sinners by executing His righteous judgment against them for their sins, an angel or two would have sufficed, as in the case of the guilty cities of the plain. But neither men nor angels would do for the purpose and will of God which was now to be unfolded; only Emmanuel, who came, saying, "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God." When Emmanuel appears, men and angels stand aside, for every ear must be attentive unto Him, for He comes to declare and bring to pass the intentions of divine and infinite love. "For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world: but that the world through Him might be saved" (John 3: 17).

If sinners were to be saved God must come down to them to do it, and if God comes down to sinners He must come as their Saviour: His very nature demands this, and His wisdom has found a way by which it can be done, according to the righteousness of the eternal throne.

So Emmanuel's name is JESUS. Blessed, precious name! Name of reproach and shame on earth, name of ignominy upon the cross, name above every name in heaven above, name that through endless ages shall thrill a universe with gladness, and blend in harmonious praise the joy of every creature within the limitless extent of the realm of the Redeemer-God.

"Sweetest Name on mortal tongue,

Sweetest carol ever sung,

Sweetest note on seraph song —

Jesus! Jesus! JESUS!"

The world opened a stable door to receive Him, and thus advertised its contempt and hatred of Him, but He accepted in infinite meekness the place they assigned to Him, that He might open out before the eyes of the poorest and the least the priceless treasures of divine compassion and love.

And so He moved through this world "seen of angels": they rejoiced in that goodness which dwelt in Him; the goodness of God by which He overcomes evil, even though men upon whom it flowed forth did not appreciate it. He healed the sick, fed the hungry, dried the tears upon the widow's cheeks, kissed the children into the kingdom of God, and preached the gospel to the poor. God had visited men, for "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself" (2 Cor. 5: 19).

This is a great sight for us to turn aside and see, greater than that which Moses saw, as the substance is greater than the shadow. And in the presence of God made known to us, and brought nigh to us in Jesus, our souls can stay without a fear, (and not as Moses, who "hid his face and was afraid to look upon God,") for "GOD IS LOVE."

"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4: 9, 10).

"WE LOVE HIM, BECAUSE HE FIRST LOVED US" (1 John 4: 19).

"He Dwelt among us"

"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us . . . full of grace and truth." — (John 1: 14.)

What an amazing fact is revealed to us in this short sentence. He who WAS when time was not, at whose fiat the pendulum of time began to swing, who set all the forces of nature into motion, and made the universe pulsate with life: Who is Himself personally the exact expression of the infinite thoughts and eternal glory of the Godhead — the ever-existing Word — He became flesh and dwelt among us, taking part in flesh and blood that He might come near to us without making us afraid: it is this that fills the souls of those who have received Him with wonder and worship.

He did not come as a king might come to visit His subjects in their cottage homes, speaking a kindly word to them, and then passing on and forgetting them; He dwelt among us. There was no aloofness about Him: He entered into the circumstances of life: He entered into the joys and sorrows of men, as well as into their houses. He came near to them, became infinitely accessible to even the poorest and the worst. He dwelt among us full of grace and truth.

We say with deepest reverence that He took men as He found them: He demanded no special treatment from them: He was full of compassion for their sorrows, He did not grow impatient at their ignorance and weakness, nor condemn them for their sins.

He was ready to set the TRUTH before a man of the Pharisees when he came to Him, and was so full of GRACE that He did not rebuke the cowardice that made him creep out in the darkness for that memorable interview.

His GRACE took Him to Sychar's well to talk with a lonely and tired sinner there, and He poured the TRUTH into her soul so abundantly that she returned to her city a new creature, with Himself as her absorbing theme. And mark well His way in that story. The distance was great to where that solitary sinner sighed and sorrowed, yet no camel or ass bore him over the weary miles, for He was a poor man: He must take that journey, every step of it, on foot: and tired and hungry and thirsty He met her — met her as one wayfarer would meet another — and talked with her so gently that she felt neither restraint nor fear in His presence. How truly He "dwelt among us," and how full of grace and truth was He in that dwelling: for let not His lowliness and the poverty of His circumstances, and the way in which He "dwelt among us," hide from our souls the glory of His person. He was "THE WORD," "THE ONLY BEGOTTEN SON IN THE BOSOM OF THE FATHER."

What a never-failing, ever-growing charm this Gospel of Gospels — the Gospel of the incarnate Word — has for our souls! How infinite are the heights in which it takes its rise, how deep are the depths into which it flows. Grace and truth are there in Him who dwelt among us, while He still dwelt in the bosom of the Father as the only begotten Son. He has brought the love of that bosom to us, and revealed it, not as something to be admired on the sabbath day in the temple, but as that which would labour seven days in the week, seeking no rest, in order to relieve the needs of men and fill their souls with joy. And TRUTH was in Him — He came from the highest height of God's glory to reveal it; and GRACE also — He stooped to the deepest depth of our need to meet it; and He has filled the immeasurable distance between the height and the depth with the light of God's love.

That which He declared here abides for us. What He was He is, and what He was the Father is: for He said, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." How infinitely attractive to our souls has the Father become since He has been revealed to us so blessedly in JESUS, who dwelt among us.

"My Lord and my God"

"And after eight days, again His disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said Peace be unto you.

"Then saith He to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold My hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into My side; and be not faithless, but believing.

"And Thomas answered and said unto Him, My Lord and My God.

"Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." (John 20: 26-29.)

The Unitarian objects to this incident being advanced as evidence of the Deity of our Lord. He contends that Thomas was an admiring enthusiast, and an Eastern withal, having a tendency towards the picturesque and the exaggerated in his speech, and that on this occasion he was betrayed by his feelings into saying what was outside the truth.

That this is an ill-considered conclusion is evident from the insight into the character of Thomas, which the brief record of him in the Scriptures gives us. That his affection for his Master was not less than that of the other disciples is proved in John 11: 16, but that he was not of an hysterical or credulous nature is equally proved by John 20: 25. When his brethren — and there were ten of them — declared to him that they had seen the Lord, he met them with obstinate unbelief, and looked upon them as a band of visionaries. His cold, hard reason kept a tight rein upon his fervour, and his answer to their glad news might have been framed upon the lips of a modern rationalist. "Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into His side, I WILL NOT BELIEVE."

As to faith and training he was a Jew, believing in one all-transcendent God, and to address a mere man as God would have been in his eyes a most heinous sin, a sin of which a devout Jew would be morally incapable. For proof of this take the case of Daniel, who chose to face the lions rather than perform an act which would, by inference, ascribe an attribute of Deity to a man. It was not the impulsive Peter, but this man, naturally stubborn and unimaginative, and religiously a stern monotheist, who was convinced as to who his Master really was, and his confession of the truth of this drew forth no rebuke. Instead, his faith was confirmed by the Lord's reply "Because thou hast seen THOU HAST BELIEVED."

It is remarkable that the Spirit of God has placed it on record that homage was offered by men to both Peter and Paul, and that they both immediately and vehemently restrained it. "Stand up: I myself also am a man," was Peter's command to Cornelius when that centurion prostrated himself at his feet (Acts 10: 26). And when the people of Lystra brought sacrifices to offer to Barnabas and Paul, they, Barnabas and Paul, "rent their clothes, and ran in among the people, crying out, and saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you" (Acts 14: 11-15). These were true men, and they would not permit any to think that they were more than men, nor would they, even for a moment, accept adoration, which was God's alone. From these incidents in the lives of His servants we are taught by inference that Jesus was God when He accepted the adoration of Thomas: if not, what was He? Let the objectors supply the answer.

There is another incident in the Acts of the Apostles that might be well cited by way of contrast in this connection. "And Herod was highly displeased with them of Tyre and Sidon. . . . And upon a set day Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne, and made an oration unto them. And the people gave a shout, saying, It is the voice of a god, and not of a man. AND IMMEDIATELY THE ANGEL OF THE LORD SMOTE HIM, because he gave not God the glory; and he was eaten with worms, and gave up the ghost" (Acts 12: 20-23). In his presumptuous and impious pride he accepted the adoration of the people, and immediately he was stricken by the stroke of a just and jealous God, his glory fled away, and he went down to the grave a loathsome mass of putrefaction. But Jesus, whom Thomas worshipped, was carried up into heaven, for we read that He led out His disciples "as far as to Bethany, and He lifted up His hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. AND THEY WORSHIPPED HIM, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God" (Luke 24: 50-53).

It is John, who had been restrained from worshipping an angel (Rev. 22: 8, 9), who records the meeting of Thomas with his Master, and what a meeting it must have been. It seems as though it was for Thomas alone, for twice did his Lord address him by name. He discovered that the very thoughts of his heart were all read by the all-seeing eye of the Lord, and the wounds which he beheld in that incorruptible flesh were to him mute though eloquent witnesses to the fact that He was the One who had laid down His life but who also had taken it again. The scales fell from his eyes, his heart threw off its infidelity, the glory of the Only Begotten was no longer veiled from him, and as his soul was drawn out of the winter of his unbelief, he voiced the worship of his brethren in those true and memorable words, "MY LORD AND MY GOD."

This meeting with Thomas is typical of the time, still to come, when the Lord will show Himself to the remnant of His people Israel, and when they shall say to Him, "What are these wounds in Thine hands?" (Zech. 13: 6). And as they look upon Him, they, as did Thomas, will recognize Him, and will cry, "Lo, this is our GOD: we have waited for Him, and He will save us; this is the LORD: we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation" (Isa. 25: 9). They will believe when they see Him, but "BLESSED ARE THEY THAT HAVE NOT SEEN, AND YET HAVE BELIEVED."

The Light and the Truth

"O send out Thy light and Thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto Thy holy hill, and to Thy tabernacles. Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy: yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, O God my God." — (Ps. 43.)

Thus cried the Psalmist as his soul panted after God, and God has answered his cry. He had purposed to do so before time began, and that every one who sought Him might find their full joy in Him, and that in a way that never could have entered into any human mind. The way He has done it is told out in the gospel of John the Apostle: where we see the height from which the light and the truth have come, the greatness of the One who was sent forth to be both: the depths of shame into which He went to save us, and the triumphant way in which He leads us, not to God's altars merely, but to His very home and heart. In John 1 we learn THE GLORY OF HIS PERSON, who said, "I am the light," and "I am the . . . truth."

"In the beginning was the Word" — HIS ETERNAL EXISTENCE.

"And the Word was with God" — HIS DISTINCT PERSONALITY.

"And the Word was God" — HIS PERSONAL DEITY.

"The same was in the beginning with God" — HIS ETERNAL COMPANIONSHIP WITH, BUT DISTINCTION FROM, THE FATHER.

The Word brings Him before us as the One in whom the wisdom of God's infinite mind has found personal expression: hence we read of Him, —

"All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made" —

HIS CREATIVE WISDOM AND POWER.

Thus is the eternal glory of His Person told, and thus John introduces Him to our faith and adoration. Augustine wrote, "John, deservedly compared to an eagle, has opened his treatise as it were with a peal of thunder: he has raised himself not merely above earth and the whole compass of the air and heaven, but even above every angel host and every order of the invisible powers, and has reached even to Him by whom all things were made, in that sentence, In the beginning was the Word.'"

From the glory of His Person, He proceeds to THE GREATNESS OF HIS CONDESCENSION.

"The Word was made flesh" (ver. 14) — HIS REAL AND PERSONAL INCARNATION.

"And dwelt among us" — HIS ENTRANCE AS MAN INTO ALL THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF MANHOOD.

"Full of grace and truth" — HIS SUITABILITY TO ALL THAT MEN ARE WITHOUT COMPROMISING WHAT GOD IS.

And in connection with His coming to tabernacle among us, a fresh glory bursts upon our vision: one that creatorial power could not reveal: one that never would have been revealed at all had it not been for the great purpose that was in the heart of the Father in sending Him forth.

And we beheld His glory, the glory as of "the only-begotten of the Father" — HIS UNCHANGING RELATIONSHIP IN LOVE, AND ONENESS IN NATURE WITH THE FATHER.

An able and reverent writer has said; "His was the glory of the only-begotten, come fresh from the splendour of uncreated light. Every idea but that of pure Sovereign Deity in this part of the argument is trifling and profane."

The same writer, speaking of this wonderful epithet, "Only Begotten Son," said; "When the evangelist would affirm the perfect and eternal intimacy and union between the glorious Persons in the Godhead, and the unspeakable and infinite endearment of our Lord to the Father: when he would convey the loftiest possible idea of the majesty of evangelical truth: when he would impress the minds of his readers with a deep sense at once of the inscrutableness of the Divine nature, and the certainty of the manifestations of God in Christ, he declares; 'No man' (nemo), no being of created mould, 'hath seen God at any time; THE ONLY-BEGOTTEN SON, who exists in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him' (ver. 18): when, again, he would illustrate the benevolence of God with the highest splendour, he says, 'In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that GOD SENT HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON into the world, that we might live through Him.' And, finally, when our Lord would represent unbelief as the last extreme of human guilt, He finds no stronger argument than that conveyed in this appellation, 'He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the NAME OF THE ONLY BEGOTTEN SON OF GOD.'"

We pass from the glory of His person and the greatness of His condescension to the PERFECTION OF HIS LIFE.

"I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do" (17: 4) — HIS ABSOLUTE DEVOTION TO THE WILL OF GOD.

"I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (8: 12) — HIS PERFECT MANIFESTATION OF GOD, THE ONLY SOURCE OF LIFE AND LIGHT FOR MEN.

"Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end" (13: 1) — HIS UNCHANGING LOVE AND FAITHFULNESS TO THOSE WHOM HE HAD CHOSEN OUT OF THE WORLD.

How great the blessing that comes from the consideration of the fulness of light and truth in the lowly life of this glorious Person: of His suitability to meet the condition and need of every sinner whom He sought: of His patience toward their ignorance: His sympathy toward their sorrows: His mercy toward their sicknesses, and His grace toward their sins. What witness to His fulness is borne by Nicodemus, the Sychar sinner, the Bethesda cripple, the storm-tossed disciples, the hungry multitude, the guilty adulteress, the blind beggar, the stricken Bethany sisters, and all who were not too utterly blinded by their love for their own evil deeds to behold His glory. It was thus amid weariness and hunger and thirst, despised and rejected by men, that He laboured amongst them that the Father's heart might be made known, His words declared, and His works performed: and He that hath seen Him "hath seen the Father." He is the light and He is the truth.

HIS SUFFERING AND THE SHAME THAT MEN PUT UPON HIM.

"And one of the officers which stood by struck Jesus with the palm of his hand" (John 18: 22).

"Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber" (ver. 40).

"Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged Him" (19: 1).

"And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on His head, and they put on Him a purple robe. And said, Hail, King of the Jews! and they smote Him with their hands" (ver. 2).

"They cried out, Away with him, crucify him" (ver. 6).

"Then delivered he Him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus, and led Him away" (ver. 15, 16).

Thus He, whose glory the Gospel unfolds before us, was smitten, scourged, mocked, buffeted, execrated, and crucified.

Along this path of sorrow and shame the Man of sorrows trod His stedfast way to accomplish the will of God. Rising up above all the contumely and the hatred wherewith the men, whose very breath was His, hated Him, He took up the question of God's glory in regard to sin, and became the bearer of it.

HIS GREAT SACRIFICE.

"And He bearing His cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha" (19: 17).

He upholds "all things by the word of His power," we learn from Hebrews 1: 3: but heavier than the universe was the burden that He carried that day, for then and there He was "THE LAMB OF GOD WHICH BEARETH AWAY THE SIN OF THE WORLD."

"They crucified Him and two other with Him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst" (ver. 18).

"When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, IT IS FINISHED: and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost."

How incomparable the dignity of the holy Sufferer amid the shame of that cross! How triumphant that word ere He gave up His life! The will of God accomplished: the prince of this world utterly confounded: the great sacrifice made that would fill the universe with the glory of the light and the truth that He went even into death to fully manifest.

One more passage from this most solemn chapter we must quote: —

"One of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and forthwith came there out blood and water" (ver. 34).

The last act of man's hatred brought out the love of God in all its fulness.

"The very spear that pierced His side

Drew forth the blood to save."

And now through the infinite, eternal, and ever-abiding efficacy of that blood, we are in the light, i.e., we are brought to full revelation of what God is that our joy may be full. "If we walk in the light, as He is IN THE LIGHT, we have fellowship one with another" (IN THE TRUTH). And the never-failing basis of both is "the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin" (1 John 1: 7).

As we consider the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are not surprised at anything that may flow therefrom. We are assured that God must have had some great purpose in sending Him forth, and in this we find that we are not deceived, for when risen from the dead the Lord sends this message to His disciples; "Go unto MY BRETHREN and say unto them, I ascend to MY FATHER AND YOUR FATHER, TO MY GOD AND YOUR GOD." He has brethren now, to whom He can declare His Father's name, and lead them, not to a Jewish altar upon which smokes an impotent sacrifice, but having Himself sanctified them for ever by His one offering, He leads them to the Father that they may worship Him in spirit and in truth. We accept in deep humility this place and relationship which eternal love first planned, and then made possible, and while we find our joy in fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ, we own Him who leads us into it as our Lord and our God.

What the Gospels Prove

It is asserted by some who hate the truth that Jesus is the Son in the Godhead, that the Gospel of John alone declares it. This is false: the fact is stated very definitely in the other Gospels, but what is even more arresting and equally convincing is that this great truth is woven into the very texture of them all. Just as the gold was woven with the blue and purple and scarlet and fine twined linen into the ephod of the High Priest (Ex. 28), and could not be separated from it without destroying the whole fabric, so the Gospels must be reduced to torn and meaningless shreds if there is taken out of them the words and works in which the Deity of Jesus shows itself. To take this away is to tear the sun from the spiritual heavens, and to take away His true humanity is to rob us of the atmosphere by which the light of the sun reaches us.

The Gospel of Matthew opens with — "Jesus Christ the Son of David, the Son of Abraham," but before we reach the end of the chapter we read, "His Name shall be called EMMANUEL, which being interpreted is, GOD WITH US" (ver. 32).

"Thou shalt call His Name JESUS," said the angel of the Lord to Joseph when explaining to him that the child that Mary would bring forth was conceived of the Holy Ghost. And this name is of infinite preciousness to us because it is His personal, human name: the name which tells us of His grace and tenderness, His lowly life, His sorrow, and His death: but this name also carries with it divine glory, for it signifies JEHOVAH THE SAVIOUR. Yes, the very name of His humiliation, that which was written in derision on His cross, declares to us the greatness of His person and the love of His heart: He is Jehovah the Saviour.

This name of eternal sweetness to all who believe, was given to Him because He would "save His people from their sins." They were "His people." The great I AM THAT I AM who spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, and sent him to deliver Israel, His people, from Egyptian slavery, had appeared Himself to deliver them from a greater bondage. He had come to lead them into a more glorious liberty with an outstretched arm of power: but He had come in this lowly form so that they might not be afraid of Him: He had come to be the Lamb of God: the Son of Man lifted up: to suffer for their sins: and finally to take from their hearts that strange perversity that made them hug their chains and prefer their misery and bondage to God's mercy and care. He must be wilfully blind who does not see that He must be Divine and yet a man, a man who must Himself be sinless if He was to save others from their sins, a Divine Person having life in Himself if He was to impart life to others and bring them out of the bondage of death.

The wise men came saying, "Where is He that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen His star in the east, and are come to worship Him." Did ever a star in the heavens flame forth at the birth of a child either before or since? These princes brought their gifts, gifts such as nobles from afar would bring to a king, but "when they saw the young child with Mary His mother," they recognized first His divine glory and they "fell down and worshipped Him." Then they acknowledged His kingship and brought out their gifts; gold and frankincense and myrrh. They worshipped God and gave gifts to the King. How great is this mystery of love! The One "whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting," who was "to be Ruler in Israel," had come forth out of Bethlehem Ephratah (Micah 5: 2), but in such meek and lowly form that the world passed heedlessly by, yet to the anointed eye His glory shone: the glory of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

In the Holy-Ghost-inspired record "the young child" always has the precedence of His mother. Five times in chapter 2 we read of "the young child and His mother," in striking contrast to that blasphemous system, Rome, which paints her pictures of "Madonna and Child." But had He not been greater than the mother that bare Him, the Spirit of God would not have thus given Him the precedence, for He it was who founded the law which said, "Honour thy father and mother": and it may be here remarked (though this belongs to Luke's Gospel and not Matthew's), that when the aged Simeon came into the temple and took "the child Jesus" in his arms, recognizing in Him "God's salvation," he blessed Joseph and His mother, not the child Jesus (Luke 2: 34). Had Jesus been as those other children gathered in the temple that day, what more natural than that Simeon should have blessed Him? But this could not be, for the lesser cannot thus bless the greater.

It will be noticed that whenever the angel of the Lord addresses Joseph, who, being the husband of Mary, was the young child's legal guardian, he never makes the mistake of calling Jesus "thy son." The people make this mistake, and their mistake is recorded for us in Luke 4, but the Scriptures guard this matter with the utmost care, and in this connection the prophetic word is quoted regarding the sojourn in Egypt; "Out of Egypt have I called MY SON." Turning aside to Luke's Gospel again, it is important to notice that when Mary, only dimly recognizing who He was, or forgetting it for the moment, seemed to question His loyalty and obedience to Joseph and to her, saying, "Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing," He replied at once, "wist ye not that I must be about MY FATHER'S business" (Luke 2: 49).

It has been said by some who will seek out any subterfuge to break down the truth that Jesus is not of the first man, who came out of the dust, and sinned, and goes back to the dust again from which he came, but is the Second Man, the Lord out of heaven, that He did not realize His Sonship to the Father until His baptism. This passage exposes that falsehood, and shows us clearly that as He emerged into a responsible age the Lord knew who He was, from whom He came, and what His business was. The fact that He was the Son of the Father was publicly declared from heaven by the Father's voice at His baptism ( Luke 3: 17), where for the first time the truth of the Trinity appears.

The prophets of old had come before the people with "Thus saith the Lord" on their lips, for in times past, and in divers manners, God spoke to the fathers thus: but in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus stood forth and said, "I SAY UNTO YOU," and those who heard Him were astonished at His doctrine, for He taught them as One having authority (Luke 7: 29). This authority was the authority of the Lord, for this He declares Himself to be, having power to exclude from the kingdom of heaven all those who do not do the will of His Father which is in heaven. See how intimately He connects the kingdom of heaven with Himself. Some whose lips had owned Him, but whose hearts had not yielded to His Father's will, will desire to enter that kingdom: He will say to them, "Depart from ME": and He will say this, as being able to look behind the profession and all that is external, and read the heart, which none but God can do (Luke 7: 21).

Later on in the Gospel He stretches out His hands to mankind and cries, "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Luke 11: 28). He knew the miseries, the burdens, the toilings, and the sins of the world: every groan and sigh and tear He noticed, and knowing all, He proposed to relieve all. What man, however mighty in influence, great in intellect, or broad in his sympathies, would dare to make such an appeal as that to men? But Jesus made it, and still makes it: and a countless host of ransomed saints will bear eternal witness to the fact that His deed is as good as His word. The Speaker is the Son, eternal, infinite, omnipotent: the mighty Creator who opens His hand and satisfies the needs of every living thing: the fountain of life and of mercy whose compassions fail not: hence He is able, being in Himself sufficient for the whole creation and every man within it, to remove every burden from every human soul and satisfy every craving within every one of them.

He is the Son into whose hands the Father hath delivered all things, whom only the Father knows, and who knows the Father and reveals Him to whomsoever He will ( Luke 11: 27). He showed Himself to be the Master of the elements when He rebuked the winds and the waves and hushed their raging to a great calm (Luke 9: 26): He had power on earth to forgive sins, which is God's prerogative (Luke 9: 6). He claimed the absolute allegiance of the hearts of His disciples, before father or mother or son or daughter, which only God can claim (Luke 10: 37). He declared Himself to be the Lord of the Sabbath (Luke 12: 8), plainly indicating that though the Son of Man, He was the One who had ordained the Sabbath for His people. As Creator of the abundance of earth and sea, He multiplied the five loaves and two fishes so that a multitude were fed to satisfaction, and twelve basketfuls remained ( Luke 14: 15-21). He walked triumphantly upon the heaving waves at midnight, and by his power enabled His servant Peter to do the same ( Luke 14: 25-31). He unmasked the Pharisees by the question of all questions. "What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He?" "The Son of David," was their ready reply. Then He quoted the Scriptures which they knew so well. "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand till I make Thine enemies Thy footstool." He asked, "If David, then, call Him Lord, How is he His Son?" They were silenced, for they had no answer to this great mystery. The whole Gospel of Matthew is the answer to the question: and we glory in the knowledge of this great mystery: the Son of David and Son of Man is the Son of God, and though His enemies refused His rights as David's Son, He has been raised up and made Lord of all. He sits at the right hand of God on God's very throne, and none but God could do that: and He is coming back again to the very place where His enemies cast Him out of His inheritance. He is coming back as the root and offspring of David, David's Lord and David's Son.

The Gospel closes with His place in the Godhead fully declared, for all nations are to be baptised in the Name (not "the names," the word is in the singular) of THE FATHER AND THE SON AND THE HOLY GHOST.

Finally, when the dispensations of time have served their purpose and run their course, and God shall dwell with men in a redeemed creation, every intelligent creature will rejoice in a Triune God fully revealed —

as FATHER, the source of all blessing for men:

and SON, the One who brought the blessing to men:

and HOLY GHOST, who by His power makes the blessing good in men:

"THAT GOD MAY BE ALL IN ALL."

The Necessity of the Deity of Jesus

The necessity of the Deity of Jesus meets us first in relation to men being brought to God in righteousness, for no purpose of God in regard to them could be realized if they were not brought to Him righteously, and established before Him according to His eternal justice and the holiness of His nature. How could this be done, and who was able to do it? The question is not a new one. It was asked by Job long centuries ago when he cried, "How should man be just with God?" (Job 9: 2). And the question was not one of passing interest, that engaged his attention for a moment merely; it received his most earnest consideration, for he realized how vital a question it was. In the ninth chapter of his book we find him testing one by one the suggestions that arose in regard to it, and finally, apparently hopeless of finding an answer, breaking out in that soul-stirring lament, "HE IS NOT A MAN AS I AM, that I should answer Him, and we should come together in judgment. NEITHER IS THERE ANY DAYSMAN BETWIXT US, THAT MIGHT LAY HIS HAND UPON US BOTH. Let Him take His rod away from me, and let not His fear terrify me; then would I speak and not fear Him: but it is not so with me."

Do you perceive where he stood, and can you interpret his feelings? He said in effect: "I know that I have sinned against Him, and if He were a man as I am, I could, having the feelings of a man, understand His displeasure: I could estimate the extent of my offence, and I could go to Him and make restitution for the wrong that I have done, and so be at peace with Him. But He is not a man as I am, and I cannot enter into judgment with Him. I do not know where to begin the argument, and I cannot measure the demands of His justice. I have no ground upon which to stand before Him: the gulf between us is immeasurable from my side: He is almighty, holy and just, and I am weak, sinful and guilty: His very holiness is a terror to me: it makes me afraid."

Only could Job have hope if a daysman, or mediator, appeared in the case, fully qualified to take it up: and see how accurately he had gauged the situation; He must be one who can stand betwixt us — between God, infinitely holy and just, and the sinner, guilty and conscience-stricken — and put his hand upon us both: and, says he, I know no one who can do it. I have felt the need of such an one, longed for Him, sought for Him, but I have not found Him.

Mark well the qualifications that the needed mediator must possess; He must stand between God and the sinner, and put His hand upon both: and I beg of you not to miss the meaning of that. It is recorded that when David would bring the ark to Zion, that ark being God's throne in Israel, and the symbol of His presence there, Uzzah put forth his hand to steady it, and the moment his presumptuous fingers touched that throne of God he fell to the earth a corpse. Learn from that solemn incident that no sinful man could put his hand upon God, or upon the throne of God, and live. The mediator for whom Job cried in his despair must be able to put His hand upon God, He must be God's equal, pure as God is pure, holy as God is holy, great as God is great; none less could intervene, or be of use to Job or to us. But he must also put His hand upon men: He must be one of us, yet sinless or He would need a mediator Himself: He must be able to take our part and to identify Himself with our vast indebtedness, able to answer for the enormity of our guilt, and remove it. HE MUST BE GOD AND MAN.

It should be evident to us all, as it was to Job, that such an one we cannot produce, for no man, even the best, could exalt Himself to Deity: the attempt to do so, which will be made by the coming superman, the beast of Revelation 13, will be the climax of all blasphemy: and will result in that impious and devil-inspired personage being cast alive into the lake of fire (Rev. 19). Men cannot bring forth the needed mediator: here they come to their wit's end: they have no hope except in God, the One whose glory has been challenged by their sin. But man's extremity is God's opportunity, and the one whom Job could not find on earth has come from heaven, and our part is to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.

The New Testament is the book of the Mediator. In its first chapter there stands twice over in capital letters the name of its great subject, its true title, JESUS. "Thou shalt call His name JESUS; for He shall save His people from their sins" (ver. 21). "She brought forth her firstborn Son; and he called his name JESUS" (ver. 25): and Jesus is Emmanuel; GOD WITH US.

Being God, He knew according to God's perfect estimate what the effect to the universe of man's disregard of His will was; how and to what extent God's glory was jeopardized by man's sin: what the demands of the eternal throne were in regard to the violation of its just decrees. He knew how completely man's self-will had made him the slave of Satan, how great was the gulf that separated him from God: how utterly powerless he was to rectify the awful wrong that he had committed. He knew the penalty that had to be paid, the conflict that had to be waged, the work that had to be done. It was the will of God that every problem that man's sin had raised should be taken up and settled in a way in which every attribute of His should be glorified and salvation secured for us, and He, the Son, came to accomplish the will of God. He said, "A body hast Thou prepared Me. . . . Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of Me) to do Thy will, O God" (Heb. 10: 5-7). He became man to stand in our place before God: to take the bill of our terrible indebtedness, and meet it to the full, so that God Himself could write "Settled" across the account. This involved for Him the sorrows of Calvary: and there, as the holy Substitute for men, He "gave Himself a ransom for all." The sacrifice that He made has met all the claims of the throne, and He is now "THE ONE MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND MAN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS." But only one who could estimate things according to God's own measure of them could do what He has done.

What a Saviour is Jesus! How fully worthy is He of our fullest praise! He stooped to us that He might put His hand upon us, degraded though we were, and He has done it tenderly and graciously, so that we are not afraid. There is no terror for us in His hand, we do not shrink from Him. He has touched us with the touch of a man, and bound us with the cords of love. Yet he was never less than God, and God has touched us in Him. He has put one hand upon us and the other is placed upon the throne of God, and He is the one mediator. With the one hand He has offered the fullest satisfaction to the righteous claims of God, and with the other He has bestowed fulness of grace upon us. He brings us to God and gives us a place in His presence without fear, and in everlasting peace, a peace established upon the infallible and immovable foundation of divine righteousness, secured for us by a divine person for the eternal glory of God.

Thus are we justified before God, and all our fear is removed, and we are free to behold the hand that has been placed upon us, and to mark the fact that it is a wounded hand: a hand that was nail-pierced for us when He identified Himself with us, as we stood subject to the judgment of God, that He might save us. We know the power of this hand too: it has smitten death for us and will not relinquish its hold upon us for ever. As He is now a man in heaven, so shall we be there; He the first-born among many brethren, we His associates identified with Him in an everlasting oneness. He will never surrender that true humanity which He has taken up, and as He is, so are they also who are His. The purpose of God is that we should be conformed to His own image. And so we shall be, and yet never shall we forget that He is "over all, God, blessed for ever more."

Part 2. His All-sufficiency for Our Need.

"In all their affliction He was afflicted" (Isaiah 63: 9).

"And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12: 9).

"He hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee" (Heb. 13: 5).

"JESUS! Thou art enough

The mind and heart to fill,

Thy patient life — to calm the soul,

Thy love — its fear dispel."

"Still in Thee love's sweet savour

Shone forth in every deed,

And showed God's loving favour

To every soul in need." (J. N. Darby.)

The Friend of Sinners

For one brief hour only is the veil that covers the first thirty years of our Lord's life drawn aside, and one saying of His alone during that period is recorded for our learning. But what a revelation of sinless, holy perfection, and readiness to bear the yoke of service for the blessing of mankind, does that one saying reveal! "How is it that ye sought Me? Wist ye not that I must be about MY FATHER'S BUSINESS?" It is probable that at the age of twelve a child begins definitely to choose between evil and good; and the Lord is shown to us in this beautiful passage as making His choice; He refused the evil and He chose the good; as it was written by the prophet, that Emmanuel would. His Father's business — His Father's will — this to Him was good and perfect and acceptable, and with this will treasured in His heart He lived His youthful days, until the due time came for His manifestation.

"A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver," and "A word spoken in due season, how good it is." Such were all the words of the Lord; every one of them came forth in its own time and circumstance, and none more fitly spoken than this word. In the record of His words also, all are divinely placed. If a Divine Person, divinely perfect and blessed, came into the world for the eternal blessing of men, it is only fitting that a Divine record of His coming and His words and ways, also divinely perfect and blessed, should be given, that those for whom He came might have a perfect assurance as to it. Admit the former, and the latter follows in logical sequence. To suppose that God would send His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him, and having done that, allow an imperfect, contradictory human record to be the only record of His life and death here, would be to suppose Him to be guilty of colossal folly. The record must be as perfect in its own sphere as the One whose life and mission it records was perfect in His, or else we have no sure knowledge or certainty of these things upon which depends our souls' eternal welfare.

If the Holy Scriptures are what the critics say they are, mere ancient, human documents, in which are recorded events which the writers did but poorly remember, to be tested by human scholarship, which, by the way, commences its test by a decided bias against them; if they may be cut and criticized, accepted or rejected, in parts or wholly, then, where are we in this matter? The angel's triumphant declaration that He brought "good tidings of great joy" when He announced the birth of Jesus is a mockery; we know not whether our great Redeemer did ever say, "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Such wonderful words may have been put into His mouth, as Shakespeare put great sayings into the mouths of his characters. Did He really warn men against "the damnation of hell," and speak those blessed words about the many mansions in His Father's house? We cannot say unless the record of them is divinely perfect, and divinely sure.

We believe in God, and we are confident that if "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life," He would see to it that having given "His unspeakable gift" for men, they should be in no uncertainty about it; hence are the Scriptures God-breathed; the men who wrote them were moved by the Holy Spirit; they had these things, not by hearsay, or from their own imperfect observation, but "from the very first" from the source of all true knowledge, from God Himself. Hence the record of our Lord's words is a divine record, and the words are divinely placed, so that they shine like apples of gold in pictures of silver.

It is in Luke's Gospel that these words are alone recorded, and how beautifully they fit in to the character of this Gospel.

The Gospel of Luke is the Gospel of "My Father's business." It is the Gospel of grace, for this the Father's Name implies.

It is the Father who, in the very heart of it, sees His prodigal son afar off, and has compassion upon him, and runs to meet him while yet he is a great way off, and falls on his neck and kisses him; and cries in His gladness, "Let us eat and be merry: for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost, and is found." Yes, Luke's Gospel is the Gospel of grace to guilty sinners, and the Lord was the vessel of this grace His Father's business was His business. He was here to commence it, to carry it on, and to finish it, and the fact that He is crowned with glory and honour at His Father's right hand, is the proof that He has most blessedly done it, as is the fact also that millions are rejoicing in the grace of God which has brought salvation to them.

Being the vessel of God's grace He was, and is, the Friend of sinners. Mark His first words in public testimony as given to us in this Gospel. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."

He came to men bruised and broken and blinded, and bound by sin, and said unto them: "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears," and they all wondered at the gracious words that proceeded out of His mouth.

In each Gospel the form of the opposition from His foes brings into greater prominence the chief feature that the Gospel presents. It is so here. The religionists did not like grace, they could not understand it; so full were they of their own importance that they marvelled that Jesus did not pay court to them and seek their patronage; they grew angry and scornful when He sought the company of sinners, and this is their chief complaint in this Gospel; against this they shouted their opposition constantly.

In Luke 5: 30 they murmured against His disciples, saying, "Why do ye eat and drink with the publicans and sinners?"

In Luke 7: 34 they grow abusive and say, "Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners."

In Luke 15: 2 they say with bitter enmity, "This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them."

And again in Luke 19: 7, "they all murmured, saying, That He was gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner."

They spoke the truth in their hatred, and that which they thought was His shame was His glory, as a countless host of sinners saved by grace will declare to His eternal praise.

Not to the proudly religious did He come who, though wise in their own conceit, were "fools grown insolent in fooling; most, when the lost were dying at their doors." He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance; "the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which is lost."

He said, "Fear not," to sinful Simon (Luke 5: 10); "I will — be thou clean," to the poor foul leper (Luke 5: 13); "Weep not," to the broken-hearted widow (Luke 7: 13); "Thy sins are forgiven," to the weeping sinner at His feet (Luke 7: 48); and "To-day, shalt thou be with Me in paradise." to the dying robber (Luke 23: 43).

He came to do His Father's business, and for this there was given to Him the tongue of the learned [or instructed], that He should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary; His ear was wakened morning by morning, to hear as the learner (Isa. 50: 4). But who was He who thus lived in entire and daily obedience to His Father's word, so that He might carry on His business? Isaiah 50 tells us this also. He says: "Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? when I called, was there none to answer? Is My hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem? or have I no power to deliver? behold, at My rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness: their fish stinketh, because there is no water, and dieth for thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering" (Isa. 50: 2, 3).

Yes, this is He who came from heaven to be the sinner's Friend, and to bring to the poorest and the worst the saving grace of God. He is the Creator, who came to redeem with outstretched arm; but it involved Him in a life of suffering and shame amongst men, and in hatred from those who loved Him not. The One who with hand omnipotent draws the curtain of night across the heavens, says: "The Lord God hath opened My ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that plucked of the hair: I hid not My face from shame and spitting" (Isa. 50: 5, 6).

Wonderful Friend of sinners! who would not cast aside their own righteousness and pride to make Thy acquaintance! and count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Thee!

The Lord and the Home Life

To assure us of His constant and particular care for us in all our circumstances, God has taken infinite pains in His sure and holy Word: it is bright with many faithful sayings in regard to it, and beautiful with many concrete cases in which His perfect care for those who trust Him is illustrated; but nothing can be more conclusive and convincing in regard to it than the life of our Lord Jesus on earth.

Let us consider, then, how the Lord Jesus acted in regard to the matters domestic, and the general needs of those whom He loved, as shown us in the Gospel of John. In that Gospel, be it remembered, He comes forth as the Word, who was with God, and who was God — the great Creator of the universe become flesh for our blessing. It is in this Gospel that He said: "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." Hence as we behold His tender mercy ever flowing forth, we see what the Father is, for thus He has revealed Him.

Is it not, then, most worthy of note and full of comfort to all who need comfort, that in this Gospel, and this alone, He is shown to us as a GUEST AT A WEDDING, rejoicing with those that rejoice? And is it not equally significant that in this Gospel, and this alone, He is also shown to us as A WEEPER AT A GRAVE SIDE? The wedding is the beginning of the home life, and may represent its most joyous period: the sealed grave is the close and the breakup of it, the darkest day of all. And the Lord, who came to earth to show to us the Father, was at both: and is there a day between the two when He is absent? No. He has said "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee," and that, be it noted, again in connection with the home life (Heb. 13: 4-6).

There are profound depths of spiritual meaning in these two incidents, and we should certainly seek these, but in doing so do not let us miss that which lies clear and plain upon the surface. Jesus, who was the Creator, the only begotten Son of God, the revealer of the Father, associated Himself with His own in the joys and sorrows of their home life. Perish the thought that we may only know His presence at the meetings for prayer or worship: that He only connects Himself with what are known as religious services. If this were all, then our religion were artificial and dead, and our Lord useless to us in our trials, and scarcely of more value than the dumb idols of the heathen. But He comes into the home life when He is allowed, comes in all the plenitude of an inexhaustible grace, rejoicing if we rejoice, and Himself becoming the source of a joy that earthly circumstances cannot yield: and standing by us in days of stress and sorrow, to sympathize with and support the heart that looks to Him. How near this brings Him to us: how real it makes Him: how tender and accessible it shows Him to be.

If this is the case (and only those who do not know the Lord will deny it), then all we have to do is to bring our need to His notice. At the wedding in Cana this was done and He supplied the lack. Happy bridegroom and bride who were wise enough to ask Jesus to their marriage. At the sorrowing home in Bethany this was done, and it was not done in vain. We behold Him as He stands with Mary prostrate at His feet. Listen while she pours out her grief before Him. See her as she looks up through her weeping into His dear face, and see, His cheeks are also washed with tears. Yes, He cares. How beautiful must He have seemed to her that day! How His sympathy must have swallowed up her sorrow! What a revelation of His heart were those tears! What intimacy with Him did Mary's sorrow yield her!

"The bud had had a bitter taste,

But oh, how sweet the flower."

Christ became supreme in her love. She had learnt in that silent walk by the side of Jesus to the grave of her brother how fully and tenderly He entered into her grief: how able He was to lift her out of the depths and sustain her by His sympathy: how every question that could arise in her mind as to the rightness of God's ways with her was settled in Himself, and how His love, so perfect and true, for it was God's love, was able to heal the wound and fill the void in her heart: and those were lessons, and that was an experience, that no mortal words can describe, but the result of it appeared when in silent adoration she poured the precious ointment upon His sacred feet. And what He was to Mary "yesterday," He is "to-day" to all who will bring their sorrow to His feet. And in Him is God revealed, turning that which seems only evil into everlasting good.

The same blessed care is most beautifully expressed in the Lord's words to Zacchaeus: "To-day I must abide at thy house." This was not said for the chief of the tax-gatherers alone, but for us also: it is the way the grace of the Lord compels Him to take towards all whom He has sought and saved, and so it can be said that salvation has come to all who are His; salvation not from the penalty of sin merely, from hellfire at last, but for every day of the journey to the homeland, for He Himself is salvation to us, and He is an everyday Saviour, who will never leave us nor forsake us.

What a comfort lies here for all about whom the storms of trouble sweep! The Lord is with them, and every sorrow may be laid at His feet and every difficulty told to Him. That life which appears to have the least sorrow has its difficulties and burdens, and none of us have sufficient wisdom or strength to deal with these. But He is sufficient for little trials and for big, and so precious are we to Him that He will never abandon us. Only let it be realized that the grace of God brought Him down to us, not only to save us, but to abide with us, and that He is ever by our side to support and succour us and to sympathize with us, and it will change the aspect of every sorrow and produce the song where the sigh has been. It is the realization of His presence that can lead the saint of God to say, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for THOU ART WITH ME: Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me" (Ps. 23). And if "He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee," we may boldly say, "The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me" (Heb. 13: 5, 6).

Observe carefully that the Lord did not merely say to Zacchaeus, "I must abide with thee," but "AT THY HOUSE." He was interested in the family of the man whom He had sought and saved. A place was to be found for Him in the home circle, so that not only the individual needs and difficulties, but those of the household, might also be brought to His notice.

The Lord of Winds and Waves

When the disciples launched forth upon the Sea of Galilee on that evening of which three of the Gospels tell, they needed but little faith to put their Master into the helmsman's seat and commit the steering of the ship to Him, for the wind was fair and the sea was calm. But when the storm uprose and the shore lights were lost in the darkness, and they found that He had fallen asleep in the place that they had assigned to Him, it seemed to them that they had jeopardized their safety. The good ship might have had some chance of outriding the gale if the helm had been in the strong and capable hands of one of the sons of Zebedee, or if wide awake Simon had had control, but what hope could there be for it in such a sea while the helmsman slept? As the tempest grew in violence their terror increased, until, when it seemed that the mighty billows would break them utterly, they awoke Him with that cry, made bitter by unbelief, "Carest Thou not that we perish?" And in that cry their Master's power over the storm and His love to them were alike arraigned.

What shame must have been theirs when in answer to their cry He rose up from His sleep and calmed the elements with a word! How outrageous must their doubts of Him have seemed when the winds retired at His bidding and the waves obeyed Him as a dog obeys its Master! Ah, why had they no faith? They might have stretched themselves beside Him and known the wonder of unbroken peace in the tempest, and made that night most memorable by their confidence in Him. They might have shared His peace with Him, for it was not indifference that marked that one recorded sleep of His, but peace, wonderful, beautiful, unruffled peace in the wildest storm that ever beat upon that sea. And they were not one whit more safe when that great calm spread itself upon the waters than they were when the great billows thundered upon them, for the Man who slept in their storm-tossed ship was the Lord of the universe, and whether in peace or in calm they were in His care. Had they but realized this they might have honoured Him and saved themselves much worry, for if His hand was on the helm all was well.

Let us beware lest we fail in our confidence in the Lord as those fearful men failed. We may have spoken of safety in Him in fair weather, but when sailing upon stormy waters let us hold firmly to the fact that He cannot fail. Have we committed ourselves to His keeping? He is most worthy of our trust. Can we say as said Paul of old, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day"? Do we know His love and His wisdom so well that we can stay our minds upon Him and put the helm of our tiny craft into His hands and leave it there? Do we ask sometimes, "Carest Thou not?" Let the Scriptures give the answer: "Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you" (1 Peter 5: 7).

Held up on the Waves

It was night, and the disciples of our Lord were afloat upon the Sea of Galilee. He had remained upon the quiet mountainside in prayer to His Father, but He looked through the darkness and beheld them toiling uselessly, for the waves rolled high. His heart was moved with compassion as He saw how the storm baffled them, and from His peaceful retreat He stepped out upon the sea to go to them. His appearance, as He strode from wave to wave, affrighted them, but His voice quickly calmed them. How sweet must have been the peace that filled them when they heard Him say, "BE OF GOOD CHEER: IT IS I: BE NOT AFRAID"! Aye, it is good to hear the voice of the Lord above the night-storms and to know in days of stress that He is nigh.

But Peter, impulsive and full of admiration for his Master, and ready to dare much to be near Him, left the boat to join Him where He walked. Then he found himself in circumstances that were new and strange to him — circumstances in which the creature could only sink and perish. But here comes in the loveliest bit of the wonderful story. He felt his desperate need and cried out to His Lord, and "immediately Jesus stretched forth His hand and caught him," and held him up. And together with the Master of every storm Peter walked on the very crests of the waves. The gale still raged fiercely and the sea surged and swished about his feet, but he was held up by almighty power and he walked by the side of his Lord, erect, fearless, and comforted.

Now let us understand the story. The Lord who sits above the water floods, and rules the waves from His throne of eternal calm, does not send succour to His saints as a sympathetic onlooker who knows nothing experimentally of the sorrows they endure. No. He came down upon the waves, He came from the eternal peace of heaven into the storm where His loved ones laboured: the winds blew and the waves tossed about Him. When His disciples saw Him, they were affrighted and supposed that He was a spirit, but He was not a spirit. HE WAS A MAN, AND HE IS A MAN. This is the amazing thing. Because the children were partakers of flesh and blood He, the Lord of Glory, likewise took part of the same, that He might know in His own experience the fierceness of the storms that beset our weak humanity: and He was tempted in all points as we are, apart from sin, and so He can succour us with a sympathy that is perfectly human though divine.

It was the hand of a Man, in which was the very power of God, that held up Peter on that memorable night. It is the hand of a Man — of Jesus, who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities — that is stretched out to us, and that holds us up upon the very waves that have leaped to our destruction. He is the Son of God, eternal in His being, and omnipotent in power, yet a man who loved us enough to die for us that He might take from our souls the very fear of death and make us triumph evermore.

We want our readers to lay hold of this great truth, not as a theory, but as a fact to be known first to faith and then blessedly in their experience. Peter's was an individual experience, he had it for himself, but it is an experience that every Christian may have when seas of trouble roll around. Yes, each for himself may be supported by that hand of gracious power and be made more than a conqueror in the very circumstance that threatens to swallow him up. What encouragement there is for us in the story — Peter's need and distress stretched out and reached the Saviour's heart, and the Saviour's hand stretched out and reached His sinking saint, and with his need met, his fears calmed, and his faith strengthened, Peter walked hand in hand with his Master until the storm ceased.

The Good Shepherd

The hand that bruised the head of the devil and smashed the power of death is the hand that holds the sheep of God securely for ever, but John 10 was not given to assure the sheep of Christ that they are eternally safe. It is often used for that purpose, and no doubt it has yielded comfort in that way to thousands of harassed souls. But that is not its purpose. The sheep of Christ should not need to be assured of their safety. It should be sufficient for them that they are HIS sheep. Can He let them slip? He is THE GOOD SHEPHERD. He laid down His life to deliver them from every foe. He has taken it again to gather them into one flock — the flock of God. Can one amongst these perish? Impossible! His greatness, goodness, love, and power forbid the thought entirely. They are safe. But the precious words of this chapter were not spoken, and preserved, to assure the sheep that they are safe, nor to occupy their thoughts with themselves at all, but with Christ. The chapter is about the Shepherd. It was written that we might see His greatness and hear the melody of His voice, and, as a consequence, know the supreme blessedness of following Him.

"He that entereth in by the door is the Shepherd of the sheep."

The door is the appointed way of entrance, and by that way He came — by the way that was marked out by the prophecies of old, which spake of Him. Others had come claiming to be Christ, but they had proved themselves to be thieves and robbers, actuated by vain-glory, and making gain of the sheep: they did not come in the appointed way. He came into the fold (Israel), fulfilling the Scriptures. His entrance into the fold is given in the earlier chapters of Matthew, in which Gospel He is presented as the Messiah of Israel, and these chapters are significant with the phrase "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet." And at His exit out of it given in the closing chapters of John, we are told often that things were done to Him "that the Scripture should be fulfilled."

There are prophecies which tell of His glory: how, as the Sun of Righteousness, He shall arise with healing in His wings, and fill the earth with the knowledge of God — for that time we wait: but there are others which tell us that "He was despised and rejected of men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." These prophecies mark out a path of humiliation and suffering for Him: they show Him trodden under foot by the proud of the earth; "His visage so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men." He gave His back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: He hid not His face from shame and spitting. He was perfectly submissive to the will of Him that sent Him. The Lord God opened His ear and He was not rebellious, neither turned away back.

Now mark well who He is who trod this path of submission to God, and of suffering from sinners, who was buffeted by men because He would obey God. He says, "At My rebuke I dry up the sea. . . . I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering." He is the mighty Lord of the universe.

"Heaven's arches rang as the angels sang,

Proclaiming His royal degree —

But of lowly birth came the Lord to earth,

And in great humility."

Thus is He shown to us as the Shepherd of the sheep, gentle and submissive, meek and lowly of heart, the Servant of God and the Servant of men, yes, even of those who hated and derided Him. Have we seen the glory of that life of His — the glory of its humility?

HIS DEATH UPON THE CROSS.

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep."

He has become the door of salvation and liberty for the sheep, the God-appointed and only way of blessing, but He has become that door by giving His life for them. There was no other means by which He could deliver them, for they were sinners every one, and held in the power of death. So the sword awoke against Him who is the Shepherd, who has proved Himself to be the Shepherd by standing between that sword and the sheep. "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray: we have turned every one to his own way: and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." It is not here a question of physical pain; of the thorns, the smitings and the nails: nor of all the shame and degradation connected with His suffering a malefactor's death: undoubtedly our Lord felt these things with an intensity of which none other could be capable: but there was more than that at Calvary, for "It pleased the Lord to bruise Him: He hath put Him to grief" (Isa. 53: 10). It was Jehovah's sword that smote Him when His soul was made an offering for sin: the billows of His wrath rolled over Him as He stood as the Substitute in the place of the sheep.

He gave His life for the sheep. He entered the field where death seemed to hold an undisputed sway, and there He annulled him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. As David beat down the mighty giant in Elah, so has the Good Shepherd, by His dying, destroyed the great foe, and wrought deliverance for the sheep.

He laid down His life, no man took it from Him. He had power to lay it down and power to take it again. These are wonderful words, proclaiming the fact of His Deity, for no creature could so have spoken, and yet in this same connection He says, "This commandment have I received of My Father" (ver. 18). How startling is that which greets us here. The supreme power of Deity was His, and yet He shows Himself to us in absolute submission to the Father's command. But further, this commandment of the Father's had the sheep entirely in view. His purpose was that they should be saved from every foe, and He has found a new reason for loving His well-beloved Son in that He laid down His life for them. These are wonderful things for the heart's meditation. Have we seen the Good Shepherd in the glory of His love?

HIS RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD.

"Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life that I might take it again."

He has taken His life again, that, as the Great Shepherd, He might gather the sheep of God into one flock. His voice sounded amidst the dead legalism of the Jews' religion, and the sheep within that fold heard it and followed Him out of it: His voice was also to ring tenderly and clear over the far-away mountains of sin, that His "other sheep" from among the Gentiles might also be brought, that there might be ONE FLOCK and one Shepherd. Not a fold now in which the sheep should be held together by the high walls of law and ordinance, as the Jews had been kept from the nations: nor yet by rules and regulations, either written or unwritten, but a FLOCK held together by the all-sufficiency and attractive power of the ONE SHEPHERD.

This is the beginning of the revelation of the oneness of the Christian company. It is developed in the thought of the family having God as FATHER, and still further in the body and its one HEAD, which is Christ: but there is a sweetness about the thought of the one flock which is entirely its own, and it is this: the sheep are not united to each other organically, as are the members of a body, but each individual in the vast flock of God is attached to the Shepherd by an intimacy known to itself alone. "He calleth His own sheep by NAME." "I know My sheep and am known of Mine." It is because we know Him that we belong to the one flock. He has a special name for each one of us, each of us is —

"Called by that secret name

Of undisclosed delight."

We shall fully understand its meaning when we see Him in the "saint-thronged courts" above, but now our ears should be so keenly attent to His voice that we should be learning it here. There should be with each sheep a secret history of soul with the Shepherd, increasing in blessedness as the days go by.

How precious is this oneness to God, and to Christ, and to everyone whose heart is intelligent in divine truth. "I am the good Shepherd, and I know those that are Mine, and am known of those that are Mine, as the Father knows Me and I know the Father: and I lay down My life for the sheep" (N.T.). This is an intimacy and communion that creature thought could never have conceived, and which can only be enjoyed by the Holy Ghost.

"There shall be one flock and one Shepherd"; this is the purpose of God, and, blessed be His name, it abides true, for there can be no failure in the one Great Shepherd. It is true for God, and true also for the faith and affection of every sheep that is contented to hear the Shepherd's voice and follow Him. Have we seen Him as the Great Shepherd, in the glory of His all-sufficiency for the whole flock of God?

HIS SUPREMACY OVER ALL EVIL.

"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand."

These words were spoken to those who believed not, and they were the declaration of the Lord's ability to keep and bless His sheep. Those Jews who urged Him to tell them plainly whether He was the Christ or not were seeking some sign that would satisfy their sensuality, a sign such as He had given them when He fed the multitude. They wanted a king who would give them the bread that perisheth, and bless them according to their own carnal thoughts, but for the Bread of God they had no taste. But His sheep heard His voice: they said, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life." And this life He gave to them, a life outside of the world and nature, a life which was manifested to them in Him, and which belonged to the home out of which He had come.

He gives this life to His sheep, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of His hand. Neither decay within nor foes without can rob Him of those whom the Father has given Him. He is their life and protector, and He is supreme in His glorious power. Can any sheep have a doubt since He is its Shepherd? If when crucified in weakness He annulled the power of the devil, what will He do in the glorious strength of His resurrection? Shall He not be triumphant over every force of evil, and that for ever? It must be so, and He declares in this His supremacy, that He will hold all who are His. Have we seen Him in the glory of this great power?

Part 3. His Sufferings and Death.

"But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him and with His stripes we are healed" (Isa. 53: 5).

"Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow" (Lam. 1: 12).

—

"O day of mightiest sorrow,

Day of unfathomed grief!

When THOU didst taste the horror

Of wrath without relief.

"No eye was found to pity,

No heart to bear Thy woe:

But shame, and scorn and spitting.

None cared Thy Name to know." (J. N. Darby.)

On Both Sides of the Sea

"And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives." — (Matt. 26: 30.)

"In the midst of the church will I sing praise unto Thee." — (Heb. 2: 12.)

Christians are called to be a triumphant people. Through the riches of the grace of God they can sing with joyful lips their songs of praise unto Him, but in this they are like the Israelites when they saw their enemies dead upon the seashore: then in the gladness of their freedom from the cruel oppressor they could sound the loud timbrel and sing the high praise of Jehovah, for He had manifested the greatness of His excellency in their deliverance (Ex. 15). But they did not sing on the other side, when the waters rolled darkly before them, the fierce foe pressed hard behind and the mountains reared their rugged heads on either side. But Jesus sang on both sides of the sea.

He "divided the sea, whose waves roared," and "made the depths of it a way for the ransomed to pass over." He divided it by passing through it, while all its fury was spent upon Him, and now in resurrection He can celebrate His great triumph, surrounded by those whom He has set free: and so is fulfilled the word, "In the midst of the church will I sing praise unto Thee." But He also sang on the other side. When deep called unto deep: when the waters were gathered to compass Him about: when the waves and billows of judgment uprose to pass over Him: as the darkness of Gethsemane and the deeper darkness of Calvary, with all its shame and woe and ignominy and unspeakable sorrow confronted Him; then He lifted up His voice and sang unto God.

The disciples may have known the words and the tune, but we cannot suppose that they entered into the spirit and meaning of that praise-psalm: He was the singer in deed and in truth.

It is written, "Whoso offereth praise glorifieth Me," and herein was that passage fulfilled and God greatly glorified, even though no other heart appreciated or understood what Jesus then did.

When the last "Praise ye the Lord" of that song was reached, He spoke of Himself as the Shepherd — the Shepherd, who, for the sake of the flock, was to bear the smiting of Jehovah's rod, and in view of this smiting He had to say, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." But in the presence of that unspeakable sorrow He fully approved God's will concerning Him, and to its last drop He would drink the cup that His Father gave Him. In this holy determination, conscious of God's approval of His faithfulness, He sang forth His praise as He entered the conflict. Be assured the music of that singing will never pass away: it will sound for ever in the Father's ear as the melody of a trust that never faltered and a love that was stronger than death.

So He sang then, and so He sings now. But now He has companions who can join in the singing that He leadeth; His brethren — who owe their every joy to His sorrow: who are placed, through His death, beyond the reach of judgment's wrathful sea: who are one with Him in nature and life, and to whom He has revealed His Father's name. These can share His joy, and so can sing in concert with Him, for they stand with Him in the unclouded light of His Father's love, and this is their place for ever. Yes, this is our place who have believed on Him, the risen Lord; but how our hearts are moved in the midst of our joy, and for ever will be, as we remember that He sang on the other side of the sea.

"About a stone's cast"

"He went a little farther" (Matt. 26: 39).

"He was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast" (Luke 23: 41).

A great crisis was now reached in the life of the Lord Jesus. He had not separated Himself from His disciples in this way before, nor had they ever parted company with Him. They would not leave Him, for they could not do without Him. When others turned their backs upon Him, they said: "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," and so bound to Him had they been, that He had said to them, "Ye are they that have continued with Me in My temptation." They were His lovers and friends, and though they did not understand the exceeding sorrow that filled His soul, yet there was the sympathy of love in their hearts towards Him, and this was very precious in that hour to Him.

But now the parting time had come, if He was to fulfill the will of God. They follow Him to Gethsemane; they had often done so before, for Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with His disciples, and in the past they had watched with Him in the silence of the night beneath those olive trees while He held communion with His Father. But now it was different, and He says to them: "Sit ye here, while I go and pray YONDER." Who can tell what that "yonder" meant to Him? He was about to enter the great conflict, and He "looked for comforters," and as Peter and the sons of Zebedee entered more fully into His thoughts than the other disciples, He takes them with Him. Surely these three could give Him what He longed for, and watch with Him through that terrible hour! But He must leave them, also. "He saith to them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death; tarry ye here and watch with Me." AND HE WENT A LITTLE FARTHER, or, as we read in Luke's record, "He was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast." In Matthew's Gospel, Emmanuel is the King, and it was the prerogative of David's royal Son to act in His own right, so there "He went." In Luke's record, He is the obedient and dependent Man, filled and anointed by the Spirit to do His Father's business; hence there He is "withdrawn from them" by the Father's will and the Spirit's power. His own voluntary act was in absolute unison with the Father's will and the Spirit's leading.

But though it was only a stone's cast that He was withdrawn from them, as a man would measure distance, in reality the distance was immeasurable. He had started on a road now upon which His disciples could not travel; He must take it alone. It was a road that never had been or could be travelled by any other human foot than His. And these disciples were never to be associated with Him in the old way again; that was a chapter which was closing; the links that bound Him to them as the Messiah of Israel were breaking now, and keenly He felt it.

Three times in the midst of His own great conflict He went back to them; for though they were unable to tread the road that He was treading, or watch with Him in it, yet His love towards them could not change; and they also were to pass through a stern sifting, and He wanted them for their own sakes to watch and pray. There was no response now to His earnest desire; the comforters He looked for failed Him, "He found them asleep." Then, when they did awaken from that strange sleep, terror-stricken at the sight of His sorrow, "they all forsook Him and fled."

Lover and friend were put far from Him; no mere human sympathy could help Him, for no human heart had ever suffered as His was to suffer. The cup from which He shrank was in His hand, and He must drink it until not a drop of its bitter contents remained; His Father's will and His love to us conspired together to make Him take it without a murmur. But He must do it alone.

"Alone He bare the cross,

Alone its grief sustained."

He had told His disciples that this break would be for "a little while." As a tender mother on leaving her timid child assures it that she will "soon come back," so He assured them that they should see Him again. "A little while, and ye shall not see Me: and again a little while, and ye shall see Me: because I go to the Father." The "little while" passed, and the "little farther," the distance "about a stone's cast," with all its accumulated sorrow that had separated Him from them for that little while, was removed out of the way. And in resurrection He went after His broken-hearted, despairing, and scattered sheep, and gathered them together into one flock, and associated them with Himself in new and heavenly relationships, the blessedness of which they could never have conceived. We look back to that little while when He went a little farther, with deepest gratitude of heart, for but for the sorrow that He passed through then, we never could have sung, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"

Love that suffered all the Sorrow

The more deeply we know the love of Jesus the more unknowable we find it to be: the more we consider the way of it the more amazed we stand at its wisdom and its warmth. It is not a blind love that may awaken to find flaws and faults in its objects that it knew not of, for it knew from the beginning with omniscient certainty all about the loved ones. It knew, also, with the unerring knowledge of God, the whole way of sorrow that must needs be trodden in order to obtain its desire. It is a love that cannot be disappointed or alarmed, and when the great tests came it neither faltered nor fled. We need not fear that it will break down or change now: it has been fully proved.

"His love to the utmost was tried,

Yet firmly endured as a rock."

Consider that great crisis in the life of the Lord when Judas came with "a band of men and officers . . . with lanterns and torches and weapons" (John 18). How hideous, how hellish did the treachery and hatred of the human heart appear in that torchlight glare! Yet that band was but an advance guard, a flying column sent out to reconnoitre: behind them lay the hosts of darkness, waiting to crush and overwhelm Him. They were but as the spray of a stormy ocean cast up upon the strand: behind them surged the seas of sorrow, frightful and unfathomed. But how did He meet the crisis? He met it by saying, "Let these go their way." He might have escaped what lay before, from one point of view, for two words of His were enough to paralyze His foes. But He would not use His divine might to save Himself, for had He done so He must have lost His loved ones. In their fervid devotion His disciples might well have put that band to flight, but He would not let them fight. Of what use would their feeble arms have been against all that lay behind that band of men who came to take Him with Judas as their leader? He saw what lay behind them — the awful sorrow, the malignity of Satan, the judgment of God, and He said, "Let these go their way." He saw the wolf preparing to devour the sheep. He saw the righteous sword, also, that had awakened against His people's sins, and He said, "Let these go their way: that the saying might be fulfilled which He spake, Of them which Thou gavest Me, I have lost none."

He would bear all the sorrow alone. Not one pang must they feel of all those pangs that He would endure for them: not one stroke of all that judgment that He would bear must fall upon them. Not one drop of that bitter cup must gall their lips: He would drink it to the dregs and drink it alone for them. He would shield them from the suffering: stand between them and the threatening foe: become their Substitute under the judgment, and sacrifice Himself for them. That was the only way, and His love led Him that way, with steadfastness and deliberation, that He might keep for ever for Himself those that the Father had given Him. And we were represented there in those of whom He said, "Let these go their way." And we can say, each for himself, "He loved me and gave Himself for me."

"Guilt's bitter cup,

He drank it up,

Left but the love for me."

He bore it all for me.

That Terrible Hour

"This is YOUR HOUR, and the power of darkness" (Luke 22: 53).

"Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from THIS HOUR but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name" (John 12: 27).

Consider these words, my soul, in the presence of Him who spoke them. Note well the fact that there was an hour in the years of the Saviour's life below that was full of horror for Him, an hour from which He shrank with a perfect shrinking, and from which He would have escaped had any way been found in heaven above or on earth beneath. It was the hour of the unrestrained hatred of men and of the power of darkness.

He had trodden a rough road, but in all His ways God had given His angels charge over Him, and in their hands they had borne Him up, lest at any time He should have dashed His foot against a stone. So that, though His adversaries hated Him with a virulent hatred, they could not hurt Him. They led Him to the edge of the rock upon which their city was built, in order to hurl Him into the abyss beneath it, but He, passing through the midst of them, went His way unharmed. The very stones that they picked up to cast at Him clave to their murderous hands while He "passed by." No malice of evil, whether of men or devils, had been able to break through the unseen angelic cordon, but for this terrible hour that protection was taken away. An angel brought Him heavenly succour in the garden and withdrew, and He turned to His foes and said to them, "This is your hour and the power of darkness" (Luke 22: 43-53).

It was then that every element of evil beset Him round about. The floods rolled upon Him, and no voice was uplifted to cry unto them, "Hitherto shall ye come and no further." The dread array that had sought means to crush Him during the days of His lowly service amongst men combined against Him. The reins that had restrained them were thrown free, there was no check upon them, and their utmost fury broke upon Him. He was reproached, despised, and railed upon. Strong bulls of Bashan encompassed Him, gaping upon Him as a ravening and roaring lion: dogs beset Him: the assembly of the wicked enclosed Him. The sword, the power of the dog, the lion's mouth, the horns of the unicorn (Ps. 22) — all these in that dread hour sought out His soul to destroy Him: for to destroy Him was to destroy all that was good, and to overthrow Him was to overthrow the very throne of God. Upon Him — that one solitary Man, the Nazarene — who in that darkness had no helper, depended every hope of all the saints: the confidence of the host of great unfallen angelic principalities: the stability of the universe: and the supremacy of God.

We dwell upon the hatred of men, but we have seen nothing and known nothing so terrible as their hatred of Him, for never before, nor since, had proud men been confronted with absolute meekness: never before, nor since, had sin been unrestrained in the presence of perfect goodness, unprotected. But what of the malignity of the devil, and of those awful and entirely evil spiritual powers in rebellion against God, the roll of which is called in Psalm 22? Of these how little we know. Thank God, we know so little: we should have known much more had our Lord Jesus not faced them for us: but He knew, with divine and all-embracing prescience, their full strength before He entered that hour. Do we wonder that He prayed, "Father, save Me from this hour." But how worthy of everlasting adoration is He because of that supremely blessed and full consecration of soul which made Him say, "FATHER, GLORIFY THY NAME." This was the grand purpose of His life below, and to secure this He entered and passed through that hour.

It was the great hour in which darkness wrestled against light for the mastery. How closely He was beset in the palace of the High Priest: before the Sanhedrin: in the house of Pilate: before the throne of Herod: in the place called Gabbatha: on the road to Golgotha; and finally on the malefactor's gibbet. We are permitted to hear His cry, "I am poured out like water, and all My bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax: it is melted in the midst of My bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd: and My tongue cleaveth to My jaws: and Thou hast brought Me into the dust of death. . . . Deliver my soul. . . . Save Me."

There was not a weapon in the vast armoury of evil, that Satan and his hosts had been preparing throughout the ages for this awful conflict, that was not brought against Him, the sent One of God, to force Him from the path of God's will and to make Him cry, "I yield" to the authority of darkness. Yet He did not yield. He was wholly light, darkness could gain no foothold in Him. The prince of this world came, but he had nothing in Him. Blessed, holy, adorable Lord! Having exhausted every device of their almost boundless malice, and exhausted themselves in their fury against Him, they sat down to watch Him there (Matt. 27: 36) — men and devils, amazed, baffled, defeated, crowding together about Him. Thrones and dominions had fallen before Satan as the great leader of all evil, so that he had become "the prince of this world," and "the prince of the power of the air." His conquests were far-reaching and his triumphs great: he had only to drive back the Son of God from doing the will of God and then would his victories be crowned with everlasting success: but in that one poor and lonely Man, despised by the people, abandoned by lover and friend, and forsaken of God, he met his conqueror.

Consider Him, my soul: He had neither reply nor reproach for the men who mocked Him: had He cursed them Satan would have triumphed, but only prayers for their blessing were forced from His suffering soul by their cruelty. He was laughed to scorn because God did not aid Him in His dire necessity: and to make Him cast off His faith was the enemy's fell purpose; but neither repining nor rebuke was heard in His cries as He poured out His sorrow before God, whose ear seemed deaf to the voice of His supplication. Nevertheless He still cried, "My God, My God . . . O My God. . . . Thou art holy. . . . Thou art He. . . . I was cast upon Thee. . . . Thou art My God. . . . O My strength" (Ps. 22).

So He triumphed in that terrible hour, and trod the foes of God beneath His feet by being trodden down. And because no power of evil could overcome Him He was able to take up the question of sin on behalf of sinful men and settle that question to the everlasting glory of God by bearing His righteous judgment against it. He had suffered for righteousness, and in faithfulness to the will of God, but when the full tale of His suffering in regard to these was told, He entered into deeper depths and into a darker hour, for He was made "to be sin for us, who knew no sin." It pleased the Lord to bruise Him. He put Him to grief when He made His soul an offering for sin. He died, and through death He has annulled him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. He lives again and has the keys of death and hades. He is crowned with glory and honour. He must be exalted and extolled, and made very high, and He shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied when the greatness of God's triumph through Him is publicly manifested to the wide universe. How glorious is He. The forces of evil have been met and vanquished: the judgment of God against sin has been borne and His justice glorified: the power of death has been destroyed by His dying, and He lives to die no more. No wonder that His saints delight to sing —

"Bless, bless the Conqueror slain,

Slain in His victory,

Who lived, who died, who lives again,

For thee, His Church, for thee."

"He was numbered with the transgressors"

"And when they came to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified Him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand and the other on the left." (Luke 23: 33.)

—

They searched the prison cells of Jerusalem that morning for the most debased of all the criminals that that city contained, and they led them out to die along with Jesus. These men had been guilty of appalling crimes, and that was why they were chosen to hang one on His right hand and the other on His left: that was why they put Him upon the centre and highest cross. They meant to proclaim by their well-considered and malicious plan that He was the worst of the three. Thus did they heap shame upon Him, adding deepest insult to deepest injury.

But I am glad that such men as these, and not James and John, were taken to be His companions on that day: in this the devil showed his lack of foresight, and in this he was outwitted, for if they had crucified the sons of Zebedee, one on His right hand and the other on His left, it would have been said that they were helping Him to finish His work of redemption. The devil would have deceived men, now that Jesus is proclaimed as a Saviour, and would have said: These holy men, His disciples, had their share in His work, so that you must not trust in Him alone, but trust also in St. John and St. James, for they are worthy of as much glory as He.

Such a deception cannot now be practised upon weary, anxious sinners; those murderers who hung with Him could have no hand in the work that He was doing. They were suffering for their own crimes, He, the sinless One, for yours and mine.

"Alone He bore the cross,

Alone its grief sustained;

His was the shame and loss,

And He the victory gained.

The mighty work was all His own,

Though we shall share His glorious throne."

Yes, Jesus is the Saviour, and He alone. Behold Him there upon that cross, the darkness and shame of His surroundings only throwing into brighter relief the glory of His person. See Him "numbered with the transgressors," bearing the sin of many, and praying for His foes! How worthy is He of that name which is above every name!

Behold Him, the central object of man's hatred: all the unspeakable enmity of men against God flung upon Him in scorn and shame, and cruelty unrestrained, and that, too, in the very hour when He stood forth as the infinite expression of God's love to men. Truly, as we look upon Him there, every other actor in that solemn scene fades from the view, and He stands out alone in the incomparable glory of His own divine and unconquerable love.

Yet what an evidence it is of the utter darkness of the heart of unregenerate man, and of his complete alienation from God, that he should have heaped shame and execration upon the One who is the most glorious and everlastingly blessed Person in God's universe, that he should have condemned Him to die between two malefactors upon a shameful cross, in whom was centred the eternal delight of the heart of the Father.

The Victory of Love

"And they took Jesus, and led Him away. And He bearing His cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: where they crucified Him, and two other with him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst." — (John 19: 16, 17, 18.)

—

"They took Jesus and led Him away" in that the guilt of men reached its flood-tide.

"He bearing His cross went forth": in this was manifested the great victory of divine love over human hate. He was not dragged forth, nor driven forth; He went forth. No man took His life from Him; He laid it down Himself. The shouts of the rabble smote His ear and, with a holy sensitiveness, He keenly felt it all, and yet no thought of saving Himself was in His heart. In majestic lowliness He went forth, bearing His cross. He knew, to its last bitterness, all that the cross meant. He was not taken by surprise, nor did He go forth on the impulse of a moment. On the night that was passed in Gethsemane's garden He had looked into the darkness and had fully counted the cost. He had talked of it on the holy mount with Moses and Elias. This hour had been planned in the council chamber of eternity ere ever He came, and now He does not draw back. There was no resistance, no regret, and every step He took towards Golgotha shook the kingdom of the devil.

And there "they crucified Him"; and the crucified Christ is God's answer to the devil's lie in Eden. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3: 16). If God had left us to reap the bitter harvest of our rebellion and sin, we could not have complained; but, instead of this, He undertook to dispel the darkness and overthrow the power of the devil by this mighty and convincing proof of His love to us. Satan had made men believe that God was a hard Master, gathering where He had not strawed. God has proved that He is full of love by giving the very best gift that heaven contained, even His own beloved Son, to bear the penalty of our sin: and it is when the glorious light of this love shines into the hearts of men that Satan's thraldom comes to an end. Jesus was lifted up upon the cross, and that lifting has declared the whole truth, and we who believe it have been drawn to Him. He has become our great attractive centre, and the devil no longer holds us as his prey. The lie is laid bare, the darkness of ignorance past, and God has triumphed: for the prince of this world is cast out of the hearts of those who believe. He no longer holds them as his citadel. They have surrendered themselves to the God whose perfect love has been demonstrated in the cross of Christ.

How great is the splendour of Calvary! By its glorious light we have been awakened from our night of sleep as by the rising sun at morn. We have been compelled to exclaim: "Then God did love us, after all!" The entrance of His Word has given light, and with light has come liberty. The curtains of darkness have been torn asunder, and our souls have stepped forth into the day.

Part 4. His Resurrection and Glory.

"And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. And He laid His right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death" (Rev. 1: 17, 18).

—

"For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" (1 Cor. 15: 25, 26).

—

"He is not here! the power of death is broken:

The Son of Jesse hath Goliath slain.

See in this riven rocky keep the token

That death no longer shall despotic reign.

This casket holds the Prince of Life no longer;

The powers of hell have felt the might of God;

The strong man has been vanquished by the stronger;

The Red Sea smitten by the Saviour's rod" (J. Boyd.)

"Fear not ye."

Stone and seal and soldiers held the lonely sepulchre in the garden where the body of Jesus lay. The subtlety of Jewish priests and the authority of Rome combined to make the place secure. "Make it," said Pilate, "as sure as ye can." They did their utmost, and may have gone to their beds assured that they would meet the hated Nazarene no more. What orders were issued to the Roman guard as they went to their unwonted watch? Were they told, I wonder, how to treat the expected raid upon that tomb by a mob of Galilean fishermen? It is more than likely that they were, but they certainly were not instructed how to deal with an earthquake, and an angel of the Lord, whose countenance was like lightning and whose raiment was white as snow. And the Galilean fishermen came not, but the earthquake and the angel did.

What a moment was that when the earth trembled and rocked, and the imperial seal was torn asunder, and the stone was rolled away from the mouth of that tomb by angelic hands! Glittering spears and shining armour were useless to withstand this display of heavenly power: the courage of the coarse defenders of that tomb failed utterly and they fell down flat as dead men.

There was every reason why that guard should shake and fall with fear, for it represented a world determined to be rid of Jesus, and that thought had realized its determination. Now He was risen from the dead, and His resurrection was His triumph and their defeat. It was the declaration on the part of God that He had seen and disapproved their awful act at Calvary: and that Christ was the righteous One before whose throne all men must stand.

But close at hand in that memorable hour were two weak women, and to them the angel turned with words of cheer. There was nothing in the power of God to make them afraid: there was every reason why they should rejoice. They represented, not the world that hated Jesus, but those whom He had chosen out of it, and who loved Him because He first loved them. So the angel said to them,

"FEAR NOT YE."

It seemed strange that such words should be said to these weak women, when Roman veterans fell as dead for fear: but the reason is at once declared. "I know," said the angel, "that

YE SEEK JESUS."

That was the reason. He was the object of their hearts' truest affection. The world was a dreary desert without Him: they could not keep away from that sepulchre where they supposed that He was lying. All their hopes were centred in Him: and though their faith, through ignorance, had been sorely shaken, their love for Him remained. He was their Beloved and their Friend, and in this, though they knew it not, their hearts were in fellowship with the heart of God. And we come together as those who cannot do without Him. As those women sought Him because they loved Him, so do we seek His presence, for He has won our hearts' affections, and in His company we find our fullest joy. He has become our gathering centre, our great attraction, our bond of fellowship: that which bound these women as one in their search for Him unites us also: we are one if we love our Lord Jesus Christ. We are not of the world that hates Him, but of God and of one another, because of our common devotion to Him.

"It is Himself that bindeth heart to heart,

In one eternal love."

But why did they seek Him? And why do we seek Him? The angel supplied the answer, "Ye seek Jesus," he said,

"WHICH WAS CRUCIFIED."

That is why. We should never have sought Him if He had not been crucified. His crucifixion was the expression and the measure of His love to us. When He was despised and rejected by men,

"Stripped and scourged by hands ungentle,

Mocked by tongues untamed,"

then He suffered, the Just for us the unjust, to bring us to God. "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him: and with His stripes we are healed" (Isa. 53). He "loved the church and gave Himself for it." It is love that passes knowledge, and yet we know it, for He bore our sins, and has put them all away, having borne the righteous judgment that was due to us for them. He died for us.

"We know the way, the glorious way He made

Through death's dark sea.

O Lamb of God, we bless the love that laid

Our sins on Thee."

But if the angel could have said no more of Him, it would have been useless for any of us to have sought Him, or still to seek Him. He would have been of no use to us, nor could be. If He is a dead Christ we are hopeless, for "if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain: ye are yet in your sins" (1 Cor. 15: 17). But a glad triumph swells through the angel's words, as he proclaims, "He is not here, for

HE IS RISEN."

His work upon the cross has been accepted: the price He paid there for us is enough. Death has met his conqueror: the grave has been robbed of its terrors, and the devil's power has been broken for ever. The Father's approval of His life and death has been made manifest, His own personal greatness and glory has been declared, and eternal redemption secured for us beyond recall. We can understand how every fear and dark foreboding in these women's hearts would be changed to confidence and joy. His resurrection proved that He had not deceived them; that every hope that He had raised within their breasts would be fulfilled. And it was this that the angel urged upon them when he said, "He is risen

AS HE SAID."

He had told them that He would rise again: that He had done so was the confirmation of all His words, and proved that He was fully worthy of their fullest confidence. We, too, may give to the winds our fears, and renew our confidence in Him, as we read His words, which tell us that not one jot or tittle of His word shall fail. He is risen, that is the pledge. Death mocks at men's assertions and brings to naught their words and works, but our Saviour lives as Victor over death to give complete effect to all that the prophets have spoken concerning Him and all that He has spoken concerning us.

"COME, SEE THE PLACE WHERE THE LORD LAY."

They were to be witnesses to the disciples of this great event, and so must view the empty tomb with their own eyes, and this they did at the invitation of the angel of the Lord. It was presumptuously stated by one whose blasphemies have been closed by death that the Lord did not actually rise from the dead: that His remains are still lying somewhere near to Calvary. If this is so the Christian faith is a delusion and a snare, and all those who have fallen asleep in the joy of it have perished. "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept" (1 Cor. 15: 20).

See how the glorious worth of our Lord comes out in the angel's words.

1. YE SEEK JESUS — His personal preciousness.

2. WHICH WAS CRUCIFIED — His matchless love.

3. HE IS RISEN — His glorious power.

4. AS HE SAID — His absolute trustworthiness.

But there is more in this wonderful story: the risen Lord had not forgotten His disciples; they were His first thought. So that the angel continued,

"GO QUICKLY, AND TELL HIS DISCIPLES

that He is risen from the dead, and goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see Him; lo, I have told you. And they departed quickly with fear and great joy, and did run to bring His disciples word." Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee,

"INTO A MOUNTAIN WHERE JESUS HAD APPOINTED THEM."

He appointed a place where He could meet with them, and, blessed fact, He has appointed a place for us, where He can meet with us. It is in this same gospel that His precious words are recorded for us; "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. 18: 20). It is not the place that we choose: we may not please ourselves in this matter: the place is His appointment: it is our responsibility as well as our joy to obey His word and keep this appointment with Him.

The place that He appointed them was outside the temple and away from Jerusalem. We must remember that in Matthew's Gospel He had been presented to Israel as their Messiah, and they had rejected Him, so that the temple, their house, and their city were to be desolated, and the faithful remnant was to be led out of both and gathered to Himself. His name instead of the temple and the city was to be their rallying centre. And so to-day not a sensuous religion, an ornate service, or a massive temple is that which satisfies His heart or the hearts of those who love Him. To meet His own is His wish, and to be in His presence without distraction, or the intrusion of that which pleases nature, is the wish of those who keep His word and do not deny His Name.

"AND WHEN THEY SAW HIM THEY WORSHIPPED HIM."

Could they do other, when He stood before them who had died for them, bearing in His risen body the marks of His suffering and death? A sight of Him was all that was needed to prostrate them in holy adoration at His feet. And so it will be with us if without distraction we seek His presence in the place that He has appointed us.

"Jesus, Thou alone art worthy

Ceaseless praises to receive,

For Thy love and grace and goodness

Rise o'er all our hearts conceive.

"Praise Him, praise Him, praise the Saviour,

Saints aloud your voices raise.

Praise Him, praise Him, till in heaven

Perfected we'll sing His praise."

"Woman, why weepest thou?"

Mary of Magdala stands in the garden where the mournful cypress casts its shadows, and sighs in the freshening breezes o'er the tombs of the dead. The morning sun breaking over the eastern Olivet has not reached the deep grove where she weeps, and if it had, its rays hold no power that can dispel the gloom of her soul, for she has lost the One in whom her life was centred, and she knows not where to find Him. The disciples, her friends, have homes and duties and distractions, but earth has no comfort for her as she stands beside that sepulchre where all that she loved had lain. Neither can heaven yield her consolation, she feels, for though "angels in white" appear and speak to her, she turns from them as though they were intruders, unable to understand or ease her grief. Behold her as she weeps, darkness above, darkness around, darkness within, and listen to her broken cry, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him."

Hopeless and overwhelming her sorrow seemed, for, believing that she had lost her Lord, both time and eternity were desolated for her.

Among the shadows He waits for her — her risen Lord, and when she turns herself back and stands face to face with Him, He speaks to her, asking the cause of her grief. But she supposes Him to be the gardener, and of what use can a gardener be to her? The gardener labours upon beautiful things that have neither sorrows nor souls — she has both: he tends things that grow and shed their sweetness for a day, then die and are forgotten — she is full of bitterness and cannot forget she seeks not flowers, but "Him" — who can heal the broken-hearted, who Himself is called the "Man of Sorrows." Marvellous designation for Jehovah's Fellow! The gardener may work with sympathy among the graves and endeavour to cover with the beauty of nature the stark nakedness of death, but a flower-strewed grave remains a grave, and the flowers fade in spite of all his labour, while the sorrow lives to drain the red heart white, unless a hand other than a gardener's intervenes. Mary does not want a gardener to garnish a grave, she wants her Lord to heal and satisfy her soul; she wants Him who breaks the power of death, and casts the light of resurrection upon the gloomy grave.

But if Mary knows not Jesus, He knows her, and calls her by her name in accents that throb with infinite love. He commands the morning for her, and turns the shadow of death into joy. The darkness flies away from her soul, and the dirge gives place to the triumph song within her heart, as she sees Him, recognizes Him, and responds to His voice to her in that one word, "Rabboni." Here is a glorious deliverance from the bondage of a hopeless sorrow. THE LORD IS RISEN INDEED. He calls her by her name, and His presence and His voice change her outlook at once and for ever.

In this there is everlasting consolation and good hope for all who weep. Death has met his conqueror: his stronghold has been stormed and taken, and the dark King of Terrors dethroned. Christ is risen, He is victor.

In no other way could the gates of death be opened for us than by His resurrection from the dead. He has opened them, and holds the keys of them, as He that liveth for evermore. To all who put their faith in Him He says, "Fear not; I am the first and the last; I am He that liveth, and was dead: and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen: and have the keys of hades and of death" (Rev. 1: 17, 18). He is Master of death and the grave. Who? The risen Lord who loves you, and who tenderly lays upon you the hand of His power, and calls you by your name. He who tasted death for you in its unspeakable bitterness because He loved you, and who now would sweeten the cup that you drink with His deepest sympathy and undying love. He has flooded the darkness of death with the light of hope, and you may look forward with confidence to the day when "shall be brought to pass that saying which is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? . . . Thanks be unto God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

The tenderness of His grace is as great as the triumph of His might: as it was for Mary in that distant day, so it is for us in this.

Power and Grace

On the evening of the resurrection day the disciples were gathered together, the last of them drawn to that blessed tryst from distant Emmaus by the Lord's personal service to them: and being thus gathered, two things commanded their thoughts and filled them with wonder; (1) THE LORD IS RISEN INDEED, (2) AND HATH APPEARED TO SIMON. Nothing could be of greater moment to them than the first, for it was the manifestation of their Lord's victorious power, and was the confirmation of all things which He had spoken to them. And though they did not understand at the time what the results of this glorious resurrection were, yet it must have opened a new world to their souls, and shown them that what, in their eyes, had been weakness and defeat, had become the veritable triumph of God.

But how could they meet the risen Lord? Had they not forsaken Him in the midst of His exceeding sorrow, and might He not in consequence discard them for others more faithful and worthy? They might have thought so, and gone to hide themselves from Him for very shame, but — He had "appeared to Simon."

They do not say He hath appeared unto Mary Magdalene: they knew that her eyes had been the first to look upon Him, but there was nothing remarkable about His appearing to her, for she — devoted heart — had stood bereaved without the empty tomb, weeping out her sorrow, because she knew not where her beloved Lord lay. The world was a wilderness night where no comfort shone because the Lord was gone. It was no surprise to them, or to us, that since He was risen, He should appear to Mary.

But to Simon! who had abandoned his Master, and had proved the veriest coward in the presence of the scorning of a servant maid: who had denied his Lord with oaths and curses — that He should appear to Simon filled them with wonder.

So the two marvels are linked together by them, and in the Holy Spirit's record for us.

His Mighty Power HAD BROUGHT HIM FROM THE GRAVE.

His Tender Gracious Love HAD CARRIED HIM EVEN TO SIMON.

It was this Lord who stood in the midst of them: the powers of darkness had been smitten before Him, and the failure of His followers had not changed Him. He was all-sufficient for every foe without, and for every failure within. No wonder then that it is recorded that the joy of seeing Him was so overwhelming, that they could scarcely believe. But their doubts were speedily removed; they saw the Lord, and it is also our privilege to see Him — their Lord and ours — who had risen indeed, and appeared unto Simon.

We need Him as much as they did, for the malignity of the devil is not one whit less now than then, and we have to mourn failure and sin as terrible as Simon's, for the Church has not kept His Word, and has often denied His Name. But Christ remains unchanged, and every purpose of God, with every hope of His people, hangs alone upon Him.

How blessed then to know that this same Lord is in the midst of His saints to-day!

Days of stress and trial they are, in which the devil is seeking to stamp out all testimony for God, both as to the true word of the Gospel, and in the lives and unity of His own.

But He abides. If His pilgrim people are treading a wilderness journey in the which they are conscious of fierce opposition, of their individual needs, and much failure, He says to them, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee," so that they may boldly say, "The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man shall do unto me" (Heb. 13: 5, 6).

Jesus showing Himself to His Disciples

"On this wise showed He Himself" (John 21: 1).

Simon Peter was a man of action: his was that nature that cannot bear to be still and wait: if his Master gave him no command he would act upon his own initiative, and being such a man he exercised an influence upon others. So that when he proposed to go a-fishing his companions fell in with his plans: "and that night they caught nothing."

As the red dawn chased the night-mists across the sea their Lord stood on the shore. Who shall tell with what tenderness He looked upon them, hungry, weary, and dispirited as they were! He had looked upon them all through that night of toil, had watched over them with an unspeakable love, for they were "His own," and the love He bore them could not change, and now had come the moment when He would show Himself to them.

Not at first did they recognize Him, not until He proved who He was by commanding the fish of the sea to come to their net. Then spake out that disciple whom Jesus loved, saying, "IT IS THE LORD."

And so they came to land and found "a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread." What a showing of Himself to them was this! How it revealed His care for them! THEY WERE COLD, and He knew it, and His own hand had provided the fire to warm them: THEY WERE HUNGRY, and He thought of it, and provided fish and bread to satisfy them: THEY WERE TIRED with their toil, and He sympathized with them in their weariness. Their faithlessness had made them FEARFUL AND ASHAMED; He knew it, and so invited them to sit down before Him, and made them quite at home by His grace, while He gave to them the food that those precious pierced hands had prepared for them. Matchless revelation of Himself! He, their Lord and Master, rejoiced to minister unto them: He, death's conqueror, and creation's Lord as He had proved Himself to be, was not indifferent to their bodily necessities, He cared for their smallest need.

Time spent in meditation upon the wonderful manner in which He showed Himself to them will not be wasted, for here is a revelation of His tender interest in His own, and He is just the same to-day as then, the same to us as He was to those Galilean fishermen.

Entering His Glory

(Luke 24).

"HE IS RISEN."

The fact of the actual bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is of the greatest possible importance. The salvation of the souls of men, the vindication of His own glorious person, and the supremacy of the everlasting God are all involved in it. If Christ be not raised, actually and bodily raised, your faith is vain: ye are yet in your sins. If Christ be not raised, actually and bodily raised, He is not what He said He was, and His life and words on earth are a cruel deception. If Christ be not raised, actually and bodily raised, God has met with defeat, His throne has been sapped at the very base of it, the devil has triumphed, and evil is almighty in the universe.

If Christ be not raised, God's gracious intentions with regard to the blessing of men have been frustrated: heaven shall never celebrate the greatness of God's salvation: no song shall ever roll over the fields of glory: the Father's house shall be sad and silent for ever; the earth shall remain a desert where no fragrant rose can blossom, and a deluge of darkness, more direful and disastrous than that flood which smote the world in Noah's day, shall roll over the whole race of men in an everlasting mastery.

If, then, everything depends upon the resurrection of our Lord — and it does, for so we are taught in the Scriptures of Truth — it is good for us to be able to travel in thought and faith with those who, on the first day of the week, sought the sepulchre where they had laid Him: it is good for us to look into that empty rock-hewn tomb and to hear angelic voices exclaim, "Why seek ye the living amongst the dead? He is not here, HE IS RISEN." Thank God! And the fact is placed outside the region of question: the Scriptures: the more than five hundred brethren: and Saul of Tarsus who saw Him alive after He was risen: and the happy millions of ransomed men and women who have staked their all for time and eternity upon Christ, and who have sung their song of triumph in the very presence of death, all unite to bear witness to His victory over death: and His own words are to us the crowning of the testimony, "Fear not: I am the First and the Last; I am He that liveth, and was dead: and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen: and have the keys of hell and of death" (Rev. 1: 18).

Let those who deny the fact produce their witnesses, and bring their proofs to the test.

HE MUST BE SUPREME.

The Lord appears in Luke's Gospel on a great mission. He called it in His first recorded words "My Father's business" (Luke 2: 49). It was "to give knowledge of salvation unto His people by the remission of their sins . . . to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace" (Luke 1: 77-79). So His first utterance in public service was: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor" (Luke 4: 18). And throughout the Gospel the opposition to Him was always because He would unswervingly pursue His Father's business. So they murmured because He did eat and drink with publicans and sinners (Luke 5: 30): they said with scorn that He was "a friend of publicans and sinners" (Luke 7: 34): they murmured again, saying, "This Man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them" (Luke 15: 2). And yet again, "That He was gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner" (Luke 19: 7). But the Son of Man had come to seek and to save that which was lost, and their murmurings did not hinder Him in this, though death and resurrection lay in the path of its accomplishment.

It was necessary, according to the divine plan of campaign, that others, not only those eleven disciples whom He met on this resurrection day, but all His disciples throughout the succeeding centuries down even to this day, should bear a part in this wonderful mission of making known this grace to the ends of the earth: and in this resurrection chapter the Lord is seen instructing His disciples as to this, and adjusting their thoughts to the new conditions.

These disciples, however, were faithless, dispirited, and sad. Strange that it should have been so, for that first Lord's day was the most glorious of all the days that God had made. But the Lord drew near and went with them, and the more we scrutinize His ways with them as He quietly and irresistibly takes the place of supremacy in their lives, the more glorious does He appear to us.

Their confidence in Him had received a rude shock, and yet they loved Him, and were sadly reciting the doings of the past week when "He drew near and went with them." He drew near in more senses than one; there was no sudden display of power and splendour to fill them with awe, but the exercise of that compassion that fills His heart for the ignorant. He came close to them in their sorrow and woe in all that gentleness that had always marked His dealings with them. They were the bruised reed and the smoking flax, which He would not break nor quench. They were broken of heart and sore of spirit, and needed the balm of the great Physician, and He was there to tenderly point out the sickness and to apply the remedy. Such is He who is the Master of all His servants, and thus does He prepare them to take up His service with boldness and joy.

Their fundamental mistake had been, that, in their innermost thought, they had made Him secondary to Israel. This is disclosed in their woeful complaint, "We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed ISRAEL." They had hoped that He would have broken the foreign yoke and made their nation free and glorious in the earth, and if He had done this how great He would have been in their eyes: but, instead, they had seen Him nailed to a malefactor's gibbet. "He was led as a lamb to the slaughter: and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth."

He had died, and His death was the grave of all their hopes. They reasoned as men, that since He had died all must be lost, for death is the end of all the glory of man: his thoughts and purposes lie shattered and broken beside his mortal clay. But Jesus was risen again, and resurrection is the power of God; it is God's new beginning and His glory; His thoughts and purposes are all established by it, established in Christ, where disaster can never overtake them, for "He dieth no more."

Happy are they who, by the grace of God, can transfer their hopes from that race of man which lies under the dread sentence of death, and centre them in Christ, the Second Man, the last Adam, who has risen above the power of death, the life-giving Head of a new race.

These disciples had not believed all that the prophets had spoken. They had had their favourite texts, and those texts spoke of the great power of the Messiah — power that would crush their foes and make them the head of the nations: these they read and cherished and loved, and as surely as God spoke them He will fulfil them: but those Scriptures that spoke of His sorrows, His acquaintance with grief, humiliation, rejection, and death they had neither understood nor believed. With great patience He expounded these to them, showing them these things written therein concerning HIMSELF, and how that He ought to suffer and enter into His glory. He showed them these things until their eyes began to perceive hitherto unthought-of glories in Him, and their hearts glowed within them at the sight of them.

In the council chamber of eternity it was planned that He should have His glory as the Head and Centre of a universe of blessing founded upon redemption, a universe to which men from all nations were necessary, and by the path of suffering He was tested, and in it His fitness for that place was proved. Every test brought out this fitness in clearer light until the final test — THE CROSS.

Every human perfection disclosed its fragrance in His suffering; His absolute and unquestioning obedience to the will of God throughout all the way that that will led Him, His meekness, dependence, self-abnegation — everything, in fact, that man ought to be according to the thought of God, He was, and that right onward and into death.

In Him also, the lonely and forsaken Man upon the cross, there appeared in full revelation every attribute of God. No ray of light from without pierced the awful gloom that enshrouded Him as the sin-bearer, but from out of that darkness there shone a glory that shall fill eternity. "All divine attributes were harmonized there — wisdom, holiness, mercy, justice, power, and truth" — and above all and through all the very nature of God, which is love, was declared triumphantly in the very place and hour where His justice demanded that sin should be judged to the uttermost.

Wonderful Saviour! It is along that path of unspeakable suffering that He has entered His glory. But the glory He has entered has added no glory to Him, for He was all glorious as He trod that downward pathway of sorrow and shame; He is not, nor can He be, more glorious than He was when He bowed His thorn-crowned head in death.

If He is now exalted to the Father's right hand it is because that place alone in the wide universe is worthy to receive Him. The diamond has been put in the golden setting, He has gone to His own place. Crowns of immortal lustre shall shine resplendent upon His sacred brow, but that brow is worthy of them, nor would they fit another.

As He expounded these things to them, thoughts of Israel must have faded from their minds, and He must have arisen to the supreme place in their thoughts, so that when at last their eyes are opened to know Him they no longer do their own will, nor think of their own interests or comfort, but that same hour of the night they arise and return to Jerusalem. They did His will, though no command had been expressed: instinctively they knew what He would have them do. HIS LORDSHIP WAS COMPLETE. But His lordship was exercised in perfect grace, and they did His will under the compulsion of love: no other service is acceptable to Him.

HE IS THE LEADER OF HIS SERVANTS.

The disciples were gathered together in Jerusalem on that day talking of His resurrection. He greeted them with that blessed salutation, PEACE! for theirs was to be a mission of peace, and if they were to prosecute it aright they must be filled with and kept in peace.

With a quiet and matchless dignity He convinces them as to the reality of His resurrection, assures them that it is Himself and none other who stands before them, and opens their understanding as to the teaching of all Scripture concerning Himself. It was this teaching as to Himself that was to prepare them for the mission and to maintain them in peace in it. Out of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms He showed them God's plan and His glory. He showed them that He was the fulfilment of every word that God had uttered whether in promise or prophecy. Their fears, then, that all they had hoped for was lost, were altogether groundless, for in Him, their risen Lord, everything that God had purposed was secured.

And further, though it was not then declared to them, they afterwards learnt that in Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and that they were complete in Him, who is the Head of all principality and power. All the resources of God were in Him for them, and there was not a power in the universe that could intercept those resources.

Brethren in Christ, are we conscious that our Lord is such a glorious Lord, Centre, Leader, and Head for His servants? Those who are in the knowledge of this will fear no foe, for all the foes are defeated, as His resurrection is witness; they will dread no lack, for all the mighty fulness of God is at their disposal in Him.

His presence in the midst of those disciples made them one, one in heart, object, and purpose: for what place could divergent views and selfish aspirations find in the presence of their glorious risen Lord? As they looked upon Him, bearing in His body the wounds of the cross, wounds received in His devotion to them, a tide of love to Him must have surged through every heart, and each would instinctively drop into his divinely appointed place with regard to Himself and each other.

IN THE GREAT OUTER CIRCLE. Having assumed His rightful place amongst them, and opened their understanding that they might have a right knowledge as to Himself and the new circumstances in which they saw Him, He turned their eyes to the great outer circle of "all nations" and said unto them, "Thus it is written." Let that sentence impress us as it must have impressed them, and mark the place that THE SCRIPTURES hold in this chapter; first as to His own personal glory, it was "All that the prophets had spoken": then in the sacred circle of His beloved servants it was, "All things must be fulfilled, which were spoken in Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms concerning Me." And now in connection with the whole world it is "Thus it is written." There can be no right understanding of any relationship which we may have with the Lord apart from the Scriptures, nor can we rightly act in any sphere with Him apart from the guidance of the Scriptures.

And further, mark the place that THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST occupy in this chapter. First, as to His own personal glory, "Ought not Christ to have suffered?" Then, in the sacred circle of His servants, "He showed them His hands and His feet." Lastly, in this wide circle of all the world, "Thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise again the third day."

There is no sphere in which we may move with Him on this side of the glory in which we may forget His sufferings and death; and on the other side, when at home in the glory of God, He will still be the Lamb that was slain. The value of the Scriptures is that they keep Him constantly before us, for they unfold to us "the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow."

How wonderfully interwoven are these great things; the inspiration and infallibility of the Scriptures, the sufferings of Christ, His resurrection and glory, and the grace of God to all nations. Let no rude hand attempt to tear them asunder, or destroy any one of these divine verities, for if one could be spoiled the whole fabric would be marred.

But what place have the Scriptures and the sufferings of Christ with those who profess to be carrying out this blessed mission in these days? The question needs to be asked, for neither can be popular in the world that knows not God, and the popular taste, alas! is often consulted rather than the will of God.

The preaching of Christ crucified strikes at the root of all the pride of man: it means that he, in spite of all his boasted progress, must abase himself at the feet of the One who hung upon a gibbet, that only by this means can he be in right relations with God.

It means that in spite of all his culture, religion, learning, and power, he is a sinner under the power of death, the judgment of God, for "death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Rom. 5: 12). It means that Christ, the holy and the true, upon whom alone death had no claim, went down into it as the judgment of God, and that only thus could it be removed.

This preaching is to the Jew (the religionist) a stumbling-block, and to the Greek (the philosopher) foolishness: nevertheless it is the power of God and the wisdom of God. And how wonderful it is to us who believe, and how great our joy when we see Him, who went into death for us, raised again from the dead. He has sustained the judgment, has passed through the deep waters, "He divided the sea whose waves roared" and has made the depths a way for His ransomed to pass over — the Lord of Hosts is His name. How great indeed is His glory in God's salvation.

"Christ died for our sins . . . was buried and rose again from the dead." These are the great facts that have to be heralded in every habitation of man, and these facts are according to the Scriptures. And these facts are to be heralded, that men may know that in consequence of them a way has been opened by which they may return to God, and returning have all their sins remitted. And these priceless blessings have to be offered in His name: that is, His servants are to do it on His behalf, as His representatives, His ambassadors, backed by His authority, and, as He told them, endued with the power which He would send them from above. Then "He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and CARRIED UP INTO HEAVEN."

His work was finished, and the glory of God claimed Him, and their raptured eyes followed Him into that shekinah cloud. He is in that glory still: Stephen saw Him, Saul of Tarsus saw Him, and we by faith may also see Him "JESUS, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, CROWNED WITH GLORY AND HONOUR" (Heb. 2: 9).

The Great High Priest

Here is a theme that might well occupy volumes printed in gold, but how little it is understood. Victory in the homeward way depends entirely upon the grace and mercy ministered from the throne on which He sits.

The great High Priest is Jesus, the Son of God. Does not the heart swell with holy exultation at the thought of His greatness? The service to which He devotes Himself in this character is that of bearing up His pilgrim saints in intercession before God, and He does this with truest compassion and deepest sympathy. He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities — marvellous thought! It means that every pang in every heart that loves Him is felt by Him. We may not be able to understand it: we are not asked to do so — it is too great for our small minds, but He asks us to believe it, and if we don't we grieve that heart that loves above all things to be trusted. He would have us to believe that He is serving us every hour because He loves us: yes, loves us with the same love that led Him to Calvary for us. The birth pangs do not exhaust the mother's love for her babe: she would be willing to lay down her life for it at any time.

"Yet she may forgetful prove,

He will never cease to love."

How could He cease to love? He is JESUS. And what does that name mean to us? It tells us of the love that brought Him from the eternal throne to Bethlehem's manger: it tells us of a life of suffering-service that led through sorrow and shame and loss to the cross of Calvary: it tells us how His love declared itself there. The waves of death uplifted their awful crests and rolled upon Him to engulf Him: the billows of Satan's power roared about Him to destroy Him, and He went down beneath the deep waters of God's judgment against sin on our behalf. But though He stood for us where all the seas met upon Him, yet was His love not quenched. It burned with a fervent flame amidst the fierce waters, and shed its wondrous light in the darkness of that awful hour, and there it triumphed — and now the Lord is risen: He lives upon the throne of God for us; and

"We stand beyond the doom

Of all our sins through Jesu's empty tomb."

His love has not changed one whit: it is as deeply interested in our welfare to-day as it was when it bore our sins on the tree. Were it otherwise, Jesus would no longer bear that precious name for us, and we should have neither Saviour, Priest, nor home.

But Jesus is the Son of God, for so our text presents Him, and while "Jesus" carries us in thought down to the very depths of the humiliation into which His love carried Him, "THE SON OF GOD" presents His glory, His magnificent greatness, the unmeasured splendour of His Person and inheritance. But there are other thoughts than these in the bringing together of these names and titles that should talk eloquently to our hearts. "Jesus" tells us of His preciousness to us. "The Son of God" tells us of His preciousness to God. "JESUS" TELLS US THAT, SINCE HE LOVES US SO WELL, THERE IS NOTHING THAT WOULD BE GOOD FOR US THAT HE WILL NOT ASK FOR US WHEN HE INTERCEDES BEFORE GOD FOR US: AND "SON OF GOD" TELLS US THAT GOD WILL NOT DENY HIM ANY REQUEST THAT HE MAKES. So that the fact of Jesus the Son of God being our great High Priest means that we are put into contact with the eternal and infinite resources of God, and that eternal and infinite love sets these resources in motion for us, for God loves His Son and Jesus loves us, and Jesus is the Son of God.

He has passed through the heavens from the very lowest point of suffering and shame: He has gone to the highest point in glory, and no watchful sentry rang out the challenge, "Halt!" for every gate was thrown open wide for Him to pass triumphantly through, and He is our Forerunner as well as our Priest. He has passed into the glory which is our HOME before us, and for us, and the welcome that He received is the welcome that awaits us. There is not a difficulty or hostile power that He has not met in the way that we travel as we follow Him. He was tempted in all points as we are, apart from sin. And now He lives in the glory to succour us with gracious help from thence.

THE THRONE OF GRACE is available for us. We may come boldly to it, and when we do we shall discover that our best Friend sits upon it, and there we shall obtain mercy and find grace for seasonable help.

Here are some of our resources, and as we draw upon them we shall hold the full assurance of hope unto the end, and THE END IS HOME.

Hallelujah!

"Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord." (Ps. 150.)

So ends the last psalm, and therein is presented to us the result, as far as the earth is concerned, of the coming of the Lord into it. He is the blessed Man of the first psalm who walked not in the counsel of the ungodly, but delighted in the law of the Lord, and meditated in it both day and night. Every breath that He drew was a "hallelujah!" — a "Praise ye the Lord:" every pulse of His devoted heart was for God: in His every word and act the Father was glorified. Every moral excellence shone in unmeasured perfection in Him. Men said, "When shall He die and His name perish?" (Ps. 41: 5): but His fruit shall appear in its season, His leaf shall never wither, and whatsoever He doeth shall prosper. Men thought that His light was quenched for ever when unresistingly He was led to the Cross, but He is coming again, He shall arise — the Sun of Righteousness: and then shall break that morning for which the saints of God have ever sighed, even a morning without clouds: as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain (2 Sam. 23: 4).

He will stamp His blessed character upon His kingdom: it will reflect the glory which is effulgent in Him: every groan, and murmur, and cry of anguish will be hushed, the darkness will fly before the shining of His presence, and the whole earth shall be full of the glory of the Lord: and as His every breath was a hallelujah when He was here, so everything that hath breath will say "Hallelujah!" then.

The rise and fall of kingdoms: the accumulation of grave questions: the clashing of conflicting interests, which is growing fiercer as the years roll on, and which prove the instability of things in this world, and fill the hearts of men with misgiving, do not disturb the one who with the eye of faith sees "Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour: that He by the grace of God should taste death for everything" (Heb. 2: 9, N.T.).

The Morning Star, bright harbinger of day, shines in the heavens and fills his heart with hope, so that he can cry, Hallelujah! now. THE LORD IS COMING.

". . . . We lift the head

In joyful expectation,

For He will bring salvation."

—

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also" (John 14: 1, 2, 3).

—

"For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself" (Phil. 3: 20, 21).

—

"For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words" (1 Thess. 4: 16, 17, 18).

—

He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly; Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen" (Rev. 22: 20, 21).

Conclusion

"For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: And that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again" (2 Cor. 5: 14, 15).

—

"Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory" (1 Peter 1: 8).

—

"To Thee, Lord, my heart unfoldeth,

As the rose to the golden sun,

To Thee, Lord, mine arms are clinging,

The eternal joy begun.

For ever, through endless ages,

Thy cross and Thy sorrow shall be

The glory, the song, and the sweetness

That make heaven heaven to me." (H. Suso.)

—

"O keep my soul, Lord Jesus,

Abiding still with Thee,

And if I wander, teach me

Soon back to Thee to flee.

"That all Thy gracious favour

May to my soul be known;

And, versed in this Thy goodness,

My hopes Thyself shall crown." (J. N. Darby.)

In going over these papers, which have as their theme the Person of Christ, we feel that it is surely one most sorrowful indication of the low and backslidden condition of the majority of the children of God that devotion to Christ should be spoken of as something to marvel at and to praise. It is undoubtedly beautiful, and must yield sweet fragrance to the Father whose beloved Son Christ is, but that it should call for special comment on our part when it shows itself only proves that it is sadly exceptional, and clearly demonstrates the need of recovery.

We speak of the wonderful character of the devotion of Paul the Apostle when he laid all his glory in the dust as dross, and counted all that in which he might have boasted as a burden of which he was well rid, that he might have Christ for his gain, but was it really wonderful when in the same breath with which he tells of his own renunciation he also tells of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord? Notice how he speaks of Him, not as "the" Lord, nor "our" Lord, but as "MY LORD." Let the heart who knows the Saviour linger there for a while, and then answer, "Would it not have been wonderful if he had acted otherwise? Would it be wonderful if a woman abandoned a torn and filthy garment for a costly robe adorned with gold and gems? Then how can it have been wonderful on the Apostle's part to discard his own righteousness and be found IN HIM, having that righteousness which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith?"

We marvel at Paul rejoicing that Paul had gone from his thoughts, crucified with Christ, so that he no longer lived for Paul, for Christ had displaced him, in every sphere of life in which he moved, but why should we marvel when he tells us at once that the One who now enthralled him and controlled him wholly was "THE SON OF GOD WHO LOVED ME AND GAVE HIMSELF FOR ME"? (Gal. 2: 20). Let us draw near and stand by this servant of Christ and put ourselves into his words, each for himself, and we marvel no more at his selfless life.

Why should we wonder that Paul laboured that whether living or dead he might be agreeable to his Lord (2 Cor. 5: 9, N.T.). He would not have us to wonder at it at all, and hastens to tell us that "THE LOVE OF CHRIST CONSTRAINETH US." It would seem as though the marvel crept into his mind, that it could be a marvel to any that he should so labour when he adds, "We thus judge, that if One died for all then were all dead; and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but UNTO HIM WHO DIED FOR THEM, AND ROSE AGAIN."

In all these passages in which Paul speaks of his own devotion to Christ it is as though he stretched out his hands to the saints to whom he wrote, and to us also, and cried — Do not marvel that I wholly love my Lord: if you had seen Him as I have seen Him you would love Him wholly too! If He had come to you as He came to me, when I lay broken and dumb at His feet in my sinfulness, and folded me — worthless as I was, and chief of sinners in my hatred of Him — warmly to His heart, you could not forget Him. If you knew His mighty embrace as I do, and if your life bathed itself in that love that is "too vast to comprehend," you would cease to marvel at me: instead you would marvel that any heart on earth could hold back from Him, and any lip remain silent before Him. And you would weep in your astonishment, that any having tasted of His preciousness should have another thought of self or turn again from Him to the base and beggarly world!

Strange that we should think it a matter for praise that Mary sat at the feet of Jesus and heard His word! The wonder is that Martha could keep away from that sacred spot. We do not wonder that men delight to listen to exquisite music, or that the heart of the maiden thrills at the voice of her true lover, and that when he is near she has neither eyes nor ears for any but he. Then why should we wonder that the voice of Jesus was sweet to Mary? In His voice there is heaven's own music, and when He speaks it is from the heart of eternal love. If we look at Jesus as Mary saw Him, and know Him as she knew Him, we shall cease to wonder that she broke her alabaster box and poured its costly treasure on His feet. We shall take our place with her and do likewise, for He will fill our vision and possess our hearts. And the frowns of sisters and the condemnation of disciples who think themselves more practical and wiser than we, will not disturb us as we wonder and worship in the presence of unspeakable preciousness.

If the purpose of heart that made Paul what he was and the devotion of heart that made Mary so acceptable to the Lord are in any measure to mark us, we must transfer our thoughts from them to Him, and from self to Him. In this only is true recovery, and it is worth our while to do so.

—

"Lord Jesus, we remember the travail of Thy soul,

When through Thy love's deep pity the waves did o'er Thee roll.

Baptized in death's dark waters, for us Thy blood was shed,

For us, Thou, Lord of Glory, wast numbered with the dead."

As we remember this, O Lord, the lowest of low places is the one we take before Thee. Angels that have never sinned may stand in the presence of the great Jehovah, but we, whose sins brought Thee into death, can only lie prostrate with amazement at Thy feet. THY LOVE for us brought Thee into the place that OUR SINS had marked as ours, and there Thou didst drink the bitter cup of our judgment to its last drop. The darkness which should have been our lot for ever, enshrouded Thee, when Thou, who knewest no sin, wast made sin for us. Thou wert wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Thee and with Thy stripes we are healed.

Saviour, we bow at Thy sacred feet and break our alabaster boxes there and pour out our adoration before Thee. And it is here that our souls are recovered from their wanderings. Here we learn our nothingness and Thine exceeding worth. Here in Thy presence we grieve that our hearts should ever have a selfish thought; that any rival could dispute Thy right to fill our lives. Here we cast ourselves upon Thy pardoning mercy, and here would yield ourselves afresh to Thee.

"Let Thy love, Lord, like a fetter

Bind our wandering hearts to Thee."

And Thou art risen from the dead. The grave could not hold Thee. The glory of the Father raised Thee, and Thou hast lifted us from our degradation and sin, and hast joined us to Thyself in all Thine own acceptance before Thy Father and God. We no longer cower in terror in the presence of death, but we triumph in Thy triumphs, Thou Victor o'er the grave! Thou hast breathed into us a new life, the first and mightiest impulse of which is LOVE TO THEE.

Feast, Famine and Flame

The Feast, the Famine and the Flame.

J. T. Mawson.

Explanation

A popular writer has said that "God" is the vaguest word in the English language. The statement offended me when I read it at first, but on considering it I have come to the conclusion that it is true as far as multitudes of men are concerned, and that God is as surely "the unknown God" to them as He was to the Athenian philosophers when Paul preached on Mars Hill nineteen centuries ago.

What is God like? "No man hath seen God at any time." Then who can describe Him for us and introduce us to Him? "The only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." Then if that is so, if we would know God, we must listen to the Lord Jesus, for He is the only-begotten Son. No man can be excused if he does not know God now, for the truth as to Him is fully revealed, and the truth is not vague; but not to nature, not to science, not to philosophy must we go for the truth, but to JESUS. He said, when arraigned before Pilate, "Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice."

Now in the central parables of Luke's Gospel, we hear the voice of Jesus telling us what God is: His care for the needs of men, and His compassionate provision for those needs, His love for men, His desire for their company, and His just judgment on the despisers and impenitent are set before us in vivid pictures. And, said the Lord, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." It is of these parables that I write in this book which I have called, The Feast, the Famine and the Flame. May the blessing of God rest upon the readers.

J. T. Mawson.

Contents

The Feast

Chapter 1 "ALL THINGS ARE NOW READY."

Blessing "ayont the grave"; John Fletcher; NOW; The little servant maid; A disappointing sermon; The negro boy.

Chapter 2 "COME."

The meaning of the word; The salvation of George Irons; The death of the Duke of Clarence; The invitation rejected; The excuses; There is no "larger hope."

Chapter 3 THE FUTURE.

The Irish Village; God, the landlord; Notice to quit; Death to the agnostic, "We cannot tell"; Death to the Christian, "We know." Testimonies; D. L. Moody.

Chapter 4 THE GREAT SUPPER.

Why it is great; The Coronation; It is God's Supper; The multitude that will enjoy it; The cost of it; The Yorkshire women and the old text.

Chapter 5 THE SUPPER SPREAD.

God's provision for men's need; The forgiveness of sins; The young soldier; Peace; "Preach us a sermon." The children's place.

Chapter 6 THE POOR, THE MAIMED, THE HALT, THE BLIND.

All are poor; The millionaire's charity; God's perfect answer; The conflict for souls; The Sydney business man.

Chapter 7 THE DOOR TO THE SUPPER.

Christ the only way; His suitability; What John saw; Christian at the Cross; John Newton; JESUS.

Chapter 8 HOW THE GUESTS ARE FITTED FOR THE FEAST.

A shroud blest by the Pope; Twenty-seven years ago in St. Helen's; Toplady's hymn; The old French missionary's invisible dress; Without the wedding garment.

Chapter 9 UNTIL HE FIND IT.

Publicans and sinners; The Pharisee's scorn; The answer of the Lord; His search for the sheep; What it cost Him; Joy in Heaven; The lost sheep in the Highlands.

Chapter 10 THAT WHICH IS LOST.

The work of the Holy Ghost; The lighted candle; "Ye must be born again." The Open-Air meeting; A young city man and the missed train.

The Famine

Chapter 11 THE PRODIGAL.

Who is the prodigal? Man's desire for independence; The Open-air preacher and the young lady; A young Norwegian and his end.

Chapter 12 THE FAR COUNTRY.

What is the world like? Confessions of men of the world; The corks; The citizen — the devil; Thompson's confession; The truth at last; God the sinner's only hope; The great King.

Chapter 13 "I WILL ARISE AND GO."

The homeward journey; The father's eagerness; The reception; All forgiven; The robe and ring and shoes; God's answer to the devil's lie.

Chapter 14 JOY IN HEAVEN.

It is the joy of God; Is there ever sadness in heaven? God looks down from heaven; The coming of the Son of God; The call to repentance; A wayward son; A son's telegram to his mother; What is repentance? Eternal joy.

Chapter 15 THE ELDER SON.

He blows his own trumpet; He charges his father with unfairness; He will not go in; The father's entreaty; The door shut at last.

The Flame

Chapter 16 THE RICH MAN'S DOOM.

A warning to the Pharisees; The Sadducees; The curtain drawn aside; The rich man's selfish life; His death and doom.

Chapter 17. ETERNAL PUNISHMENT.

Chapter 1

All things are NOW ready."

"And when one of them that sat at meat with Him heard these things, he said unto Him, Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the Kingdom of God. Then said He unto him, a certain man made a great supper and bade many: And he sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come: for all things are NOW ready." Luke 14.

"Come and hear the grand old story,

Story told in ages past,

All earth's annals far surpassing,

Story that shall ever last.

Noblest, truest,

Oldest, newest,

Fairest, rarest,

Saddest, gladdest,

That this earth has ever known."

The man who sat at meat with the Lord Jesus and said, "Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the Kingdom of God," was putting into the language of that day the feeling that it must be a good thing for a man to go to heaven when he dies. We do not hear the feeling expressed so often now as we used to when

"There is a happy land

Far, far away,"

was one of the most often sung hymns at revival meetings. Indeed, whatever may be the inner, unspoken feeling, it has become the popular thing to jeer at the idea, and those who are so far behind the times as to preach a heaven in the future for those who believe the gospel now, are looked upon by many as allies of the Capitalists offering heaven as a bribe to men if only they will be contented with such things as they have and work hard that their "masters" may continue to enjoy the wealth that their labour produces. I do not know when and where the notion started, but Robert Burns worked it into one of his poems one hundred and fifty years ago when he wrote,

"We labour soon, we labour late,

To feed the titled knave, man,

And all the comfort we shall get

Is that ayont the grave, man."

See how the Lord answered the man who could only imagine blessing from God "ayont the grave." He propounded to him the parable of the great Supper, and announced the invitation to it, "Come, for all things are NOW ready." I must lay stress upon the word "now," for I am sure the Lord did, and what a word it is! It surely means that God will not keep men waiting for happiness until they are dead; He offers to make them happy now, for the parable of the great Supper tells of His provision for the happiness of men. He has prepared joys for them in this life, exceeding their highest expectations, and He invites them to come for them now. It means that in turning to God men do not turn their backs on true satisfaction, for it is a feast to which He invites them and not a fast; He wants them to come to it now, in this life, for all things are now ready.

The Lord Jesus was always divinely quiet when men opposed and blasphemed Him; "when He was reviled, He reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not," yet He must have been profoundly moved and grieved when men misunderstood and distrusted God. Why, I have read of one of His servants, by name John Fletcher, a great preacher, who called his wife and maid to his bedside when he lay dying, and said to them, "Sing, shout, God is love," so mightily was his soul stirred by the thought of God's love to men; and I saw a little servant lassie of fourteen, distressed and weeping after a gospel service, who in answer to my question as to what the trouble was, told me that she had persuaded some friends of hers to come and hear about the Saviour and they had gone away unaffected. That was the cause of her grief. Must not the heart of Jesus who knew God's love in its full tenderness and strength have been stirred by it, and grieved — profoundly grieved, when He saw that men kept God at a distance and lived their lives without Him because they believed the devil's lie that if He had anything at all for them it was in the future and not in the present? I feel that when the Lord announced this great Supper and gave out the words of the invitation He did so with a spirit and a fervour that must have arrested and impressed those that heard them, and yet with grief of heart, for He knew that many would despise and reject it, but I do not think they would ever forget the way He said, "Come, for all things are now ready."

We cannot hear His actual voice speaking to us as they did, but the words are there, and they tell us that God has considered and anticipated the deepest needs of our lives, and that He had catered for our happiness, when we had neither the sense nor the power to do it ourselves. Dismiss your distrust of God, cast out of your heart the lie that He is indifferent to the way you live your life. He is not the author of men's miseries, as some suppose.

It is

"Man's inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn."

God has prepared the great Supper; neither angels nor men assisted Him. Father, Son and Holy Spirit have done it. None are asked to contribute to it, but all are invited to appropriate it, and to do so now — God wants men to enjoy His Supper now. The heavenly bell is ringing, calling men to the feast now. That "now" in the invitation is a great word. It is the Lord's own word N.O.W. now. It is an imperative word, it has no future tense, and its antithesis is Never.

I had a relative whom I had not met. He heard that I was to preach in the city in which he lived, and he decided to come and hear me and make my acquaintance. I do not know what he expected, but he was disappointed in what he heard. This very parable was my subject and I pressed upon the people what I am now pressing, that God's word is now. Now, not to-morrow. Behold, now is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation," and, "To-day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts." I spelt the word many times, for I felt sure that it was my message then as I am sure it is now. My relative listened. What did I mean? This was surely the strangest preaching he had ever heard! Did I think they were a lot of children that needed to have a word of three letters spelt over to them? He had expected something different, an intellectual sermon, perhaps, for intelligent men, or a forceful urge to a better and more useful life; and he went away as I have said, disappointed. But he confessed in a letter afterwards that he could not shake off that word NOW. It followed him, and kept him waking at night; it hammered at the very door of his soul; it was not an invitation only, it was a challenge, and I believe through the infinite mercy of God it did its intended work.

"Come, for all things are now ready." What does it mean? It means that God is not waiting until you die to receive you but He comes to you now and here, bringing heaven's blessing to you where you are. God loves you, and, if you will, He will welcome you at last to His home beyond the grave, but He loves you so well that He does not propose to keep you waiting until then to be happy, He sends His message to you now — a message of love and joy, an invitation to a great Supper, made ready for you by an infinite love, "Come, for all things are now ready."

* * * *

Yes, "All things are now ready," but not a man will come and enter that feast unless he is converted and becomes as a little child. The little child of the Lord's parable hears and believes, there is no pretence about him, he confesses his need when he feels it, and simply and thankfully receives what is offered him and talks about what he has received. After a protracted gospel service in Kingston, Jamaica, at which many anxious souls had pressed into the feast, a little negro lad, ten years old perhaps, touched me on the elbow and said, "Do speak to me, sir, my soul does feel so unsaved." We found a quiet spot where he could listen to the word, and then we knelt in prayer. When I had prayed for him, he prayed for himself, "Lord Jesus," he said, "save my soul." And he jumped to his feet, having no doubt that his prayer was answered, for as he said, I had told him that the Lord had said, "Him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out." He had come and proved that the Lord's words were true.

The next afternoon we held a meeting for boys and girls like himself, and he asked that he might tell them what had happened to him, and this is what he said. "Dear friends, last night I came to Jesus, and He has saved me and made me happy, and I want you all to follow my good example, for Jesus Christ's sake, Amen."

Is it as simple as that? Yes, to the little child, but, "Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes."

Chapter 2

"Come!"

"Come; for all things are now ready."

"Yet there is room!" Love, love eternal waits,

The Saviour sits within the pearly gates.

Come home, oh come!

Come, e'er it be too late.

"Yet there is room!" Still open stands the gate,

The gate of love — it is not yet too late,

Come home, oh come!

The grace of God receive.

Louder and sweeter sounds the loving call,

Come, lingerer, come — enter the festal hall.

Come home, oh come!

The love of God believe.

The Servant sent forth by the Master of the house with the invitations to the Supper is none other than the Holy Spirit of God. The Apostles of the Lord who were the first preachers of this gospel were told by their Master to tarry in Jerusalem until He came, and when He did come, they "preached the gospel by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." The messsage is so wonderful and the work of filling God's house so great and urgent, that it could not be committed to a lesser person. It is the Holy Ghost who has come into the world with an invitation to men from the Father and the Son. The first word of the invitation is COME. Consider the significance of that. It is not "Go work in My vineyard" but "COME to My Supper." It is a wonderful word, an evangelical word. It is a word that suits well the lips of the Father, who sent His Son to be the Saviour of the world; it suits well the lips of the Son who died that sinners might live; it suits well the lips of the Holy Ghost who has come into the world to compel hungry and sinful men to come to God's Supper. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are saying, Come, The Triune God desire your company in their home for ever; They are saying Come to you.

Do you understand the meaning of the word? That babe of six months understands it. If I can only put the right tone into my voice and the proper smile on my face, and hold out my hands to the little mite and say, "Come," it answers at once. It cannot run to me, it cannot even say, "I will;" but it stretches out its arms and struggles to reach me. It knows what I mean. God is saying, "Come" to men, and behind the invitation there is the yearning of His love for them. He wills the death of none of them; He will cast out none who come in answer to His call; He will welcome them to His feast and bless them for ever.

I was preaching the gospel in Leamington Spa. To the meetings came a man named Irons, and those who knew him were surprised to see him there. He was well-known, a hardened sinner. Yes, with a heart as hard as his name. He had been a man of means and had married a lady who was well-to-do, but he had drunk and gambled both fortunes, and for some years his only homes had been prison and the common lodging-house. But he came to the meetings, and one night he told me that he was saved. Saved! George Irons saved! I had my doubts, so unbelieving was I. However he came to see me, and what a time we had together! "Tell me" I said, "how this came about; are you saved because you made up your mind to give up the drink and lead a decent life?" "No," he said, "it wasn't that. While you were preaching, it seemed as if God was stretching out His arms to me, and saying, 'Come, I'll receive you just as you are.'" That is it. That is what "Come" means. I could doubt the man no more; he had heard the voice of the Saviour God calling him from his misery and sin to home and feast and love, and to God Himself. And the same voice is calling you. Come, Come, COME.

The late Canon Fleming in his Autobiography has told an appealing story of the death of the Duke of Clarence, the elder son of the late King Edward VII, who was then Prince of Wales. The young duke was lying at Sandringham. His mother, the Princess of Wales, was sitting at his side, when he suddenly opened his eyes and said, "Who is that calling for me?" She answered him, "It is Jesus calling you, dear." Those were the last words he uttered, and hers were the last words he heard, for in a few minutes his life quietly closed. She rose from his bedside and saw his diary lying on a table nearby; it was open to the date when first he took the communion, and there she read,

"Just as I am, without one plea,

But that Thy blood was shed for me;

And that Thou bidst me come to Thee;

O Lamb of God, I come."

"I could not doubt," said the future Queen of England "that dear Eddie had really come."

The invitation comes to everyone, to the highest and the least, prince and pauper, and all who come are welcomed alike, for in God's sight there is no difference between royal duke and homeless drunkard, no difference between George Irons, the Duke of Clarence, and you and me.

It is strange that such an invitation should have failed in its appeal to those favoured people to whom it was first sent; but so it was. They all with one consent began to make excuse. They were not rude about it; not one of them said, as I heard a man say to whom a gospel tract was offered in a Scottish express train, "I call that a bit of impertinence; why can't people keep their religion to themselves?" No, they were not like that, it was with the greatest possible politeness that they rejected the invitation, but they rejected it all the same, they deliberately and finally rejected it.

One had his land, another had his oxen, and a third had his wife; and there was nothing wrong in these; they were all legitimate possessions, and the men who had them were evidently shrewd, industrious and sociable men. What was wrong then? Their own interests were more important in their eyes than the great Supper; they were so completely engrossed with what they possessed that they could not even consider the grace of the invitation sent to them by the Master of the House. He had thought of them and provided His feast for them in vain, His kindness was slighted and His servant turned from their doors with a blank refusal; they could manage very well without the Supper, thank you!

Did the Lord err in drawing this picture? Most certainly not. He reads the hearts of all and knows their motives and ways, and He described in the parable the folly and sinful independence of God and His blessing of which thousands are guilty. It may have described the folly of the Jew to whom the gospel was first sent, but it also describes the attitude of thousands of easy-placed, well-to-do men and women of the world to-day. They would prefer to have nothing to do with God; they will take His benefits, but they do not desire His saving grace; the gospel Supper has no attraction for them; temporalities are more to them than eternal verities. They have no time for God. "I have bought," "I have bought," "I have married." Their own activities and achievements are everything to them, and not one of them says, "I have sinned" as did the prodigal son; and dares anyone to say that they will have another opportunity in another life? The Master of the house was angry and said, "None of those men that were bidden shall taste of My Supper." God's word to sinners is "Come"; if that word is rejected it changes to "Depart." The "larger hope" that some have preached is a delusion and a lie.

Let every man and woman of us hear this word of invitation, this great word, Come, and heed it, and respond to it without delay. It is God that is calling.

"Oh, be swift my soul, to answer Him; be jubilant, my feet."

It is God who calls; it is God who says Come.

Chapter 3

The Future

"Compel them to come in, that my house may be filled."

"The music of the ransomed,

I thought how sweet 'twould sound,

How all the halls of glory

With joy would echo round.

But ah! more sweet and charming

Than songs or music rare

Is this heart-thrilling sentence,

The one I love is there."

I don't want anybody to suppose from what I have said that the present is more important than the future — it is not. Time is short, it runs on swift feet. Forty, fifty, sixty, perhaps eighty years, and a man bids "good-bye" to this life and enters eternity, and eternity is long: it never ends; and no question can rival in importance that which we sometimes ask, Where will you spend eternity?

I remember years ago seeing a village in Ireland in ruins. All the cottages in it were roofless and uninhabited. It was a melancholy sight. I was told that the people who once lived in those cottages had refused to pay the rent and had been evicted. The village was a parable to me. We dwell in "this earthly house of our tabernacle" — you and I — and we have received "notice to quit." Why? Because we have not paid the rent. God is the landlord, He is the designer and builder of our bodies. It is He that "giveth to us life, breath and all things" as the Bible tells us; consequently He has claims upon us, and we have not met those claims, nor desired to. We were all alike in this respect, until some of us — but that is another matter that we shall come to soon — we did not pay the rent, we were determined not to; "we turned every one to his own way"; and that is why notice to quit has been served on us. We are awaiting eviction — some of us have "a better hope," but again that is another matter. The truth is, "It is appointed unto men once to die." The grim bailiff DEATH has his work to do, and when the time comes, he will do it effectually, regardless of our wishes or feelings. To some he comes suddenly, and without warning evicts them from this earthly dwelling; but however and whenever he comes, the long-cherished and tenderly-cared for tabernacle will fall into ruins; nothing can save it; and surely the greatest question to the man involved is, What of the one who dwelt in it?

Who can tell us? A well-known scientist has said that the soul of a man is like the flame of a candle; when it is snuffed out it is gone and done with for ever. I wonder if he really believes that. You do not, and neither do I. He would reduce us to the level of the beasts, from which he says we have sprung; but we know better than that. God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul; and he is greater than sun, moon and stars, for he will live for ever and be conscious of his existence when they have ceased to be. You and I will live forever. But who can tell us about that? The agnostic cannot — the man who parades his ignorance and boasts in it. Robert Ingersoll was a clever man; he laughed at the Bible and lectured in crowded halls on "The Mistakes of Moses"; had he any comfort or assurance to give us about eternity? Hear what he said about it:

"Is there beyond the silent night

An endless day?

Is death a door that leads to light?

We cannot say.

The tongueless secret locked in fate

We do not know. We hope and wait."

Suppose the landlord of those defaulting Irish folk had sent a message to them of this sort, "You have failed in your obligations, and in justice I must have you evicted from the cottages in which you have lived and disregarded my claims; but when the time comes for you to be turned out, I will open the doors of my mansion and welcome you to my home. It will be my pleasure to have your company." Suppose that! Never such a landlord existed among men; if there had been such an one, his fame would have spread to the ends of the earth, and his deed would have been the subject of many a story book. It is my business and joy to tell you that such a landlord God is. He has thrown open the doors of His home, and there are many mansions there — there is room for all. And in the gospel — in this very parable, God is telling men that though they have got notice to quit, for death has passed upon all men for that all have sinned, yet He will welcome to His home whosoever will accept His invitation when the time of their eviction comes. It is a surprising offer, and puts God in a different light to that in which men generally view Him, and it is the more surprising because it is made to those who are enemies and alienated from Him by wicked works.

Now in contrast to the hopeless wail of the agnostic the Christian speaks with confidence as he looks into the future. He can say, "We know that if this earthly house of our tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 2 Corinthians 5. And though with many, if not all, there is a natural shrinking from death, the Christian may face it without fear, for the death of Christ has taken the sting out of it, by dying He has robbed the devil of the power of it, to deliver those who through fear of it were all their lifetime subject to bondage. As we read the Scriptures we realise that the saved man or woman, those who rely wholly upon the Saviour, have no need to have a single tremor in the presence of death. We are very familiar with Paul's words, "To depart to be with Christ which is far better," and, "To die is gain." But others also have spoken when dying. John Fletcher said, "I'm like a bird escaping from its cage." Melanchthon said, "Nothing now but heaven." J. G. Bellett cried out with joy at the thought of being with the "Man of Sychar's well," and "the Man of Calvary." I heard of a young girl in her late teens, who when they thought she was gone and said so, whispered, "I'm just passing into glory," and I will give you in way of contrast to Ingersoll's gloomy outlook the words of a contemporary of his, D. L. Moody, who spoke to more people than any man of his day. It is said that he addressed audiences aggregating one hundred millions, and his subject was always Christ the Saviour. He was dying at 62, his strong physical frame worn out by excessive labours. Here in his son's own words is the account of his going. "Suddenly he was heard speaking in slow and measured words. He was saying, 'Earth recedes; heaven opens before me.' The first impulse was to try to arouse him from what appeared to be a dream. 'No, this is no dream, Will,' he replied, 'It is beautiful. It is like a trance. If this is death, it is sweet. There is no valley here. God is calling me, and I must go.'"

A gifted poet has sung a poor, sad dirge:

"Nothing begins and nothing ends

That is not paid with moan,

For we are born in others' pain

And perish in our own."

But we may thank God, that such a hopeless outlook has no place in Christian hymnary.

I am anxious that you should not be deceived by the lie that God has nothing for you now, that you must wait for His blessing "ayont the grave," but I am equally anxious that you should enquire as to the future.

The gospel that tells us of present joy and peace, of the feast that is now ready, tells us also of future glory and a home in heaven for ever. God has said, "My house shall be full," and His invitation to men covers the present and the future; there is a feast and a home for all who respond — a satisfying feast and an eternal home.

Chapter 4

The Great Supper

"A certain man made a great Supper."

"Great is the house and great the One that built it;

Great is the Supper He has spread therein;

Great was the price it cost Him to provide it,

And great the grace that forces us within.

Soon to that region He will safely bring us,

Once in that dwelling which is His and ours,

Sorrow and pain and death no more shall sting us;

There shall we worship with supernal powers."

Nobody who knows anything about it will challenge me when I say that the parable of the GREAT Supper was spoken by our Lord to illustrate God's way of blessing men. It tells how He proposes to meet the deepest needs of their souls and deliver them from their miseries; it also tells of His desire that they should be happy with Him at His own expense, as His guests; He desires the pleasure of their company. And, if I may add another thing, without clouding the issue, it shows the joyful way in which He is now celebrating the coronation of His Son in the glory. The day of the coronation of George VI and his Queen was a great day; from London to the farthest outposts of the Empire, in mansion, cottage and slum, there was feasting and rejoicing. God has raised up Jesus from the dead and crowned Him with glory and honour; He has enthroned Him to be a Prince and a Saviour for men, and He wants everyone to rejoice because of this. He invites us to share His joy and participate in the blessings that result from the triumph of His Son over sin and death and the devil, and because of His coronation in heaven. The Supper is a great one because of this great reason for it — the desire of God for the happiness of men.

It is great because God is great, and it is His Supper. He is great in His power and wisdom, as we all surely know, for this is declared in His creative works, but He is greater in His love. "God is love" and it is this that should appeal to us all. In ancient days, for His own wise purposes, He selected one nation from all the rest and cared for it with a special care, but that was only until the time arrived for His Son to appear. Now He will have all men to be saved, Gentiles as well as Jews. He thinks of every nation, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son." He sends His invitation to all. The gospel word is "whosoever will." The rich are no more to Him than the poor; in His sight the black are equal to the white. He stretches out His hands to all and invites all without distinction to come in to His Supper. It is a great Supper because it is God's, and He is great.

It is a great Supper because of the multitude that will enjoy it for ever. It does not seem that that could be so, judging by what we see. The happy Christians appear to be in the minority. The multitudes queue up for the cinemas and theatres and race courses; dance halls are packed, but not the gospel services. The clown gets the laughing crowd while the herald of God's salvation delivers his message to the children and a few, sometimes very few, adults. "Without exaggeration, a thousand people gathered round us to hear the word," writes an enthusiastic open-air evangelist, "and at the end of the meeting four men stepped out and confessed the Lord Jesus as their Saviour." Four out of a thousand! Of course we are glad of the four; "there is joy in the presence of the angels when one sinner repents," but four out of a thousand! that was a very small percentage. The world, the flesh and the devil seem to have had the best of it in that crowd. It may have been that kind of thing that made a man in the previous chapter ask, "Lord, are there few that be saved?" We know the Lord's answer, Look after yourself. "Strive you to enter in." Yet in spite of the fact that most men seem to be lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, and the many are on the broad road and not in the narrow way, His house shall be filled, and it shall be filled with a multitude that no man can number. They shall come from the North and the South, and the East and the West and sit down in God's kingdom, a mighty host, ransomed from death and hell by the precious blood of God's Son, to feast for ever with Him. Many will seek to enter in then but shall not be able, because they ignored God's NOW and arrived too late. But in spite of that, heaven will be filled with a countless multitude. The Supper is great because of the number that will enjoy it.

It is a great Supper because of the cost of it, and this is the very heart of the subject. What will God give to make men happy? What price will He pay? He gives life, but the shadow of death lies on it. He gives health, but sickness is never far away. He could give money, but what is money? A North of England newspaper offered a prize for the best definition of money, and the definition that won the prize was a great one. I do not think it could be bettered. Here it is. "Money can purchase everything but happiness, and open every door but the door of heaven." But if a man is not happy in this world and does not reach heaven in the next, what has he that is worth having? He must have both if he is to be a blessed man, and not life or health or wealth can give him either; but God can give him both, but — at what a cost!

"God so loved" — Ah, the old text! I had a strange dream. In my dream I was spending a beautiful summer's day in some Yorkshire villages giving away gospel books and talking to the people about the Saviour. At a cottage door there sat a group of women, enjoying the sunshine and an hour's gossip. I had to explain to them that I was not selling anything, but giving them the gospel, and in my explanation I quoted my text, "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." I had no sooner got the words out of my mouth, than one of the women laughed, a scornful laugh, and said, "T'owd text agean," and all the women joined with her in laughing at the old text again. I awoke from my dream with their laughter ringing in my ears, and was glad that it was a dream. And yet, I fear, that that is the way that many are treating the most wonderful words that mortal ears have ever heard. Old as the text may be, and often used, I cannot leave it out of this story; it tells us what God has done for our blessing, what it has cost Him to spread this feast. I might quote other texts, not so well known perhaps, but none the less wonderful. "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." 1 John 4: 9, 10.

How far surpassing all our need and desires must the feast be that cost God such a price! And who shall describe the price that His beloved Son paid, for the Father and the Son were one in this. He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor! The poverty of the manger was a great price to pay, but it was not enough; His life of sorrow, for He was the Man of sorrows, was a great price to pay, but it was not enough; the agony of Gethsemane, with its sweat of blood, was a great price to pay, but it was not enough; nothing could avail but the cross of Calvary; there He who knew no sin, was made sin for us; there He died for the ungodly. The Bible says, "Christ died for the ungodly." One sentence of five words — golden words. How much they have meant to me and to thousands of sinners. Many times I have pondered them, and said with moistened eyes and worshipping heart, "Why, Lord, that means me! That is the price that Thou didst pay for me!" It was the price He paid that this Supper might be spread, made ready for needy men. That is what our redemption cost Him, and that was the price that He paid that God might bless us righteously.

The Supper is a great one because of what it has cost, and because of the multitude that will enjoy it, and because of the greatness of the God who has provided it; and because of His gracious desire that all men should enjoy it.

Chapter 5

The Supper Spread

Jesus said "My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven." — John 6: 32.

"Thou bringest love and gladness forth

From Thine exhaustless store,

To me, deserving but Thy wrath,

The life for evermore."

God knows the needs of men and as the faithful Creator He gives "rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness," as Paul the Apostle told the Lycaonians many years ago. Thus He spreads a feast that our bodies may be nourished, even though some of us never thank Him. But men have not bodies only, they have immortal souls, and the need of the soul is infinitely greater than the need of the body. God gives the abundance of the earth for the feeding of the body, but for the soul! for the salvation of the soul He has given the abundance of the heavens — He has given His only-begotten Son. He could not have given more than that and less would not have done. And now He bids the hunger-stricken, sinful sons of men to come in to His Supper. "All things are ready; there is enough for all, and all who come will be welcomed and saved and satisfied.

What is it that sinful men need first and most? When those four zealous friends of the palsied man brought him to the house where Jesus was, and let him down through the tiling at His feet, they thought that He would immediately work a miracle, and by a word put strength into the shaking limbs of their afflicted friend. We can understand their astonishment, and perhaps disappointment, when instead He said, "Man, thy sins are forgiven thee." But the Lord knew better than they; He knew that the forgiveness of sins was that man's greatest need; his sins first and then his sickness, his soul first and then his body. The forgiveness of sins is the first of many blessings that God offers to men, and all who enter the door and sit down at His Supper will find that this is the first of the dishes on the table. And I am glad to be able to make known the fact and describe it in the very words that Paul used in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia. They are Holy Ghost inspired words, and one thousand nine hundred years have not changed the need or taken the power out of the words. "Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this Man [Christ Jesus] is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins." Acts 13: 38. Of course there are many who despise this blessing; those Pharisees and scribes who scorned the Saviour's grace, would not have taken a single step to get it, because they had never felt the burden of their sins; but we shall not listen to them or their ilk. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating" and only those who have tasted of this dish can speak of its sweetness and commend it to others. David was one of these. "Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven," he exclaimed, and those who know tell us that his exclamation means, "Oh the blessednesses of the forgiven man!" His cup ran over with relief and joy, and, I should add, thanksgiving.

During the war, it was on the Sunday of the Dogger Bank engagement, I addressed a gathering of soldiers in South Shields. There was one lad of the Royal Engineers there who listened to my words with great earnestness — so much so that I made up my mind that I would speak to him when the meeting was over. He anticipated me and asked if he might have a talk with me. We sat down together and I asked, "What's the trouble?" He broke down completely and said, "I've got a big sin on my soul." "Tell me about yourself" I said. And he poured out a sad tale of folly and sin though he was only nineteen. "It seems to me, Edward," I said, "that you have got a lot of big sins on your soul." He confessed that he had, and sobbed out "I'm glad my mother is dead, she would have broken her heart over me." He was ready for forgiveness, poor lad. "I want you" I said, "to read this verse," and I turned him. to Isaiah 53: 5. "He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed." I explained to him that the verse was about the Lord Jesus, and I put myself alongside him and told him how the great Saviour had suffered for our sins on the cross that we might be saved. He drank in the truth and feasted on the gospel story, and then we knelt and thanked God. As I shook hands with him that night outside his billet he said, "I haven't been able to sleep for many a night, I've been so miserable; but I'll be able to go to my bed to-night and say, 'God has forgiven me '."

Men were badly needed in Flanders and young as he was he had to go, and he found time to write to me perhaps the last letter he ever did write, for my answer came back, "Missing." In that letter written during the worst of February weather, amid sleet and rain and cold and mud and all the miseries and dangers of the trenches, he wrote "I'm so happy." Why was he so happy? Because he had entered the feast and was rejoicing in that first dish on the table — the forgiveness of sins. He had tasted and seen that the Lord is gracious; his sins were forgiven for His Name's sake.

That is the beginning of the feast and there is more to follow. We read, "Being justified by faith, we have PEACE with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." How well that dish suits the palate of those whose consciences have troubled them and who, like David, have said to God, "Against Thee, and Thee only have I sinned" and have longed to have peace with God. I knew a band of lads, I had almost said a gang, they were not Y.M.C.A. boys, nor the sort that you would expect to see rushing to the gospel meetings. But one of them was induced to go and hear an earnest evangelist who had come to the town, and he not only heard but believed. Of course he was the subject of many a jest. He did not mind that. The nightly gospel and not the variety show was now his delight, he had got into God's feast. A week passed and he returned to his home from one of these meetings, and there was gathered this band of his old friends to greet him. The laughter started at once. "Now, parson," they said, "preach us a sermon." To their astonishment he stood on a chair, and said "I can't preach, but I can sing," and he began.

"O the peace my Saviour gives,

Peace I never knew before;

All my life has brighter grown

Since I learnt to know Him more."

Before he reached the end of his song there slipped from the room his own brother and another, and when they looked at each other outside the door, the tears were on both their cheeks. The joy of that lad as his soul feasted on the peace that the Saviour had given him, and as he poured out the story in his song, had broken them down, and they too pressed in to the feast. Yes, peace with God is a sweet dish, and I who know its sweetness would urge on all who don't to enter into the feast and taste it now.

Did you ever read the story of those four leprous men who sat outside the gate of the besieged and starving city of Samaria? It is an interesting and instructive tale, and is told in 2 Kings 7. They sat there until death seemed to be closing in upon them on every side, and they decided that their only hope of life was to cast themselves on the mercy of the besieging army. But when they reached the camp of the enemy they did not find a single man there. They found instead, what they were needing most, plenty of good food. And the story tells us, "they went into one tent, and did eat and drink, and carried thence silver and gold and raiment and went and hid it, and came again and went into another tent, and carried thence also." I want to use the story as an incentive to those who have entered God's feast, not to be satisfied with one dish, but to go from dish to dish, as those men went from tent to tent. God's grace has provided this great feast of many dishes, and Faith appropriates what God has provided, and the more faith appropriates the more will God be delighted.

I speak of one more dish. It is set before us in John 3 "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God." This carries us beyond all our expectations; we compare it with that Old Testament Scripture, "He brought me into His banqueting house and His banner over me was love. I sat down under His shadow, with great delight and His fruit was sweet to my taste," and we say this is even better than that. This gives us the "bairns" place and assures us of a Father's care as long as life shall last, and is the pledge that the best that heaven can give shall be ours for ever. It tells us of the Father's love which is the richest, sweetest portion that heaven can set before our souls.

Chapter 6

"The poor, the maimed, the halt, the blind"

"Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, the maimed, and the halt, and the blind . . . Go out into the highways and the hedges and compel them to come in that my house may be filled."

"Call them in" — the poor, the wretched,

Sin-stained wanderers from the fold:

Peace and pardon freely offer:

Can you weigh their worth with gold?

"Call them in" — the broken-hearted,

Cowering 'neath the brand of shame,

Speak love's message low and tender —

"'Twas for sinners Jesus came."

"Bring them in" — the careless scoffers,

Pleasure seekers of the earth,

Tell of God's most gracious offer,

And of Jesus' priceless worth."

It is a man's own loss if he refuses the God-sent invitation. The feast will go on without him and God's house shall be full. The poor, the maimed, the halt and the blind will come in, compelled by the great Servant, from the streets and lanes of the city. But who are these? Again the Master-artist is at work describing those who are fit subjects for God's grace, and who will most certainly appreciate that grace when they know their need for it. The poor cannot pay, the maimed cannot work, the halt must be brought, and the blind are helpless without a guide. Not one of them is self-sufficient, they are dependent people. Every man and woman on earth comes into this category, only some have not discovered this, and others are too proud to own it. Some boast, "I am rich and increased in goods and have need of nothing," but to them the Lord replies, "Thou knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked." It is not easy to confess the truth, it cuts clean across our natural pride, and the discovery of it is a bitter experience; but it is the way to the blessing, and it is better to confess the unpalatable truth than hug the pleasant lie.

All are poor; the Lord has described us all as "debtors, with nothing to pay." A man's bank balance or broad acres do not enter into this question. The millionaire is as poor before God as the man who sleeps on the Embankment with neither penny nor purse. You might be able to scatter money with the munificence of Lord Nuffield, it would be of no account at God's door; gold cannot buy grace. A millionaire manufacturer in my native town gave a large sum of money to local charities. His Christian secretary asked him, Why? for it was an unusual move on his part. "Because I want to go to heaven as well as you" was his answer. But not such as he with his fancied ability to pay pass in to the Supper; it is the poor that are welcomed and those who think they are rich are turned empty away.

"Our poverty of soul

To God's gate can bring no toll,

Giftless we come to Him who all things gives."

To every sinner that owns the truth God has got a perfect answer. Let a man confess his poverty, and God's answer is, "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich." Let a man confess that he has been maimed by sin, and made helpless to work for his salvation, God's answer is, "When we were yet without strength, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly," and, "By grace are ye saved . . . not of works, lest any man should boast." Let a man acknowledge that he is halt, without the power to walk in the ways of righteousness, God's answer is, "Unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only-wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and for ever." Let a man acknowledge that he is blind, God's answer is, "To open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith that is in Me (Christ)."

Why do not men understand their need of God's grace? Why don't they see that if they refuse His grace they must be lost for ever? God gives a solemn answer to these questions. We read, "If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine in unto them." 2 Corinthians 4.

The fact is that there is a great conflict for souls being waged between Satan, the god of this world, and the great Servant who has come from heaven to compel men to come in to God's Supper. I will tell you of the conflict for one soul, and how it ended. It was on a ferry boat, crossing the beautiful Sydney harbour, that I was introduced to a man of some standing in the shipping world of the city. He had graduated from the University and had made good in his business life, but that did not satisfy him; he had a great thirst for knowledge and was determined to know the truth as to things. In his search for truth he was attracted by Theosophy, which was in the way of being popular in his circle at that time, and for a while he was well satisfied and sure that what he held for truth could not be challenged. Satan had succeeded in blinding his eyes. One day he was seized with a sudden illness and his doctor ordered an immediate operation. Now came the test. He set about to work himself up into an ecstatic state of mind to face the ordeal; he succeeded, and this lasted until he got between the sheets in his bed at the nursing home. Then to use his own words, he "got the wind up." The great Servant was opening his blind eyes. He had a few hours to wait for the operation and he was in a panic; his hope had failed him, it had burst like a bubble. He asked for a Bible and began eagerly to read from the New Testament, and he had read through the four Gospels before he was called to the operating theatre. There he had a strange experience. I had the story from his own lips. While under the anaesthetic he thought he saw upon a black background a cross uplifted, upon which hung Jesus, the Son of God. That was not strange, seeing he had read the story of the crucifixion four times within the last few hours. What was strange was that a voice seemed to say to him repeatedly and insistently, "I am Alpha and Omega. I am Alpha and Omega." When he recovered full consciousness he asked the nurse, "Can you tell me where the words I am Alpha and Omega are, in the Bible?" She could not, but because he seemed so anxious to find them, she said she would enquire. Now it so happened that under God's good hand a Salvation Army Captain was visiting in another ward of that Home, and the nurse sent him to her patient. The Captain knew his Bible and found the words and preached Christ from them to the sick man. He being a graduate of Sydney University did not need to be told that Alpha and Omega were the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet; and as he pondered the words that had been so strangely impressed on his mind, the truth dawned upon his troubled soul. The great Servant had shattered his false hope, and delivered him from the blinding influence of Satan, and was leading him into the light. He understood that Christ was all; that whatever God had to say to sinful man was in and through Christ, and Him crucified. Thus was he guided into God's Supper. He was a happy man, as happy a man as I have ever met. It was a pleasure to be with him. "My old friends call me 'the born-again man'" he told me, and the name they gave him was a good one and suited him well. Thus does the Spirit of God work with men; first to show them their soul's deep need of the saving grace of God, and then to gently compel them to the door of His festal hall; WHICH DOOR IS CHRIST.

Chapter 7

The Door to the Supper

"I am the door, by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved." — John 10.

"O God, through Christ, the living way,

My Father and my God,

So near, and I so far astray,

Brought nigh Thee by His blood."

Yes, Christ is the door to the Supper, the only way of blessing for sinful men, He said so Himself. "I am the door," and again, "I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me." John chapters 10 and 14. The words have been so often repeated and become so familiar that they seem to have lost their force and meaning; may the Holy Spirit of God put fresh unction and power into them for every one of us to-day.

Some people seem to think that God ought to have opened a dozen ways into His blessing, so that they could have chosen the one that suited them the best; they turn from the blessing because they do not like the way to it, but there is none other. This is said both clearly and conclusively in Peter's words, when, filled with the Holy Ghost, he addressed the Christ-rejecting leaders of the Jewish nation. "Neither is there salvation in any other for there is none other name under heaven given amongst men, whereby we must be saved." Acts 4. God has bound up the blessing of sinners with the glory of His Son and never will one of them be saved apart from Him. The great Servant who has come from heaven to compel the needy into God's feast of blessing will compel them only through this new and living way — Christ. There is no room for argument, no other way of blessing is possible either in time or eternity. God has spoken, and His word is final.

We should rejoice that this is so, for Christ Jesus the Lord is both accessible and attractive and most suitable to sinful men. Multitudes can bear witness to this, and it is this that the Bible means when it says "He is gracious." The four Gospels have been written that we might have no doubt about this. They show the Lord to us in a fourfold and complete way, and are well calculated to meet and win the most callous heart. They tell us that when the disciples would have driven the children away, He drew them to the warmth of His own heart and blessed them, and they were not afraid of Him and did not flee from Him. They tell us of the leper who came to Him, and was not repulsed. If he had come to Peter he would have cried, "Don't come near me," and John would have said, "Keep your distance," but Jesus had compassion on him and stretched forth His hand and touched him, and he, poor wretch, had not been touched for years, and the touch of that compassionate hand must have healed his stricken soul as truly as those words of power healed the plague of his body. These Gospels tell us how He wept over Jerusalem, the city that hated Him and was to murder Him, as He foresaw its doom, and how tears of divine sympathy flowed down His cheeks when He saw the sorrow of two of His friends weeping for their dead brother; for foes and friends He wept alike, and His tears were the proof of an impartial, invincible love.

But it is His cross that makes Him so irresistibly attractive, "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men." He was crucified; the Gospels tell us of this; and who can read that four times told story and remain unmoved! John the Apostle who stood by the cross, gives it to us in the fewest words. He tells us what he saw and heard: the cry, "I thirst," the triumphant word "It is finished"; the thorn-crowned head bowed in death; the side pierced with the soldier's spear, and the flowing blood and water. Of all this he was a witness, and he says, "He that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe." John 20: 35. Alas that the record should have been made in vain for so many!

Let us hear what John Bunyan can tell us of the effect of a sight of the cross. "Now I saw in my dream that the highway up which Christian was to go was fenced on either side by a wall, and that wall was called Salvation, Isa. 26: 1. Up this way therefore did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran thus until he came to a place somewhat ascending: and upon that place stood a Cross, and a little below it in the bottom a sepulchre. So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the Cross, his burden loosed off from his shoulders, and fell from his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in and I saw it no more.

"Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, He hath given me rest by His sorrow, and life by His death. Then he stood awhile to look and to wonder: for it was very surprising to him that the sight of the Cross should thus ease him of his burden. He looked therefore, and looked again, even till the springs that were in his head sent the waters down his cheeks . . . Then Christian gave three leaps of joy, and went on singing —

"Blest Cross! blest Sepulchre! blest rather be

The Man that there was put to shame for me."

In this way did the pilgrim pass through the door into God's everlasting feast.

And let us listen to John Newton. He had got as far from God as a man out of hell could, and in the hold of a fast sinking ship, when all hope had been abandoned, he cried to God for mercy, and saw as in a vision the Saviour on the cross, and prostrate at His feet he was saved, and afterwards wrote:

"I saw One hanging on a tree,

In agonies of blood,

Who fixed His eyes of love on me

As near His cross I stood.

That look of love and sorrow said:

My life for thee I give;

This blood is for thy ransom paid,

I die that thou mayest live!

O never till my latest breath

Can I forget that look;

It seemed to charge me with His death,

Though not a word He spoke.

That look of love and sorrow said:

My life for thee I give;

This blood is for thy ransom paid,

I die that thou mayest live."

That was the way that John Newton entered into the blessing, and he could not forget it, nor did he intend that any one else should forget it after his death, as one who has written of him has said, for he gave instructions that the only epitaph on his grave should be,

John Newton,

Clerk,

Once an Infidel and Libertine,

A servant of slaves in Africa,

Was, by the mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,

Preserved, Restored, Pardoned,

And appointed to preach the Faith

He had so long laboured to destroy.

And if I may be permitted to humbly put myself alongside these men, who were great sinners, greatly saved, I will tell you the way that I found the door to the Feast. I was a convicted and repentant sinner, feeling deeply my need of the Saviour, and a servant of the Lord put his arm round me and said, "You'll trust Him to-night, won't you, dear?" I knew who he meant when he said, "You'll trust HIM," and I answered, "Yes." He said, "Let us sing,

"'Tis done, the great transaction's done,

I am my Lord's and He is mine;

He drew me and I followed on,

Glad to confess His Name divine,

Happy day, happy day,

When Jesus washed my sins away."

Why did I, on the following day, print the Name JESUS in capital letters, and put it where I could see it constantly? I had found the way to the great Supper, I had passed through the door of salvation — It was Jesus Himself, and He was not only the way into the Feast, He was the Feast itself. He was all in all.

If John the Apostle, and John Bunyan, and John Newton, and many another John, through infinite mercy found this one way of blessing open for them and if they entered in with gratitude and joy, why not you? The door is open still, and this great Saviour's words are still the hope of despairing souls, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," and, "Him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out." The multitude that no man can number, who shall sit down at God's Feast, have every one of them entered by this one way: there is none other.

Chapter 8

How the Guests are Fitted for the Feast

"Giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light." Colossians 1: 12.

"It is the Father's joy to bless;

His love has found for me a dress,

A robe of spotless righteousness

O Lamb of God in Thee!"

—

"For our robes, so white, so radiant,

Witness as they shine

Of the sacred blood that washed us,

Thine, O Lamb divine."

But how are needy, naked sinners, whom these guests, gathered from the streets and lanes of the city and from the highways and hedges represent, to be made fit to sit down and feast in the presence of God? The parable of the Feast at the Marriage of the King's Son given in Matthew's Gospel clearly shows that a garment is needed — there spoken of as the wedding garment, and every man's conscience tells him that he must have some fitness for God's presence if he is to be at peace and happy there.

I knew a fine Christian, he was brought into God's great Supper as a young officer in the British Army. His ancestral home was in the South of Ireland, and as soon as he could obtain leave he went there to confess his faith in the Lord Jesus. He was anxious that all his old acquaintances should find what he had found, and amongst these was his old nurse, a Roman Catholic. "O, Master Eddy," she said, "don't you be worrying yourself about your old nurse, sure, she paid half-a-guinea for a shroud that his Holiness has blessed, and if her old carcase is wrapt in it when she dies, she'll go straight into paradise, and no purgatory at all." Of course she was deceived, poor credulous old soul, but not more deceived than legions who think that in a garment of their own righteousness they will be able to enter the glory of God.

"We are doing our best," say they, "we are doing our best."

One lesson of the parable is that those who enter the feast, being "poor and maimed and halt and blind," are as entirely dependent upon the Master of the house for fitness to enter as for the invitation to be there. And of this we may be sure, if He invites, He will give the fitness, but only those who know their need are ready to accept His gift of it, the robe of righteousness that He provides.

I had addressed a meeting of Christians in Toronto, Canada, when a happy looking man came forward and said to me, "I have to thank you, sir." "Have you, and what for" I asked. "Well, twenty-seven years ago in St. Helens, Lancashire, you were used of God to the salvation of myself and wife." "I am delighted to hear that," I said, "for I was only there once in my life and I remember the meeting well." Said he, "We were invited to hear you, two self-righteous churchgoers, who never imagined that we could be wrong; and what should your text be but, 'All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.' You did not spare us, and we went away from the meeting very angry, but our eyes had been opened, and we saw that we could not trust in ourselves, our only hope was in Christ whom you preached." The following evening a lady, who introduced herself as the wife, corroborated her husband's story of their discovery of the need of a righteousness not their own. Every one who enters the feast must learn what those Lancashire people learnt, and what Toplady had learnt when he sang,

"Nothing in my hand I bring,

Simply to Thy cross I cling,

Naked come I, Lord, for dress,

Helpless, look to Thee for grace,

Foul, I to the fountain fly

Wash me, Saviour, or I die."

There are two things that a man who is honest before God must confess, first, he has sinned, second, he has no righteousness to cover him before God. If any man has not yet discovered these unpleasant but inexorable facts, he should read Romans 3, where we read, "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God," and, "There is none righteous, no not one." What can we do? Nothing. What will God do? Everything. His word declares, "The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin," and, "Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." How happy are all those to whom these great sayings apply; they have brought comfort and peace to many. And as to righteousness, the same word of God is equally clear. It tells us that God has declared His own righteousness — His own consistency with Himself, and all His attributes — "that He might be just and the Justifier of him that believeth in Jesus." What is it that enables God righteously to justify, or declare righteous all those who believe in Jesus? It is the value that He sees in the atoning blood.

I listened with great interest to an old French missionary, who had laboured for many years among the Moslems of North Africa. He said the men delighted to gather round the Christian preacher in the Market Place and ply him with questions and riddles of all sorts. One day they were endeavouring to prove to him that Mohammed and his religion was far superior to Christ and the Christian Faith, when an old man spoke up and said, "We believe in Mohammed, and have more than two hundred and fifty prophets, and are all in rags; this stranger believes in Christ and has only one prophet, and is well dressed, let us listen to him." The Christian missionary was better dressed than the old Moslem imagined, and he was able to tell them that he wore a robe, invisible to the eyes of men, but beautiful in God's eyes — a robe of pure righteousness, which robe is Christ. And every one that comes to God renouncing his own righteousness is arrayed in this same spotless robe.

The great men of olden times longed for this fitness for God's presence. Moses prayed, "Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us," David said, "As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied when I awake, with Thy likeness." What these men prayed for and hoped for is given to those who believe as a present possession, for Christ "is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption." He became what we were when He was crucified, that we might become what He is now, the righteousness of God in Him.

What a glorious time that will be, when God will look upon His assembled guests in His glory, and see them all conformed to the image of His Son, everyone of them having His likeness; but even now the Christian can say, "As He is, so are we, in this world." This is God's bright design, the purpose of His love, that the poor, the maimed, the halt and the blind, should appear perfect and blameless before Him in His glory to rejoice in His presence for ever.

But if any man still thinks that his own righteousness, the works of his own hands, are a good enough covering for him before God, let him consider the parable of the marriage of the king's son in Matthew 22. There we read of a man who refused the garment provided by the king, and presumed to appear at the Feast in a suit of his own make. But the king came in to view the guests and his eye fell upon this intruder, and searched him through and through; he looked beneath the gaudy rags in which he trusted, and exposed the pride and obstinacy of his heart. To the demand, Friend, how camest thou in hither without a wedding garment?" he was speechless, without excuse. Could he then plead for mercy and beg for a covering not his own? No, it was too late for that; it was too late. The sentence of the insulted king went forth. "Bind him hand and foot and cast him into outer darkness." Immediately that sentence was executed; he was cast out of the Feast and his rags became the fetters that bound his soul in everlasting misery. He was searched, silenced and sentenced. It is divine love that has given the warning. "He that hath ears to hear let him hear."

Chapter 9

"Until He find it"

"And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing . . . I have found my sheep which was lost." Luke 15: 5, 6.

"He found me, the lost and the wandering,

The sinful, the sad and the lone;

He said, I have found thee, beloved,

Forever thou art Mine own.

O soul, I will show thee the wonder,

The worth of My precious blood,

Thou art whiter than snow on the mountains,

Thou'rt fair in the eyes of God."

—

"It was Thyself, O Lord, that sought

With tender yearnings, deep,

The loveless soul that sought not Thee,

The worthless, wandering sheep."

The Lord had more to say. His heart was full of the word He had brought from heaven and He cried," He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." He did not ask for hands that could work, or purses that could pay, or brains that could solve great problems, but ears that could hear, for "faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God," and every word from His lips was the word of God. What a crowd gathered in response! Publicans and sinners, the scum of the city, men and women with empty hearts and blasted lives, all pressing about Him. What drew them there? They knew well that He had no sympathy with their sins, then why did they come? They came because they felt that He loved them, that He cared for them, that He would not spurn them, sinners though they were. And those Pharisees and scribes that stood scornfully on the outer ring, why were they there? They were there to carp and criticise and condemn; and now they see their opportunity and seize it. "This man," they say, "receiveth sinners." They could think of nothing worse than that to say of Him, and they said it with venom. He was despicable in their eyes with that mob around Him when He might have had their honourable company. How they hated Him! But they spoke the truth in spite of their hatred. That which degraded Him in their eyes was His glory; and they then and there gave to the evangelist a most blessed text. I take up their words and strip them of the scorn with which they clothed them, and sound them forth with eager lips as the very gospel of God. "This Man receiveth sinners." Thank God! and again, Thank God! And that countless multitude that will yet fill God's home on high will be there, every one of them, because "This Man receiveth sinners."

The sneers of these scornful and self-righteous men became the occasion for the unfolding of the very heart of God, and from those lips that spake as never man spake there flowed this three-fold parable, which has been the wonder and joy of multitudes. It is truly one — three in one. The Shepherd who seeks the sheep is the Son; the woman who seeks the silver is the Spirit, and the father who welcomes the prodigal is the Father — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Triune God — concerned and active, not in the spreading of the great Supper only, but in filling it with guests, in the salvation of the lost — these very publicans and sinners despised by the Pharisees — and in your salvation and mine. It is as though the Lord said to them, You are grieved and offended because I receive sinners, but I receive them because the Father receives them, I am here to show you the Father, "he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."

But if the Father was to welcome and pardon prodigal sinners, the Shepherd must first seek the wandering sheep, and I need not quote that Old Testament word, "All we like sheep have gone astray" to prove that the sheep that the Shepherd seeks are sinful men, such as you and me.

So it is that I must speak of the Shepherd and His search for the sheep before I reach the supreme parable of the Father's love, the one is indispensable to the other.

It is the persistence of His love for the lost that He unfolds in these few words. "He goeth after that which is lost until He find it." He does not tell all that this would cost Him ere He could lift it safely to His shoulders, we must go to other of His words for that. But these other words were plainly spoken and we learn that His love was a suffering love as well as a persistent love. A great foe claimed the wanderer, and judgment threatened it, it was in imminent danger of perishing, and if it was to be rescued and saved the foe must be defeated, the judgment must be borne, the danger faced. There was no other way; if there had been, God would have found it. "If it be possible" Jesus prayed, "let this cup pass from me." It was not possible; the Shepherd must be smitten for the sake of the sheep. "I am the good Shepherd" He said, "the good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep and fleeth . . . I am the good Shepherd and know My sheep . . . and I lay down My life for the sheep." John 10.

"He tasted death's waters, offensive and bitter,

Yet dared He to drink, for the lost He would save;

His great love upheld Him, strong, infinite, quenchless,

And for His lost sheep He went down to the grave."

But having laid down His life to ransom His sheep, He lives again to keep them. He holds them in everlasting security in the hands that destroyed the power of death, and upon His shoulders He has placed them; they are carried home by omnipotent ability, and not one of them shall perish; no power on earth or in hell can change His word; they shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

"His own He has rescued from ruin eternal,

His blood He has shed for the life of His sheep;

What creature on earth or in hades can challenge

His right His redeemed ones in safety to keep?"

There is one word that stands out brightly in this three-fold story, it is "I have FOUND." The Shepherd found the sheep; the woman found the silver; the Father found the son. The sheep, the silver and the son were saved; no one will question that, but it is not that that the Lord is showing here, but that they were lost and found. They were lost to whom were they lost? To the Shepherd, the woman and the Father. But we do not talk of a thing as lost that has no value. We do not seek for that that is worth nothing; and when we have found that that we had lost, ours is the joy. It is the joy of the finders that thrills through this three-fold parable, it is the joy of the Triune God. "Rejoice with Me," says the Shepherd Son. "Rejoice with Me," says the Holy Ghost; "It is meet that we should make merry and be glad," says the Father.

It is a wonderful thing that sinners should be so precious to God, that He should set such a value on them as to give His Son for their salvation; and that His Son should have come from heaven and gone down into the depths of judgment and death that they might be saved, and that the Holy Spirit of God should have come from heaven to labour with them to bring them to repentance. It is wonderful, but it is true, for nothing less than this is the teaching of this parable. And twice the Lord tells us that there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth. Empires may rise and fail, kings abdicate or be crowned, these are things that shake the world and fill the chief pages of our newspapers, but they do not move heaven; but if one sinner repents and turns to God, if the Shepherd finds one sheep, there is joy in heaven. Incredible! Yes, we would have said that if Jesus had not told us, but He knows surely what heaven values and He said, "Likewise I say unto you there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth."

I have read a story told by an Englishman who went deer stalking in the Highlands of Scotland. One day the old gillie, who was his attendant said, "Turn your glasses on that spot on the mountain side, sir, and you will see a lost sheep." And sure enough he was able to discern the poor creature on a ledge of rock, above it unscalable crags, and beneath it a precipice dipping sheer down 500 feet. "However could it have got there without flying?" he exclaimed. "Do you see a few yards down from the top of the cliff a narrow ledge of rock from which all the grass has been eaten, and again to the right another, and lower down another, and still another just above the one upon which the sheep is now?" asked the gillie. "Tell, that silly creature, tempted by those green looking ledges, has scrambled from one to another, and can't get back." "But can't anything be done to save it?" asked the tourist. "Nothing" was the answer. "Even if anybody was foolish enough to risk his life in trying, the poor beast is in such a nervous condition now that at the sound of anyone approaching, it would leap over the precipice, and there's an eagle just waiting for its prey. Nothing can save it." I borrow and repeat the story, because I want to say that if your soul is in as great and imminent danger as that sheep was, JESUS CAN REACH YOU AND SAVE YOU!

Chapter 10

That which was lost

"Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it."

"What moved Thee to impart

Thy Spirit from above,

Therewith to fill our heart

With heavenly peace and love?

'Twas love unbounded love to us

Led Thee to give Thy Spirit thus."

—

"Praises for the Holy Ghost

Sent from heaven at Pentecost,

'Tis through Him alone we live

And the precious truth receive."

In considering the activities of the Godhead for the blessing of men we cannot leave out those that lie in the hands of the Holy Spirit. We have seen that He is the Servant compelling needy men to come in to the great Supper, and now His work is portrayed again in the central story of this great three-fold parable. He has come into the world, sent by the Father and the Son, to be the Servant of their glory and to seek the lost for their joy, but He must also have His share in that joy, for the joy of the Godhead is one; and though He seeks no glory for Himself, it is right that we should honour Him and rejoice in His unwearied and never ceasing labours of love. The lost piece of silver was not easily found, the woman had to light a lamp and search diligently for it before she could say, "I have found that which was lost." It was hidden in the dust of an out of the way corner and would have remained there but for the diligence of the woman.

It has been the way of sinners to hide from God from the very beginning; it was the first impulse in the hearts of guilty Adam and his wife in Eden. "They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day; and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the Garden." Genesis 3. They had lost their God, but He had also lost them; they were lost souls and He came to seek them crying, "Adam, where art thou?" And it is thus that the Holy Spirit is seeking Adam's sons to-day, He is searching diligently for them.

The reason why Adam hid from God was because he had become a disobedient man and he feared God's just judgment; he did not know His mercy or His heart of love. Men hide from God to this day for the self-same reason; they do not know His thoughts and feelings towards them; they are ignorant, and ignorance of God is darkness; and darkness needs light. The woman lighted a lamp. The Holy Spirit has lighted a wonderful and unquenchable lamp. He inspired the Holy Scriptures, He is the Author of them, "Thy word is a lamp," is clearly said of the Word in the Word itself. The Holy Spirit uses the Word that He has inspired; He uses it to expose sinful men in their hiding places, and He uses it as the infallible record of what God has done for their redemption.

The presence of the Holy Spirit in the world for His great work is just as real as was the presence of the Lord Jesus when He came into it to save sinners. The difference is that the Lord became incarnate, He could be seen and handled by men, while the Holy Spirit is not incarnate and consequently not visible to mortal eyes, and because men cannot see Him they ignore Him, to them He is non-existent. But to those who have believed He is real, they have felt His power and they walk in the light which He has brought to them. The wind is unseen, but its presence is felt and the effect of it is seen. So it is with the Holy Spirit of God. He strives with men, this we learn from the Old Testament — Genesis 6 — and men resist His strivings — this we are told in the New Testament — Acts 7. And when the history of souls is unfolded in the great day of judgment, multitudes will be compelled to confess that they have resisted His strivings and missed the blessing of God in consequence.

I have no doubt that all who have believed the gospel could give some account of the gracious way of the Holy Spirit with them. Mr. J. Wilson Smith of Berwickshire, a one-time officer in the Royal Scottish Regiment, was well known for his long and faithful labours in the gospel throughout the Cheviots. He was to hold an open-air meeting on a certain Sunday afternoon, not many miles from Wooler. A fine old Christian lady felt a great urge to invite a neighbouring farmer's wife to this meeting, but she got very small encouragement when she did so. "Open-air meetings are not for the likes of me. I go to church, not as often as I should like, but as often as I can. I don't need these open-air meetings," was the answer to the invitation. "Well, Mrs. Dunn," said the Christian lady, "don't forget, 'Ye must be born again'." "What do you mean by that?" came the sharp response. "Come to the meeting to-morrow afternoon and perhaps you will find out," was the quiet and wise answer. I knew this Christian lady, and knew that she prayed for her neighbours, and I am sure that she asked that she might be guided by the Holy Spirit to invite this special one to that special meeting, and I am sure that the Spirit in His search for that religious but unregenerate soul gave her the words to speak to her. Anyhow, Mrs. Dunn could not forget them. As she went about her work she said over and over again to herself, "Ye must be born again! Ye must be born again! I wonder what she meant." She continued to wonder to such purpose that at 3 o'clock on the following afternoon she was standing with many others waiting for the open-air meeting to commence.

I knew Mr. J. Wilson Smith intimately for many years, and I never met a servant of the Lord who prayed more about his service, or sought more sincerely and earnestly the guidance of the Holy Spirit of God for the messages that he had to deliver. On this particular afternoon he did what was unusual for him, without a preliminary hymn or even a prayer, he announced his text. "Ye must be born again." And as his fine clarion voice repeated the text again and again, the effect upon Mrs. Dunn was deep and immediate. "Dear me," she said, "the very same words, what can they mean?" She discovered that they meant something that had never taken place in her soul's history. The Holy Spirit was shedding the light of the lamp upon her in her hiding place, and bringing her out of it. And she did come out of it, for she abandoned all her confidence in her religious observances, and it was my part in the matter and my joy to follow up the work and lead her actually to the Saviour's feet.

I must add another incident in which the Holy Spirit showed His diligence and over-ruling hand in this search for souls. It is the case of a great friend of mine. As a young man, he began to realise that his endeavours to lead an upright life and his steady progress in his profession did not satisfy the deeper needs of his soul; he was unhappy, and he felt he was not right with God. It was the Spirit's work within him awakening him to his need of Christ. He was a methodical man and caught a certain train to the City every morning, but one morning, to his great annoyance, he arrived at the Railway Station just in time to see his train disappearing Cityward. When the next train came in he stepped into the compartment nearest to where he was standing. Sitting in the opposite corner to the one he took was a man reading a New Testament who looked up, and as though he was an old acquaintance, asked him why he was so unhappy. He was amazed, for how did this stranger know that he was unhappy! But the whole truth came out, and before the train reached its terminus that morning, my friend had found peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And there was joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner repenting.

There are many dark corners in the house in which sinners hide from God. With one it may be religion, with another pleasure, another becomes engrossed in business and hides in his success, and the longer they are hidden from God, the more thickly do they become covered with the dust of their sins. But the Spirit of God continues His patient pursuit of them, searching diligently until first one and then another is found. Saved by the precious blood of Jesus, but brought to own their need of it and to rely wholly on it by the work of the Holy Spirit. The work done for them by the Lord Jesus and the work done in them by the Holy Ghost result in their being found for the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Chapter 11

The Prodigal

"And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country and there wasted his substance with riotous living."

"Man, earthy of the earth, an-hungered feeds

On earth's dark poison tree —

Wild gourds and deadly roots, and bitter weeds:

And as his food is he."

We need not search the night clubs for prodigals, or go down into the underworld of the great cities to find them, they are everywhere, and the man or woman that stands up and says to God, "I thank Thee I am not as other men," is a lineal descendant of the Pharisee of Luke 18. It was not the "riotous living" that made this younger son a prodigal, but the heart that was in him, and God looks at the heart. "Father," he said, "give me the portion of goods that falleth to me." And his father richly endowed him with goods. He gave him enough to enable him to make a great and honourable success in life. But he had other plans, and no sooner had he got possession than he turned his back upon his father and breaking loose from all restraint, travelled far away from home, and lived his life for his own pleasure without any reference to his father's will.

With what force do the Lord's words smite the conscience, and what a multitude does He describe in a few words. Here is a man, and most of us know him well, God has endowed him with great riches, He has given him a mind that can think, and hands that can work and a heart that can love, and every other faculty and organ that go to make up a man, and, greatest of all, an immortal soul. So that in all God's creation there is nothing like him; neither angel nor beast can compare with him,

"Mind that can compass the stars with its span;

Creature of mystery,

Marvellous man!"

What is he doing with his portion of goods, these great gifts? He is spending it all upon himself and without reference to God who gave all to him. He is the prodigal.

He may not be as blatant a prodigal as the rich fool of Luke 12, who talked to his soul, and said, "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry." But he is the prodigal nevertheless if he lives for self and ignores the claims of God. But may not a man do what he likes with his own? — so thought the prodigal. The answer to that question is in the words of Scripture, and is a solemn and unalterable decree from the mouth of God, "For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue confess to God. So then everyone of us shall give account of himself to God." Romans 14: 11, 12.

This young son of his father was as much a prodigal when he decided to leave his father's house as he was when he shared the swine's field and food; he had a prodigal heart and, "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." As a matter of fact he was morally a better man in the swine field than when he left his father's house, for when he had come to the utter end of his resources, he began to have right thoughts of his father, and all his thoughts of him had been wrong up to that point.

How restless and restive some men become at the thought of their dependence upon God; independence was what Adam aimed at, "Ye shall be as gods" was the lie with which the devil deceived him, and this desire to be self-sufficing and independent of God has characterised every son of Adam since.

But where does this flight from God carry men? Into the far country; and what is the far country? It is the world; and what is the world? It is the devil's sphere, where he exercises his subtle wiles to deceive man and make them happy for a while without God that he might finally destroy them; the devil has no pity, no mercy. The Bible says the world is made up of three things — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life — lust and pride. Men and women are investing their all in it, and they do not know that it is a bankrupt concern that can pay no dividends.

Yet that is not how things appear to the world's votaries. I listened to an open-air preacher, he was a fluent and forceful speaker, and chiefly because he was speaking out of his own experience. He told the people that the world had almost damned him. He had gone in for it whole-heartedly, and had found that the best it could give was "froth and bubble." Listening to that same man was a young lady who said she did not agree with the man at all, she spent her time in the social whirl and was enjoying every minute of it. I was asked if I could explain the contradiction. My answer was, Here is a man who has come into a fortune of £10,000 and he sets out to live at the rate of £20,000 a year; what a man of wealth he seems to be and what a life he lives. Yes, for six months, and then bankruptcy! The young lady was living on her capital, and bankruptcy, moral, spiritual and eternal, lay before her and every other prodigal.

It is surely bad enough that great gifts should be squandered without return, but the tragedy is that the soul is risked and lost at the same time. Suppose a man could gain his utmost ambition in the world and lose his soul — what's the profit in that? Of course they are old words, but they came from the lips of eternal Truth and are eternally true. "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

I was introduced in the North of England to a young Norwegian, a cultured and attractive fellow. He was the son of a successful business man and had come to England to perfect himself in our language. I said to him, "Wouldn't it be a splendid thing if you yielded your soul to the great Saviour at the very start of your visit? That would be worth coming to England for." "No, no," he said, "I want life, I want pleasure, I get that in England." "What sort of pleasure are you wanting?" I asked. "Oh, the horses, the races, the theatres! I want horses, theatres," and his face glowed in anticipation. He had made up his mind, and my warning that these things were sometimes the devil's soul-traps did not move him, and after a few days he went up to London where he could gratify his tastes to their full bent. A few months passed, three, I believe, when I received through the post a copy of the Daily Telegraph. A paragraph in it was blue-pencilled; it told of a young man who had been found dead in the bedroom of a London hotel with a towel twisted round his throat. The verdict of the Coroner's jury was "felo de se." He was the young man of my story. He had sold his immortal soul for sinful pleasure and it had slain him. Crowds are doing it eagerly, willingly they barter their souls to the devil for the excitement of the race-course, the theatre and worse places. Instead of God's salvation they choose the downward road, the world's way, that may not in their case run to a suicide's grave, but most certainly ends in hell-fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.

"Heart with a vacancy

Nothing can satisfy,

Filled with some pitiful bauble or toy;

Pleased by variety;

Palled by satiety,

Groping for happiness, yearning for joy;

Steeped in iniquity, folly and pride,

Thrusting its Monarch and Maker aside.

Deity bled for thee!

Pitied thee, pled for thee!

Proffered His treasures eternal in vain.

Bulk of Humanity,

Cursed with insanity,

Trample all offers of Grace with disdain

Thinking it wiser their God to defy —

Shrouded in dark degradation to die!"

Thank God, not all travel to that terrible end, many are awakened to their danger before it is too late, and the grace of God saves them, and gives them life and peace instead of disappointment and death, and heaven and eternal glory instead of hell and eternal woe.

Chapter 12

The Far Country

"There arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want."

"Where is the world?

I looked for it, 'tis gone —

A globe of glass,

Cracked, shivered, vanished,

Scarce gazed upon

E'er a silent power dissolved the glittering mass."

The prodigal journeys into the far country because he thinks it will do better for him than God will. He hopes for good things from it for it beckons to him with a pleasant smile, and makes great promises. It appears to be a nursing mother from whose breasts he may draw the milk of complete satisfaction. For a while he is not undeceived, it gives him the heartiest of welcomes, and spreads out its wares for him as Vanity Fair did for Christian and Faithful in Bunyan's Book. But at last he discovers it to be what it is, not a kindly mother that cares for her children, but a veritable vampire that will suck the blood of his soul and cast him aside at last as a worthless thing. If I were to quote Solomon to prove this, the king who tested every phase of the world, and declared it all to be "vanity and vexation of spirit," I might be charged with putting forward one-sided evidence, so I will not quote him, nor any Bible text, nor any saying of a Spurgeon or a Moody, but I will quote one of the world's own poets, a man, titled, wealthy, and talented, who could say, "I awoke one morning to find myself famous." He wrote after a few years of it,

"I fly like a bird of the air

In search of a home and a rest,

A balm for the sickness of care,

A bliss for a bosom unblest."

And hear the confession of a man who was at one time a pampered leader of the gaiety of the world, he wrote: "I threw the pearl of my soul into the cup of wine, and went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes, I lived on honeycomb; I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless ease. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in disgrace. Where I walk there are thorns, and like many or all who have placed their heaven in this earth . . . I have found the horror of hell."

He wasted his substance, and the substance wasted can never be regained, it is gone for ever. Then it is when the prodigal reaches this point in his experience that he discovers the world's true character. The mighty famine arises; and he begins to be in want, and is wanted no more. I heard of a young man who came into a large fortune at the age of 23. In a few years it had all gone, it had melted away like snow, and he had nothing left but a great quantity of corks; the corks were his only possession. But what were they and why did he keep them? It had been a notion of his whenever he split a bottle of champagne with a friend to ask him to initial the cork, and he kept these as souvenirs of the good times he had had, and now the fortune was gone, and the champagne was gone, and the friends were gone, and the corks were left. The poetess was not far wrong when, having observed that sort of thing, she wrote,

"Feast, and your halls are crowded,

Fast, and they'll pass you by

Succeed and give, and they'll let you live,

Fail, and they'll let you die."

But the prodigal of the parable had not yet reached the nadir of his fortunes; when he began to be in want the gay side of the far country had no more use for him, but a certain citizen of it to whom he joined himself thought that he could still squeeze some service out of him, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. The degradation and horror of that could only be appreciated by the Jewish audience that listened to the words of the Lord. That certain citizen is the devil; and whoever found any pity in the devil's heart? Though he transforms himself into an angel of light, as the Bible says he does, there is no mercy in him, he is "a murderer from the beginning": yet as surely as a man flies from God, he flies into the arms of the devil, whose other names are, "the dragon, that old serpent, and Satan."

It was not until he reached the level of the grunting swine, and was so hungry that he would fain have filled his belly with their food, that the prodigal came to himself, and began to assess things at their right value. What must have been his feelings as he brooded amid the wreck of his life? It has been the experience of many sinners. Thompson expressed it well in his great poem,

"In the rash lustihood of my young powers

I shook the pillaring hours,

And pulled my life upon me, grimed with smears;

I stand amid the dust of mounded years —

My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap,

My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,

Have puffed and burst like sun-starts on a stream."

The blinders are off his eyes, he sees at last, but where can he turn in his misery and despair? Who will help a wretch that the world does not want, and who may well be described as "the devil's castaway"? Memories of his father's house come back to him. The bounty of that house was proverbial, the very servants had bread enough and to spare; no beggar ever called at that house in vain, and he, a son, was perishing with hunger. "I perish with hunger" was the cry of his soul. And if his father's house was a house of plenty, what of his father himself? He will go and see, and he will cast himself upon his mercy and as he makes that decision he is encouraged to believe that his misery will move his father to pity.

God is the ruined sinner's only hope; I proclaim the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ to be the ruined sinner's only hope and more than friend. He loves the souls of men and the cry of need ever reaches His heart. When a sinner sinks to the lowest depths of his degradation he may still look up and meet a God whose heart yearns after him with unspeakable love. We have a telling incident in Old Testament history. Nebuchadnezzar, the great king, because of his pride had been reduced to the level of the beasts, and for seven years he ate grass like an ox, until his hair grew like eagle's feathers and his nails like birds' claws. At last his reason returned to him, he came to himself, and where could he look when he realised how debased he had become? He would be an object of contempt to the meanest of his slaves and would shrink away from their sight; but then, at that very time and in that condition, he says, "I lifted up mine eyes to heaven." He could turn to God. But here is something greater than that. The prodigal says, "I will arise and go to my father." But his father had risen up before him, and had prepared everything for his return and welcome. God is ahead of the sinner and heaven's rich provision and the Father's welcome awaits every prodigal that arises to return to God.

Chapter 13

"I will arise and go"

"I will arise and go unto my father, and will say unto him, 'Father, I have sinned'."

"Lord" from Thee I went astray,

Lured by magic song.

Through dim places far away

I have wandered long.

Now when lost are moon and star,

Shines the light of Home afar."

—

"Then within His home He brought me

Brought me where the feast was spread,

Made me eat with Him my Father

I who begged for bondsman's bread."

Look at the prodigal as he arises from the swine field to go to his father; his burdened conscience and the load of shame that weighs upon his soul make the going heavy; his need drives him homeward but he does not run, and often he hesitates, for he has gone so far away that it seems impossible that he should ever reach his father's house again. It would be impossible if it depended on his efforts, or even upon the sincerity of his repentance, but another and a greater factor enters the story, it is the father's love. "When he was yet a great way off" — the word is the same as the far country — "his father saw him," — How keen are the eyes of love! "And had compassion on him" — How tender is the heart of love! "and ran," — How swift are the feet of love! "and fell on his neck and kissed him." Love cannot be restrained. He covered him with kisses, for that is the word. Consider well the activity and extravagance of the father's love

Is that the way that God greets and treats returning sinners? It is nothing less than that that the parable teaches. But when the Lord told this story was He not exaggerating, did He not lay on the colours too brightly? That were impossible, for He is the Truth, and nothing but the truth and the whole truth could come out of His mouth. But why should God act in this way to those who can bring nothing to Him but their sin and shame? There is but one answer to that question. "God is love," and the love that fills His heart for men finds its relief and its delight in covering the multitude of their sins by His kiss, and driving all fear out of their hearts by His love. I speak out of my own experience, which answers most blessedly to the words of the parable.

"Yet a great way off He saw me,

Ran to meet me as I came;

As I was my Father loved me,

Loved me in my sin and shame."

It was now the time for the prodigal to speak, and his own need and his father's love gave directness and brevity to his speech, "Father," he said, "I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son." Here was sincerity and true repentance. He made no excuses; he did not cast the blame upon others; he did not even plead for mercy. In that sacred, solemn hour all others were forgotten but his father and himself — his sin and his father's love. This is the way that the sinner comes to God and is welcomed by the love that is greater than his sin. Then the whole truth comes out, for all was known before, and all is confessed and forgiven, and were this not so, no sinner could be happy in the presence of God. Let us anticipate for a moment and consider this son seated at his father's table, and suppose that his father had not known all his sins and forgiven all. He is not happy, his eye is on the door; every time it opens he is afraid that someone from the far country is about to enter the house to tell his father of some shame of his of which he does not know; says the son to himself, "If my father discovers all, he will spurn me from his table and drive me from his doors." But no, he is afraid of no report of his doings in the far country reaching his father's ears; he can say, he knows all, even the worst; he knew it all before I confessed it, and he has forgiven all he knows. "Thou God seest me," is a word that has made many tremble, it is a word that fills the heart that knows the gospel with peace and joy, for it means that God has forgiven all He has seen and known, there is nothing hidden from Him.

The father's answer to his son's confession is more than forgiveness for his sins, and food for his hunger, and the kitchen for his shelter, he is to have what he never had before. "Bring forth the best robe and put it on him," is the command which willing servants hasten to obey, while the son stands by and submits with an amazement that robs him of speech. He is to come into his father's house not as a slave but a son, and he must be there in such a fashion that his father shall not be ashamed of him, but be able to look upon him with complacency and pleasure, and nothing but the best will do. The ring was the pledge of an endless love and the shoes were for a son recognised as a son and not a servant. And this is the way that God acts according to His eternal purpose to all whom He receives. Infinitely more than Adam lost in Eden is given in sovereign grace.

"From the riches of His glory

Brought He costliest raiment forth.

Brought the ring that sealed His purpose,

Shoes to tread His golden courts.

Put them on me — robes of glory

Spotless as the heavens above,

Not to meet my thoughts of fitness

But His wondrous thoughts of love."

There was nothing more splendid in the father's house as he entered there by his father's side than that once prodigal boy, for he was dressed in the best that the house could produce, and not a servant in the house could say he was not fit to be there. But who shall speak of what the Father has done and will yet do for all who believe? They can say, "Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light." Col. 1: 9. "To the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved." Eph. 1. "Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and for ever, Amen." Jude 24.

"Had I an angel's raiment — fair

With heavenly gems unpriced,

That glorious garb I would not wear,

My robe is Christ."

Thus sang an old saint of God long ago, and every one that has come to the Father by Christ, the new and living way, may sing the same glad song.

Then they began to be merry, and as they feasted on the fatted calf, it was the father's joy that filled the home; it was he who said, "Let us eat, and be merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found." They began to be merry, and that divine and heavenly merriment shall never cease, for it is the joy of God in the blessing of men.

"And now in His joy He singeth,

In His joy He singeth of me,

And all the heavens make music

As the gladness of God they see —

'He was dead — he was dead, and he liveth,

He was lost, was lost and is found!'

This is the song that He singeth,

The marvellous joyful sound,

Through the open doors of heaven

Afar through the starless night

Is borne the hymn of rejoicing,

The music of God's delight."

This story of the love of God and how His love acts is incredible to all but a God-given faith, but those who have that faith believe it because Jesus told it, and His word is the word of the living God Who cannot lie. And how complete is the blessing, it is exceeding abundantly above all that they ask or think. Like the prodigal, they would have been satisfied with bread and a place in the kitchen, and that would have been infinitely beyond their deserts; instead God has forgiven them for Christ's sake, He has brought them into favour in His Beloved One, and they are permitted to hear the Beloved saying to His Father, "Father . . . Thou hast loved them as Thou hast loved Me . . . and I have declared unto them Thy Name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me, may be in them, and I in them." John 17.

What an answer to the cold and bitter sarcasm of the Pharisees is this story of the love of God for sinful men! And what an answer to the devil's lie in Eden! In this love, so amazing, so divine, the weary sinner finds complete repose and, made fit for the Father's presence, worships at His feet.

Chapter 14

Joy in Heaven

"Likewise I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth."

"There is joy in heaven to-night,

And the angels all look on,

Yet it is not their's that deep delight,

Though their praise swells loud at the glorious sight

Of another repentant one.

The delight is Thine, O God,

For in Thee we find the source

Of that stream of love so deep and broad,

'Tis a stream that none can fathom or ford,

It has flowed by Calvary's cross.

Blessed Lord, we hear Thy voice

Saying, Friends, rejoice with Me,

And our hearts are filled with Thine own deep bliss,

We can share Thy joy in a world like this,

And throughout Eternity."

Joy in heaven! Joy in the presence of the angels of God! Do then the angels of God rejoice? They do surely, but this is not their joy, it is the joy of God — the joy of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. It is the joy of God that fills heaven when one sinner on earth repents! and all who are there see it, and participate in it. It is a most wonderful thing, and as we consider it we learn what is most to be valued on earth: not gold, or fame and worldly honours, but men, the souls of men, sinners though they be. But could there be anything else but joy in heaven? Well, sorrow and crying and pain and death belong to this world where sin reigns, and these sad things are the progeny of sin, and sin cannot enter heaven where God dwells, and yet — we read some strange and wonderful words in Genesis 6 "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart." Think of that — God grieved at His heart! grieved because men were prodigal men, selling their precious souls to sin and the devil. Was there no sadness in heaven when God was grieved at His heart? Was Jesus sad when He wept over prodigal Jerusalem? Yes, the tears on His cheeks and the lament on His lips were proof of that, and He was God manifest in the flesh, and when He wept the sorrow of God poured itself out in human tears, and heaven was sad. So I conclude that in those ancient times when God grieved over the wickedness of men, there was sadness in heaven. Does anyone suppose that it gave God pleasure to sweep that generation away with a flood? Judgment is His strange work, and a necessity when He executes it, but mercy is His joy. The memory of that judgment soon passed away, and again "the Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God," and the result of that search was sadly recorded, "They are all gone aside, they are altogether filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one." Psalm 14. And must there not have been sorrow in heaven because of that, sorrow because men sought not God, nor desired to?

"But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son into the world." Then there was joy in heaven, and the joy was great. The midnight sky was lit with the glory of the Lord, and His angel came down and announced to the shepherds on the hills of Bethlehem, "Behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." Because the Saviour had come to turn men back to God from destruction, the joy of heaven broke all its bounds, and a multitude of the heavenly hosts proclaimed their gladness by praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men." Then said those shepherds one to another, "Let us go even to Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us." And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger. That Babe was Emmanuel — God with us and the name that was given to Him was JESUS — which means Jehovah the Saviour.

No story is better known in Christendom than that; would to God its meaning were understood. He had come from His eternal throne to open up a way of repentance for lost and prodigal men, that they might turn, and turning meet a pardoning God; and the joy of heaven at His birth into the world was in anticipation of that. But for this He had to die and rise again from the dead on the third day, and such was the value of the souls of men that He came for that. The gospel that Paul preached, and there is no other true gospel, was, "That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures." 1 Corinthians 15. His resurrection was as necessary as His death, for in that same chapter, written to those who had believed this gospel, it is said, "If Christ be not raised your faith is vain: ye are yet in your sins." It was after His resurrection that the Lord said to His disciples, "Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name, among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." Luke 24.

The gospel of God is a call to men to repent, which means turn and return; thus the prodigal repented when he arose to go to his father — God offers an eternal forgiveness to all men, it is this that is proclaimed in the gospel, but those only who repent receive this priceless boon. Repentance is a turning to God from the sinful way, because it is realised that it is the way of death, and that God is other than He is supposed to be, that He is not as men have imagined Him, a hard master, an almighty tyrant out of whose presence they had better keep as long as they may, but that He is full of tender pity, that He calls them to come to Him from their wanderings, and will welcome them when they come with the kiss of forgiveness. He gave His only begotten Son to judgment and death that He might do this righteously — that He might be a just God and a Saviour, and of such value are the souls of men in His sight, that He rejoices over every one that repents.

I have seen a wayward but repentant son weeping for his sins and the sorrow he had caused his father, upon that father's shoulder, while the arms of the old man embraced him and tears rolled down his cheeks, and everyone in the house wept in sympathy with the father's joy. It was an echo on earth of the joy of heaven. I have heard a mother say when her son had turned to God, "Now Lord, lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation." Her joy was heaven's joy reaching down to earth. I had preached the gospel on a Sunday evening in Detroit, U.S.A., and a lady said to me, "My nephew was with me to-night and was very much moved, I wanted him to stay and speak to you, but he is reticent and did not care to, but if you will come to my home he will see you there." "Certainly," I said, "I'll come with you with pleasure." I was told that he was in his early twenties, and that his mother, more than 1,000 miles away in Canada, had long prayed for his salvation, and knowing that he was to attend this particular gospel meeting had decided to spend the whole time in prayer for him. We waited and waited for him and wondered why he did not come. He came at last when we had almost given up hope of him, and a wonderful joy rang in his voice as he said, "I have found Him." "Do you mean that you have found the Saviour?" I asked. "Yes," he said, "and I'm sorry to have kept you waiting so long, but I wanted my mother to be the first to hear the news, so I went into the city to telegraph it to her." But she was not the first to hear the news, before the electric wires carried it to her, heaven had got it. How greatly she rejoiced, yes, but her joy was the joy that had begun in heaven, she was near enough to God to participate in His joy.

There will always be sorrow for sin in the heart of the one who repents, but repentance is more than sorrow for sin it is a complete change of mind, that turns the whole man as the helm turns the ship. The Thessalonians repented when they turned to God from idols. Saul of Tarsus repented when he cried out to Jesus, whom he had hated, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" A young man whom I met repented when he said to me, "I've had a look into eternity and I want to be saved." Repentance comes when the light shines into a man's heart and he becomes honest to God and confesses the truth, and casts himself upon God's mercy. When the publican stood afar off and would not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven, but smote upon his breast saying, "God be merciful to me a sinner," he repented, and there was joy in heaven over him and he went down to his house justified. But repentance does not save the sinner, it is God that does that.

"It is not thy tears of repentance or prayers,

But the blood that atones for the soul."

Yet no man is saved apart from repentance. Repentance and remission of sins go together in the sinner's blessing.

We do not read that anything else causes this special joy in heaven in these gospel days and this fact shows us what God's great interest is. He does not rejoice in the discoveries of science, whatever is discovered is His creation and He knows all things from the beginning, nor does He rejoice in the successful efforts of men to improve the standard of living, for that is merely a material and temporal gain, but He does rejoice when sinners turn to Him, when He finds that which is lost, for the sons of men are more to Him than shining worlds. He gave His Son for their salvation, and when they repent, they come into harmony with Him; they were dead but are alive again, they were lost and are found, and it is meet that heaven should make merry and be glad.

Sometimes we turn to the Scriptures and read of a time that is coming, the very thought of which thrills the soul. It is in Revelation 19 "And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to Him; for the marriage of the Lamb is come." That will be when the whole multitude of the saved are gathered home, and the work of Father, Son and Holy Ghost in regard to them is completed, then will heaven be the scene of continuous and eternal joy, but that joy begins now when one sinner repents — "They began to be merry."

Chapter 15

The Elder Son

"Now the elder son was in the field: and as he drew nigh to the house he heard music and dancing . . . and he was angry and would not go in."

The two sons in our parable do not represent those who are sons by faith in Christ Jesus, but sons of God in the sense in which Adam was a son, by creation. Luke 3: 38, and as one of the pagan poets, quoted by St. Paul, had said of all men, "We are His offspring." Acts 17: 28. Man was created in the image and after the likeness of God and set in the earth as a steward to hold it for Him. From that high honour he departed and fell when he gave his allegiance to the devil instead of to God, and he became what we see him now to be, not God-centred, but self-centred, a prodigal Adam and not an advancing and much to be congratulated ape. The race is a prodigal race, whether Pharisee or publican. Yet the heart of God yearns for men as the heart of a father yearns for a wayward son. It is this that the parable teaches.

I have heard it argued that the majority of men are not like the younger but like the elder son, and to be heartily congratulated on their upright lives and good citizenship. Well, the elder son is a problem and not easily placed. But it must be noticed that it was he who said the good things about himself. It was he who said, "Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment." Certainly he could blow his own trumpet, and he had a high estimate of his father's indebtedness to him. But look at him — an angry and jealous man! Consider him well; that which had made his father most wonderfully happy and filled his house with music, had filled him with bitter and hateful feelings. Look at the heart of the man, there is murder in it; we feel that he could have choked this vile son of his father's, if he could have demeaned himself enough to lay his hands on him; certainly he would rather he had perished in the swine field than come back to his father's house. Then he turns on his father and pours his spleen upon him. Why, through these "many years" of which he speaks, he might as well have been a thousand miles away from his father, for he had not a feeling in common with him; he had no sympathy with the compassions that filled his heart; he was morally farther away from his father than his wayward brother.

Hear him talk, "Thou never gavest me a kid." Not even a kid! what resentment, what scorn is in those words. He charges his father with unfairness, unrighteousness, with a total lack of appreciation of all his honourable service. The only righteous man in the house was himself! Then the utter selfishness that was in him came out, "that I might make merry with my friends." That was what his brother had been doing in the far country, at heart he was the same.

And he would not go in. A quaint old preacher used to say, "The younger son was too hungry to stay out, and the elder son was too angry to go in." The prodigal was driven to his father's house by his need, the Pharisee refused to be drawn by the father's grace. He may represent the Jew, of whom Paul wrote, "They please not God and are contrary to all men, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway; for wrath is come upon them to the uttermost." 1 Thessalonians 2: 16, but he also represents those self-righteous people who will not have the grace of God, and they are many.

I would rather be inside the house with the prodigal than outside with the Pharisee, for inside is the Father's love, outside is the wrath of God, and what a terrible thing it must be to be out of sympathy with God, to have not a chord in one's being that thrills to the joy of heaven, to be an alien to the life of the Father's house, and to choose to be outside of it instead of inside! Such was the elder son, and what will he do? A great blasphemer of God is reported to have said as his life ebbed away, "O thou almighty but most indulgent God, hell will be refuge if it hides me from Thee," and it seems to me that hell will be preferable to heaven to the man who has the unregenerate heart of the elder son.

But why did the father go out and entreat him, and say, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine"? The father's heart yearned for the elder son as much as for the younger son, and the grace that was in him when he went out to him ought to have dispelled his anger, and opened his eyes to see what a father he had got; and it may be that the father recognised that he had not wasted his substance as the younger son had. God's grace puts no premium on vice, and the man who keeps himself from the grosser sins is not so great a sinner outwardly as the profligate. He may be only a fifty pence debtor in contrast to the five hundred pence debtor. Moreover, this man, if we can carry our thoughts back to the days in which the Lord lived, was one of those who never missed the services at the synagogue, he would be careful to keep the fasts and be strict as to all the outward observances of the law, he has his counterpart to-day in the religionist. The father did not charge him with gross conduct, he recognised the outward respectability and put all that he had within his reach, but he would have none of it, he would not go in. Can we not feel the sob in the father's words? Here was that that marred the joy; the father might have rejoiced over two sons; one of them refused to give him the opportunity and was a grief to his heart.

As long as the door was open, he refused to enter in, but when the door was shut, ah, what then?

In chapter 13 of our Gospel, we read, "When once the Master of the house hath risen up and shut to the door, then ye shall stand without and knock and say, Lord, Lord open to us," and further they will say, "we have eaten and drunk in Thy presence, and Thou hast taught in our streets." There they are, the elder sons who would not have the grace of God, outside the closed door. "But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out. And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God. And behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last." Luke 13: 27-30.

And, further God will be angry. "Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant . . . None of those men that were bidden shall taste of my supper" ch. 14. And what will the angry Pharisee do in the presence of God's anger?

Chapter 16

The Rich Man's Doom

"And in hell, he lift up his eyes, being in torments . . . I am tormented in this flame."

"Thy song is at an end,

Thy harp shall solace thee no more,

All mirth has died upon thy grave,

The melody that could not save

Has perished on death's sullen wave,

That flung thee on that shore."

No man of proper feeling could speak lightly of the doom of those who "die in their sins." Next to those three mysterious hours of darkness endured by the Saviour on the cross of Calvary, there is no subject so solemn and appalling, and yet since it has its place among the truths of Holy Scripture, it cannot be ignored. But here the preacher of the Word must put a curb on his imagination lest he dishonour God and stumble men; his thoughts must be formed and controlled by what is written.

The Feast prepared for all men, and the Father's welcome to the worst of sinners, precede in this Gospel the story of the rich man and Lazarus, and this I believe is divinely ordered. First a full and eternal salvation offered to all, then the solemn warning to those who are disposed to despise that salvation. "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" The rich man's doom is the answer to that question. There is no escape. The warning was given to the proud Pharisees, who hated the Lord because of His care for sinners, and who considered themselves quite good enough for God without forgiveness and grace, and who supposed that such wealth as the rich man wasted on himself was evidence of God's favour. The Sadducees also mingled with the crowds that thronged to listen to the Saviour's words; they had persuaded themselves that there was no life beyond this, and would consequently congratulate the rich man not only on his wealth but on his wisdom in using it for his own pleasure. Their pernicious doctrines and influence were spreading among the people and had to be exposed. The progeny of these two sects is numerous to-day, more numerous perhaps than ever before, hence these warning words are needed now as they were when the Lord spoke them. Truth does not become outworn by time, it is eternal.

It was the Lord's own hand that drew aside the curtain that we might look into eternity; and by His own mouth this most solemn of all parables, if indeed it is a parable, was uttered. Who could tell us the truth as to the future but He? And love was behind the telling of it, for it is the way of true love to warn when its wooings fail. It is not the final doom of the wicked that the Lord here describes, but the sufferings of the intermediate state; that which lies between the death of the body and its resurrection at the judgment of the great white throne. Revelation 20. The souls that share the rich man's place and state in hades are remanded there until that last dread assize.

The rich man clothed himself in purple and fine linen and made good cheer in splendour every day. He lived for the present and forgot the future — he forgot eternity, and his sins and God. This alas, is the folly of thousands. He lived as did the rich fool of chapter 12 and as those did who despised the great Supper in chapter 14. He was a self-centred man, who gratified his fleshly pride and lust to his full bent; he left God out of his life and reckoning, and cared nothing for the stricken beggar at his gate, but left him to suffer and starve and die. Such a life could only move God's displeasure and wrath. But wealth and self-will cannot arrest the march of time, nor resist the power of death. Death is no respecter of persons, it claimed both the beggar and the rich man and neither could refuse its claim. The beggar's name was known in heaven, it was entered in the book of life there, and when he died angels carried him into Abraham's bosom — a Talmudic designation for the place of blessing. The rich man died also and was buried and forgotten by the successors to his wealth.

There does not appear to have been any interval between his unwilling departure from this life and his entrance into conscious torment in the next. "I am tormented in this flame," is the cry of his soul, that had indulged its slightest whim in his former life; the cravings remained, but the slightest gratification was denied. This man, no longer rich, makes no appeal to God for mercy; he had lived without Him, and died without Him, and must abide without Him and without hope for ever. He does not pray for release, for he knows that that too would be useless. He has reached that woeful hour in his soul's history when the written word must have its full meaning, "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still," and as there could be no change in his condition, there could be no release from his prison. One drop of water is all he craves, and that at the hand of the once ignored Lazarus, but that also is a relief that cannot reach him, for the great gulf is fixed never to be bridged, not even by almighty mercy, and the fountain of living water is not on his side of that fixed gulf.

This lost soul had full consciousness of his own misery and he had carried into hades a memory that could only add to his torment; and he was conscious moreover of the blessing in which Lazarus rested, in which he might have shared. It is a remarkable thing that he should then plead for his five brothers. It may be that he was responsible for the way they were living; he had set them the example and encouraged them in self-indulgent lives, and he would have them warned, for it would seem as though his torment would be increased five-fold if they came where he was, as a result of his influence and example. He pleads, If only some apparition from the unseen world would warn them, someone whom they had known in his earthly life, they would take heed and repent. No, answers Abraham, "They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them . . . If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

By this parable the notion that the soul sleeps at death until the resurrection is shown to be false; and that more pernicious teaching that the dead will have a second opportunity of salvation is exposed, and that still further lie that the spirits of the dead are anxious and able to communicate with the living is shattered. I am sure that some spirits do communicate through mediums at Spiritistic seances, for not all is fraud in those circles, but they are evil spirits — demons such as possessed men and women when the Lord came to earth, these impersonate the dead to deceive souls.

The rich man was conscious, he had no hope of salvation, he could not communicate with his brothers himself and heaven refused to allow one of the blessed to do it.

Faith cometh not by seeing apparitions and signs and wonders, but by hearing, and hearing by the word of God; there is no hope for those who refuse the word of God.

I know that some, desiring to rob this parable of all its solemn meaning, and to do away with the thought of suffering after death, have endeavoured to make it illustrate the fact that the Jew has forfeited and lost the favour of God and the Gentile has come into it. It is true that this has taken place as Romans 11 clearly tells us, but this favour of God was and is only for this life, and does not extend to the next, and this parable tells us of the next life, where all national distinctions cease to be. Moreover if the rich man represents the Jew, and Lazarus the Gentile, the whole of mankind is covered by these two races, then what section of mankind do "the five brothers" represent?

Because men naturally hate the thought of their responsibility to God, and judgment after death, they argue against it, but even while they do so their consciences tell them it must be so. I was introduced to a man of considerable intellectual powers, a great student, and one who seemed sincere in his search for truth. We had a long talk together in which I pressed the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ upon him. Several times in the course of our conversation he said, "I'll never believe in hell." My answer was, "I am not asking you to believe in hell; what I want is that you should own the once crucified, but now risen and glorified Saviour as your Lord." His final words were, "I'll never believe in hell." That night he found it hard to sleep; his conscience and his mind were in conflict, and he argued with himself, until very weary he dozed off to sleep early in the morning. It was the month of December. He awoke suddenly to see his bedroom lurid with fire, and his first thought was, "I'm in hell." It was a great factory on the opposite side of the road that was ablaze, flames leaping from the windows. His relief was beyond words, but he began to ask himself, "If there is no hell, why should I have thought that I was there on seeing the fire?" He realised that his conscience had spoken before he had had time to marshal his arguments, and, a thoroughly sobered man, he came to listen to the gospel and fled for refuge to the one and only Saviour, Jesus Christ the Lord. Six months afterwards, from across the seas he wrote, "I have found in Christ the solution of all my difficulties — He is the wisdom."

But we rest not either in man's conscience or his reason, neither is the standard of truth. We turn from man to God; we believe His word, and thank Him for its warning of love.

Chapter 17

Eternal Punishment

"These shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal." Matthew 25: 46.

"And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." Revelation 20: 15.

"One last word of solemn warning

To the world below —

One loud shout that all may hear us,

Hear us e'er we go.

Once more let that Name be sounded

With a trumpet tone,

Here amidst the thickening darkness,

Then before the throne."

If objection is raised to my interpretation of the rich man's doom on the ground that it is a parable, I would remark that it is not so called; but even if it has that character, like every other parable of the Lord it was spoken to teach us some great truth, and what can that be but that that lies clearly on the surface of it? If it is further argued that "tormented in this flame" and "great gulf fixed" is figurative language, I would answer that it is figurative of something surely, and if the figure is appalling, what must the reality be? The subject is too solemn for argument, and if the interpretation given is not in harmony with the whole of the written Word, it must be rejected. The Word of God is the test and the standard, and upon this subject of such tremendous importance it speaks not only in parable but in plain and unmistakable doctrine.

Naturally we shrink from the thought of eternal punishment as once we did from other solemn truths. The heinousness of sin, for instance, is not a pleasant contemplation until we discover that the all-cleansing blood of the Son of God has made a full atonement for us before God; death, too, fills us with fear until we learn that it has been robbed of its sting by the death of Jesus. But eternal punishment is different; if it is the truth, there is no remedy, no release for those who come under it, and it is this that makes it terrible.

We must admit that our thoughts and opinions are useless. We may rightly investigate the things that belong to this life and sphere and form opinions about them, for they lie more or less within the range of our understanding, but if we are to know anything about the unseen world and the life beyond this, we must get that knowledge from God; it must be by REVELATION from Him and not by our INVESTIGATION. And in this lies the difference between faith and the greatly flattered "modern" mind, which is practically synonymous with unbelief: the first accepts the revelation that God has given to us; the second refuses it and relies upon its own investigations. It is just here that difficulty in understanding comes in. In the things of God faith must come first; it is "by faith we understand" (Hebrews 11).

God's revelation is in the Bible. We get our knowledge of heaven from the Bible, we know nothing of heaven apart from it, but it speaks of hell as well as heaven. If we accept the one we cannot consistently reject the other. Take the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so I would have told you" (John 14: 2). If there had been no place and state of blessing beyond this life for us, He would have told us plainly; and if there had been no judgment to come, no retribution for sin, no hell, would He not also have told us? But the strongest language in the Bible as to these things came from His own lips. He spoke of some who would die in their sins and the impossibility of such going where He would be (John 8: 21, 23, 24). He said to the proud self righteous hypocrites of His day, "How shall ye escape the damnation of hell?" (Matt. 23: 14). He said, "Fear Him which, after He hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear Him" (Luke 12: 5). He it is who will say to some in the day of judgment of the living nations, "Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt. 25: 41), and of these He said, "these shall go into everlasting punishment" (Matt. 25: 46). He spoke of "outer darkness" and "weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matt. 25: 30), and "of their worm that never dies and the fire that is not quenched" (Mark 9: 46). Who dares to say that he will listen to the Lord and believe Him when He speaks of blessing, but refuse to hear and believe when He speaks of judgment?

The consciences of all men everywhere admit that there must be retribution for wrong-doing, and they act upon this in their dealings with each other; for laws are made by them and penalties inflicted upon the breach of them. Yet some would deny this right to God that they feel they must exercise themselves. "But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things" (Romans 2: 3). God is not less righteous than men; His claims and authority must be upheld, and His judgment where these are flouted will be a righteous judgment.

Others admit that God must judge evil-doing who deny that His judgment is everlasting. To such our answer is: The Bible says it is. But it is argued that "everlasting" and "eternal" when used in the Bible do not mean "never ending," The word occurs about seventy times in the New Testament, and I give some examples. "To be cast into everlasting fire." (Matt. 18: 8). "These shall go away into everlasting punishment" (Matt. 25: 46). And in the same verse, "the righteous into life eternal." "Is in danger of eternal damnation" (Mark 3: 29). "In the world to come, life everlasting" (Luke 18: 30). "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life" (John 3: 15, 16, 36; John 5: 24) "The commandment of the EVERLASTING GOD" (Rom. 16: 26). "An house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Cor. 5: 1). "They shall be punished with everlasting destruction" (2 Thess. 1: 9). "In Christ Jesus with eternal glory" (2 Tim. 2: 10). "The author of eternal salvation" (Heb. 5: 9). "Having obtained eternal redemption" (Heb. 9: 12). "Who through the ETERNAL SPIRIT offered Himself without spot to God" (Heb. 9: 14). "Called us unto His eternal glory" (1 Peter 5: 10). "This is the true God and eternal life" (1 John 5: 20). "Suffering the vengeance of eternal fire" (Jude 7). What other language could God have used to have conveyed to our minds the thought of judgment and punishment without end? And if the punishment is for a time only and not everlasting why should He have used the same word to describe it as that which describes the blessing of the saved and the eternity of His own Being, and not have said so in language about which there could have been no question?

Another argument against the truth is that reason revolts against the eternity of punishment for a lifetime of sin; but whose reason revolts against it? Quite recently there was a case of a man who received a life sentence for the attempted murder of a policeman; his reason revolted against it, he thought the sentence too heavy, too terrible; he said so, and appealed against it on that ground, but his reason was no match for the sentence of the law, his appeal was dismissed. It is not for the criminal to say what the sentence shall be; the judge decides that, and when God judges He will do it in absolute justice; "We are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth" (Romans 2: 3). He has told us what that judgment will be before any come into it, and He has done this in love that warns of it that men may escape.

But further, it is evident that the state of those who die in their sins and upon whom the judgment that comes after death will fall, remain unchanged. We do not read of any hope of repentance on their part in eternity. Three times over the Lord repeats the solemn word, "Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9: 44, 45, 48). It is generally said that "their worm" symbolizes the gnawing and remorse of the conscience, and it may indeed be this, but there is surely more in it; "their worm" speaks of corruption, and in this corrupt condition they remain unchanged for ever. Consequently the fire, symbolical of God's judgment, abides on them, it never dies out. We do not mean that these unrepentant sinners will continue sinning in hell, for as men in prison are restrained from crime, so will the lost be under the restraint of God's judgment in the lake of fire; but the sinful condition will remain, for we read, "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still" (Rev. 22: 11). And John 3: 36 is a decisive word: "He that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." He "shall not see life" shatters the false hope of the universalist, and the wrath of God abiding on him meets the error of the annihilationist.

Now if there is no judgment for sin, or if that judgment is of a limited or temporal sort; if, for instance, sin can be expiated by a period in purgatorial fires, why did Christ die? And do we not here come to the heart of the whole question? If the punishment for sin is not everlasting, it did not require an infinite sacrifice to atone for it, and a lesser person than Christ could have made it. But the fact that "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son" that men might not perish, is proof enough that they would and will perish apart from Him. It is the "whosoever believeth in Him" that escapes this awful doom. To deny eternal punishment is to belittle the greatness of God's gift, and the work and death of Christ, and to make sin against God but a matter of small account.

The cross of Christ, on which He gave Himself a ransom for all, is the great proof of God's love for men and the length He would go to save them; He could not have done more, and less would not have availed. But that cross is also the great proof that God cannot pass by the sins of men as though they were nothing at all. He would not be a God of holiness and truth if He did; hence the gospel that proclaims His love and grace also reveals His wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men (Romans 1: 18). How shall those who have refused to repent of their sins to God, and have neglected His great salvation, escape His wrath? His goodness and long suffering have been expended on them, but all in vain, they have not obeyed the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and must be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His power (2 Thess. 1: 8). Thus the Bible teaches, and to reject its clear statements and believe instead the reasonings of the human mind is blind folly.

The greatness of God's love has been revealed in the gift of His Son for our salvation (see John 3: 16; Romans 5: 8; 1 John 4: 9, 10). The universality of His mercy is manifested in the offer of salvation to all without any exception, but the eternal punishment of impenitent sinners will be an eternal witness to the infinite character of His wrath against sin, a wrath that will be as perfect and just as His mercy.

But judgment is God's strange work. He will find no delight in it, though He does delight in mercy. We read that in heaven they say, when God judges, "True and righteous are His judgments" (Rev. 19: 2). That is not a joyous song; but there is joy in heaven, though it is not when judgment is executed, but when one sinner repenteth, and in that joy God's heart reveals itself, it is His own joy in which all heaven shares.

FINIS

For This Cause

"For this cause"

The Church: the Bride of the Lamb

"this is a great mystery but I speak concerning Christ and the church" Ephesians 5: 32.

J. T. Mawson

"Scripture Truth" Series — No. 1.

Contents

Behold the Bridegroom

The End of the Voyage

The Holy Spirit's Chief Work

The Lord's Triple Claim to Our Love

The Grace that Meets Our Need

The Glory of His Person

His Suffering Love

Espoused to one Husband

The Espousals

The Spring-time of Love

The Answer of the Great Lover

Christ Everything

"For this cause"

The Deep Sleep: the Help Meet

The Father's Purpose

The Early Morning: the Father and the Son

The Heat of the Day: the Faithful Servant

The Eventide: the Meeting of the Bridegroom and the Bride

The Catching up of the Church

The Lord's Last Words

Satan's Complete Defeat

The Law of Gravitation

That Blessed Hope

The Marriage of the Lamb

The Judgment of the False Church

Great Joy and its Cause

The Lamb

His Wife hath made Herself Ready

The Marriage Robe

How it is Being Prepared

The Holy City

The Bride, the Lamb's Wife

Having the Glory of God

The Wall of the City

Four Square, and Ever-open Gates

The Street of Gold

God is the Light and the Lamb the Lamp

The Pure River of the Water of Life

The Tree of Life

The Lord God Giveth them Light

The Eternal State

God All in All

The Tabernacle of God

Conclusion

Shine forth, O Lord

"Behold the Bridegroom"

The End of the Voyage. — The Holy Spirit's Chief Work.

"Be ye also ready." — Luke 12: 40.

As the mist lifted from the horizon, our port came into view; rising up from the sea the Table Mountain reared its head to the sky and Capetown stretched itself out at the foot of it, as though proudly secure beneath the shadow of a mighty protector. Most of us were glad that we had reached the end of the voyage, but there were two of our fellow passengers who interested me more than the rest, and whose feelings as the good ship steamed into the bay, must have been as different as it was possible for them to be. One was a bride-to-be, the other a criminal, in charge of the police. The bride was eager and expectant as she leaned over the rail of the vessel and scanned the jetty through borrowed binoculars in search of the man she loved and trusted; and it was easy to see when she had got sight of him, for the glasses were dropped suddenly and the handkerchief was waved excitedly. The criminal stood back from the crowd with the handcuffs upon his wrists, a dejected figure. The end of the voyage meant hopes realized, a husband, and gladness and home for the bride; it meant a judge, and conviction, and punishment to follow for the criminal.

We are all moving on to the end of the voyage, the mists that veil the future will lift from our eyes soon. Shall we behold the Saviour as our heavenly Bridegroom? Shall we in that hour come to the realization of that blessed hope? Or shall we meet Him as the Judge, who with divine and inexorable justice will deal with our guilty lives and condemn them? It must be one or the other. Those who have believed the gospel, who have come as sinners to the feet of the great Saviour, and there heard His voice of pardon, shall meet Him as the Bridegroom when He comes, but those who have refused His mercy, and loved their sins rather than God's salvation, shall meet Him as the Judge. There can be no escape from this; whether living or dead they shall meet Him as the Judge, for "He hath commanded us to preach and to testify that this is He who shall be judge of quick and dead."

My book is for those who are saved, for those who can say the Son of God "loved me and gave Himself for me." I have good news for them, the best of news — it is that the Saviour, who died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and was buried, and rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures, and ascended to the right hand of God in the sight of His disciples, is coming again. Yes, Jesus is coming again, and you are to meet Him as the Bridegroom. The cry has gone forth, "Behold the Bridegroom, go ye out to meet Him."

THE HOLY SPIRIT'S CHIEF WORK

"The Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me." — John 15: 26.

Every one who has believed the gospel of our salvation has been sealed by the Holy Ghost (Eph. 1: 13). He dwells in each one, and by His indwelling He has bound them all together into one indivisible body, and this Holy Ghost indwelt body is to be the bride, the wife of the Lamb. This is really the subject of my book, and my desire in issuing it is that the hearts of many may be filled with hope, and be stirred up and eager for the end of the voyage, for the coming of the Bridegroom.

I have been asking myself why the blessed hope of the coming again of the Lord Jesus seems to move the hearts of Christians so little. Many believe it as a doctrine — they know that it must be so, because the Bible so clearly speaks of it, but that is all. It does not stir them and change them, they are not like unto men that wait for their Lord. What is the reason? I believe it is because the Holy Ghost is greatly hindered in His greatest work within them. He has been given to us, not in the first place to enable us to be free from the dominion of sin, or to give us power for service — He can and will do both — but there is something greater than these great things; they will be the natural consequence of His chief work in us if He is not hindered in it. What is that work? It is to make Christ supreme in the affections, to make Him everything to us. Let us learn this from the Lord's own words in the Gospel of John. He said, "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you" (John 14: 26). And again, "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, HE SHALL TESTIFY OF ME" (John 15: 26). And again, "Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide you into all truth, for He shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak, and He will show you things to come. HE SHALL GLORIFY ME: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are Mine: therefore said I, that He shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you" (John 16: 13, 14, 15).

In this little book, reference is made to Abraham's servant, who went into the distant land to bring back from it a wife for his master's son. The friends of the damsel besought him that she might remain with them for a little while. They were ready to acknowledge that it would be good for her to go, but they were against undue haste, they were not exactly enthusiastic about the matter, it was not all-important in their view of things. The servant's answer to their request was peremptory and final, "Hinder me not," he said. He would not loiter uselessly or waste his time in that distant land. The joy of his master and his master's son was before him; and the supreme matter in his thoughts was to fulfil his mission faithfully. To them who were awaiting the success of his mission he would hasten the bride.

Have we learnt that to gather out of the world a bride for Christ and to lead her home to Him is the supreme work of the Holy Ghost? If those who are saved have more heart for the world and for earthly things, than they have for the Lord and His things, the Holy Ghost is hindered in His great work. If we are inclined to loiter on the homeward way, or if going forth to meet the Bridegroom is not the all-important thing with us, we might well hear a grieved Holy Spirit saying to us, "Hinder Me not." We cannot separate the bright hope of the coming again of the Lord Jesus from the work of the Holy Spirit within us; we shall not be eager to see Him as He is, if we have not ears to hear what the Spirit has to say to us. He has come to: —

"Speak of Jesus and His love,

Passing all bounds of human thought."

He has come to unfold the glories of the Son of God to our souls. He wants our whole hearts for Christ and is delighted when He gets them; He is grieved and hindered when He does not.

It is remarkable that the last mention of the Holy Spirit in Holy Scripture is in the last chapter of the Bible, where we read, "The Spirit and the bride say, Come." It shows us the end and the climax of the Spirit's work. Here we have "the unity of the Spirit" in practical manifestation, for here we see the hearts of the saints bound together in one great desire for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. For this the Spirit of God is labouring. He is taking the things of Christ and showing them to the saints of God, and in this way He is tuning their hearts into full unison with His own, so that the Lamb may hear at last the music of this prayer from the heart of the bride, "EVEN SO, COME, LORD JESUS."

The Lord's Triple Claim to Our Love

"Myrrh and aloes, cassia are all thy garments; out of the ivory palaces, stringed instruments have made thee glad." — Psalm 45: 8 (J. N. Darby's New Translation).

The Grace that Meets our Need. — The Glory of His Person. — His Suffering Love.

"We love Him because He first loved us."

Of old it was commanded, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might," and though our Lord's claim upon us is now not one whit less than that, nor could He be satisfied with anything less, it is not by commandment that He secures the love of His church or of any heart in it. Love cannot be secured in that way, as man's sad history, in every phase of it, since Sinai, declares. No, He has another way, and a way that cannot fail— He gains our love by disclosing His own; He gains His desire to have us for Himself by showing Himself to us, as brighter and better than the brightest and best that would be a rival to His claim.

His claim to our love has a triple basis: He claims us because He can meet all our needs by His grace; He claims us because of what He is in His own glorious person; He claims us because of the love that He has for us, love that led Him into the deep suffering of death on our behalf. Psalm 45 declares these three great things, and though this Psalm may have the earthly bride in view in the coming glorious millennium, yet we believe we are fully justified in using it for our present purpose, for it is full of Christ. It is Himself — and He showed His disciples things concerning Himself out of the Psalms. The end in view is that the fair daughter of a distant land might be attracted to the great King, for His joy and glory. Hence He is spoken of to her in glowing words that can apply to none but Christ.

"Grace is poured into His lips" — He speaks in tender tones to the heart, as many proved when He was here upon earth, when He spoke words in season to them that were weary: the woman by the well of Sychar, for instance, and she who wept at His feet in Simon's house, and the widow who mourned her only son, and the palsied man who groaned beneath a load of sin, and Zaccheus, and the children, and a host of others — all these found Him to be fairer than the children of men, because of the grace that was poured into His lips. And has our experience been less blessed? We have heard His voice speaking in words of pardon and peace to our once troubled and burdened hearts. Grace has poured out of His lips for us. Yes, we know from blessed experience what grace is His, we have heard His voice saying:

"Lay down, thou weary one,

Lay down, thy head upon My breast."

THE GLORY OF HIS PERSON

But He is glorious as well as gracious. His arrows are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies. He stands out in His glory above every name that is named. He will be triumphant over all that hate Him, even as He is tender to all who hear His voice and love Him. This also must be declared of Him, that we may know that His grace to us is not weakness. In His majesty He will ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness— three great attributes that will show themselves when He comes forth to judge, but which were not wanting when He stooped to save us.

He is as great as He is gracious, for He is God, with an everlasting throne, and nothing could exceed the significance of this; for if He is God, His claim must be supreme. It stands before all other claims. The claims of father, mother, brother, sister, husband, wife, children, and self also, must recede into the background when He puts in His claim. None other than God has a right to supersede these relationships which He has ordained, but He who would win our undivided hearts, is God, whose throne is for ever and ever, and to His claim we must yield.

But the final appeal is more touching than all; verse 8 of our Psalm is given in J. N. Darby's New Translation, as "Myrrh and aloes and cassia are all thy garments; out of the ivory palaces, stringed instruments have made thee glad." These fragrant spices which clothe our Saviour like a garment stir our memories; they carry us back to the time when instead of glory and honour, a life of sorrow was His. It is of this that the myrrh speaks. The wise men from the east were divinely guided when they gave their gifts to Him as He lay in His mother's arms in the house— gold, frankincense and myrrh. The gold spoke of His divine glory; the frankincense of His holy, fragrant humanity; and the myrrh of His suffering even unto death. They represented the way that He took — three great steps, if you will: —

"From Godhead's fullest glory,

Down to Calvary's depth of woe."

We look back to it now and it is the fragrance of the myrrh that greets us and attracts us. We might remain unmoved in the presence of His majesty, but whose heart will not melt in the presence of His suffering?

HIS SUFFERING LOVE

The aloes, the central spice of the three, speaks of the love that lay behind all the suffering. It was more fragrant and prized than all other spices; nothing to be compared with it ever came out of the mysterious East. I found in an old dictionary the following account of it: "It was the inner wood, or heart, of a tree that grew in India, exceedingly fragrant, worth more than its weight in gold, and said to be a sovereign cordial for all fainting fits and nervous disorders." If the learned compiler of that dictionary had intended to give a description of the love of Christ he could not have succeeded better.

The aloes tree had to be cleft to its heart if the fragrance of it was to be disclosed, and it was on the cross of Calvary, when cleft by the sword of God's judgment against our sin, that the heart of Christ disclosed all the greatness of His love, and there is nothing in the universe more fragrant than that — the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. Further, His love is far more precious than gold. If the world could give all the gold it possesses and offer it to us in exchange for the knowledge of the love of Christ, would any of us exchange that knowledge for that great price? We would not, for His love is more precious than gold. It cannot be purchased, but it has poured out its priceless wealth without reserve for us. It is said to be a sovereign remedy for all fainting fits. Do we grow weary and faint in the pilgrim way that leads us to our glorious destiny — the marriage of the Lamb? There is a sovereign remedy for such a state, let us lean upon the arm and heart of our Beloved and taste afresh the cordial of His love.

Further, it is the sovereign remedy for all nervous disorders. It is the united love of His church that the Lord looks for, but these are difficult days in which the devil has succeeded in sadly dividing the hearts of His loved ones. There seems to be an epidemic of what might well be called spiritual neurasthenia. The symptoms scarcely need to be described — they are irritability, hypersensitiveness, fault-finding, and strife, and where these things are there may be sighing and crying in secret, but there is no united crying for the coming of the Lord. What is the remedy? The aloes was the cordial for nervous disorders. This is the remedy — the suffering love of Christ, one full draught of this love is enough to allay the fever, sooth the spirit, throw things into their true proportion and perspective, and heal every sore and breach.

The meaning of the cassia is not so easy to determine, but it may set forth that same love that brought the Lord down from the glory into a life of suffering, and down into death and deep darkness, come forth now in resurrection, unchanged by all that it has suffered. This I believe it to be. "Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them to the end," and will for ever more. He has come forth in resurrection and shows Himself to us now in the glory, yet fragrant with all the love that led Him to die.

What answer could there be to such a presentation of Himself? Only one. He must be made glad by the music of the stringed instruments out of the ivory palaces. Our hearts are such palaces in His reckoning — He desires to make them His dwelling-places. Do we welcome Him with gladness and praise, as Zacchaeus did when the Lord said to him, "To-day I must abide at thy house"? He looks for this, it is His due. "In psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord."

But while our Lord and Saviour rightly expects that we should open our hearts to Him, this is not the end that He has in view. Nothing will satisfy Him but the marriage day. He has prepared a home for His bride; His heart is opened wide for her. So there comes the appeal, "Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear: forget also thine own people, and thy father's house: so shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for He is thy Lord; and worship thou Him."

"What needest thou with thy tribe's black tents,

When thou hast the red pavilion of My heart."

In the New Testament also it is the presentation of Himself that wins the desired response. In Revelation 22. He makes a direct and personal appeal to us all: "I Jesus . . . am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning Star." His name — His precious name — like ointment poured forth, revives our affections; His glory commands our admiration; His beauty as the morning Star awakens our hopes, and in unison with the Spirit we can answer this revelation of Himself by the one word He desires to hear: "Come" — "Even so, come, Lord Jesus."

Espoused to one Husband

"I am jealous over you with godly jealousy for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." — 2 Corinthians 11: 2.

The Espousals. — The Spring-time of Love. — The Answer of the Great Lover. — Christ Everything.

THE ESPOUSALS

What a change it makes in a Christian's outlook when he discovers the fact that he is loved by the Lord and that he is precious and desirable in His sight. When this knowledge comes to us — and it is true of everyone who has owned the Lord's claims and trusted Him as Saviour — we are lifted on to a new plane in our thoughts of Him. We shall not think less of all that He has done for us, instead, we shall begin to understand the greatness of it better. We shall still be grateful for all His ways of grace with us, and shall often tell Him of them, but rest of heart in His love will be the dominant thing, and, what goes along with that, love to Him in response to it. We shall become conscious that we stand in a hitherto undreamt-of relationship to Him, a relationship in which mutual love has the chief place. This is a day of our espousals. Can we reverently contemplate the meaning of this?

This is not mere poetic imagery, for we read in the Scriptures, and wonderful are the words, "I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ" (2 Cor. 11: 2). What does this mean? It can only have one meaning. The redeemed of the Lord have been affianced to Him. He loves us and has chosen us for Himself. He has made the appeal of love to us, He has said, "I want you for myself." And we have said, "Yes," to Him. It was a happy day for us when our sins were washed away and our souls were saved and we got a sure hope of heaven, but greater than all, and the end that the Lord had in view in it all, we were then espoused to Christ, to be for Him alone, the joy and rejoicing of His heart. The marriage day has not yet come, but it is coming, and we may read about it in Ephesians 5: 25-27 and Revelation 19: 7-9.

These are the days of the espousals, and we have been espoused to a PERSON WHO LOVES US and has proved His love. It is on my heart to press this, for I fear that the Lord Jesus is not a living, bright reality to many Christians. "Christian Science" is spreading, and though no true child of God could follow the delusions of that cult, yet the spirit of it is abroad — an evil, seducing and anti-christian spirit, that would persuade us that Christ is only a divine principle in the lives of men, and not our living Saviour, Jesus our Lord, who can fill and satisfy the heart. "What matters it," say some, "whether Jesus rose from the dead or not, so long as His spirit permeates society?" And Satan beguiles many unwary souls by this sort of thing, and the very heart is taken out of their faith, and the Lord Jesus becomes to them intangible, vague, impersonal, shadowy, and distant.

But we know that Christ is a living Person, who loves us, and delights in us and in our love to Him, and that He gave Himself for us that He might wholly possess us. He can be satisfied with nothing less than our love. The greatest joy we can give to Him is to love Him, and to yield up ourselves to Him in full surrender. The greatest work we can do is to keep ourselves for Him. This is what it means to be a chaste virgin for Christ.

It may be, that like many another, you have feared His imperious and exclusive claim. You may have felt, as Francis Thompson expressed it in his striking poem:

"For, though I knew His love who followed, Yet was I sore adread —

Lest having Him, I must have naught beside."

And so you fled from Him, but: —

"Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue."

You tried elsewhere for satisfaction, but nothing blest your thirsting mouth, and still He followed you: —

"With unperturbed pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic majesty;

And passed those noised feet

A voice came yet more fleet —

Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me."

You could not evade Him and now you are His for ever. Blessed be the Lord for the persistency of His love. Now His joy in us and ours in Him lies in our being wholly for Him.

The Spring-Time of Love

"I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley."

The joy and beauty of this relationship to Christ in which we stand is illustrated for us in the Song of Solomon. Every chapter is fragrant with love, and if we read it, and are taught by the Holy Spirit as we read it, we shall find that the language, though figurative, describes the Lord's delight in us and ours in Him, when we know Him in this sweet relationship. Take the second chapter. There the bride-to-be has discovered that she is beloved, and that the one who loves her delights in her. She is precious to him; this she has learnt, and she exclaims: "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valley." These were not high thoughts of herself. The rose of Sharon was not the queen of summer as is the gorgeous flower that we call the rose; more likely than not it was the narcissus, a flower of the field, a fragrant flower no doubt, but not obtrusive and gay; and the lily of the valley grew in lowly places and out of sight, and had to be sought for by the one who valued it. BUT THESE WERE SPRING FLOWERS, and the fragrant hope of spring was in them. As they bloomed in the valleys they told of a time when the summer's glory would crown the hills. They figured forth the beginnings of love, but they were prophetic of the time when love would come to its fulness on the marriage day.

Upon this maiden the king's choice had fallen, she was to share his crown and kingdom; but not of this does she think and sing, for she is inwardly conscious of something greater than all the display of glory that was to come to her; the king loved her, this was her joy; she was precious to him, this filled her with a glad surprise; and without fear or reserve, she tells out to him what she knows she is to him. Have we reached this point in our secret experience of soul with the Lord? We can only learn it as we are near to Him, for who could teach us this but Himself? This is the beginning of love, it is "first love." It is more than what He has done for us, it is Himself who has done it. We do not lose the benefaction, but we have the Benefactor. We are one with the Lord, for "he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit" (1. Cor. 6: 17). The freshness and the hope of the spring flowers are in this experience, and in it there is the pledge that the day will surely come when He will present the church to Himself, "a glorious church not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing."

THE ANSWER OF THE GREAT LOVER

"As the lily among the thorns, so is my love among the daughters."

But hear the answer that this great lover gives to his chosen bride. He takes up her own words, but he adds to them. He adorns them and makes them glow with his love. He makes them the opportunity of showing her the great manifestation of his great love for her, and so increases her confidence in him and enlarges her affection for him. "As the lily among the thorns, so is my love among the daughters," he says.

Let us get at the heart of this, and understand what it means for us in our relationship with the Lord. Dr. Thompson in his well-known book, The Land and the Book, says of this lily: "Our flower delights most in the valleys; but it is found also on the mountains. It grows among thorns, and I have sadly lacerated my hands in extricating it from them." Does the fact that the lily grew among the thorns need any interpretation? If we can say, "I am the lily of the valley," if we know that we are this to Christ, His answer is, "Yes, but the lily among thorns." He would have us remember that it cost Him something to secure us for Himself. How lacerated was He in extricating us from the tangled thorns in which we grew! He showed to His disciples His hands and side, when He came to them in resurrection. Nothing could drive the cold unbelief from the soul of Thomas, but a sight of His wounds. And He would not that we should forget them. It is as though He said to us: —

"Behold with what labour I won thee,

Behold in My hands and My feet,

The tale of My measureless sorrow,

The love that made suffering sweet."

His body was lacerated, but His soul was lacerated, too, for before He could have His lilies for Himself and extricate them from the thorns, His soul had to be made an offering for sin. Can anything move the hard heart like this? We do not love Him and adore Him because the brightest crowns of heaven shine upon His worthy brow; we are glad that He is crowned with glory, but it is not that that won our hearts. We love Him because that same brow was crowned with thorns, and because He was put to shame upon a cross when He came forth in His great love to tread the thorny way to save us for Himself. To the utmost His love was tried, and it stood the test. It passeth knowledge. When we realize this, and the wonder of it fills our souls, we do not say, "Thank God WE are saved!" setting the "we" in the centre of our sentence and thoughts; but we say, "Oh, what it cost HIM to make us His." He is the centre of our sentence, and relief and thanksgiving deepen into wonder and worship.

The suffering is all past but His love abides, and the suffering will not be forgotten, for when the great marriage day comes, and all heaven rejoices in the gladness of it, it is the marriage of the LAMB that is celebrated (Rev. 19), and the bride is the LAMB'S WIFE (Rev. 21). Thus the sorrows of the cross and the joys of love's consummation are joined the one to the other; the Lamb who suffered will see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied on that great day. But while we wait for that day, the love of Christ is a present reality, and we who are espoused to Him may have the joy of communion with Him now, and constrained by His love, live not unto ourselves, but unto Him who died for us and rose again; and for this He yearns.

If any heart has been indifferent to His yearnings and has been closed against Him, let His own words move and melt it now" Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me."

CHRIST EVERYTHING

"He brought me into his banqueting house and his banner over me was love."

In this communion of love the maiden responds to the king, not now to speak of herself, but of him who fills her thoughts. Her words are great words, and the music of pure love swells in them. "As the apple tree among the trees of the wood," she says, "so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me into his banqueting house, and his banner over me was love." Have we so learnt Christ? If so our vagrant desires, our restlessness of spirit have ceased and we have found satisfaction and a great hope. It was thus with Mary of Bethany at the feet of Jesus, when she heard His word, and when she poured out her precious ointment upon Him; it was thus with John, the beloved, when he leaned his head upon Jesus' breast at supper; and with Thomas, of the doubtful mind, when he cried, "My Lord and my God"; and with Paul the Apostle when he exclaimed, "The Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." What a blessed experience this is, and the more deeply it is known in its present joy, the more will the heart long for the day of presentation, for the marriage day. Then there will be no more need for watchfulness; faithfulness to Christ in a hostile and seductive world will be called for no more. We shall have reached eternal rest.

We shall be beyond the reach of Satan's beguilings then, but now there is nothing he hates more than this personal intimacy with and joy in Christ. Hence the fear expressed by the apostle in those words of warning: "But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from simplicity as to Christ." His purpose is to draw us away from this "first love." How often he succeeds to our shame, and we have to sing sadly: —

"Yet, Lord, alas what weakness,

Within myself I find;

No infant's changing pleasure

Is like my wandering mind."

If the backsliding is not quickly arrested how soon we become neither "cold nor hot," a state of heart that is obnoxious to the Lord.

We would not willingly be untrue to Christ; but Satan is subtle, and if we are to be kept from his snares we must depend upon and commune with our Lord. "He brought me into his banqueting house, and his banner over me is love." To abide there is to abide in a safe place, and to be satisfied with Him.

"There all His gracious favour

May to our souls be known;

And versed in this His goodness,

Our hopes HIMSELF shall crown."

"For this cause"

"And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him." — Genesis 2: 18.

"And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man." — Genesis 2: 23.

"For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh." — Ephesians 5: 31.

The Deep Sleep, — The Help Meet.

If we are to understand God's purposes we must not neglect any part of His Word. The Holy Scriptures are not so many loose fragments gathered together in a haphazard way, but one complete whole. "No Scripture is of private interpretation," which means that no Scripture stands alone; each part has its connection with every other part. The beginning of Genesis finds its answer at the end of Revelation, and in the building of a help-meet for Adam there was foreshadowed the great purpose that was in the heart of God for the glory and joy of His beloved Son. Adam was made in the image and likeness of God, and was set in dominion over this lower creation to represent God to it. The greatness of his mind was proved in that when God brought the animals to him he was able to give each a name that described its character. God had crowned him with glory and honour and set him over the works of His hands. But he had a heart as well as a mind, and none of the animals nor all the power and glory with which he was crowned in Eden could satisfy his heart. Nothing could do this but a companion who could understand his love and reciprocate it. Hence God said, "It is not good for man to be alone, I will make a help-meet for him." And with this in view God casts him into a deep sleep and took a rib from his side, and with it He built the woman, and when Adam awoke he said, "This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." She was taken out of himself and she satisfied his heart. The New Testament tells us that Adam was a figure of Him that was to come, even Christ. He is to have universal dominion, for He has been set far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come. In that place of glory and power He must have His help-meet, who shall be more to Him than all the glory, one who shall satisfy His heart for evermore. "For this cause," says the Word of God, "shall a man leave his father and mother and be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh." For this cause, that He might have the church for Himself, and one with Himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, Christ went down into death, so great was His love: —

"Down beneath those sunless waters,

He from heaven has passed;

He has found His heart's desire,

Found His pearl at last."

"For this cause He died dishonoured,

As a felon dies;

For His church, the pearl all priceless,

In the Saviour's eyes."

There was no other way by which He could secure His church for Himself, for the power of death had to be broken that His loved ones might be free. As Eve was taken out of Adam when he was thrown into the deep sleep, so the church has sprung out of the death of Christ. "This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church."

The Father's Purpose

"And Abraham rose up early in the morning . . . and Isaac . . ." — Genesis 22.

The Early Morning: The Father and the Son. — The Heat of the Day: The Faithful Servant. — The Eventide: The Meeting of the Bridegroom and the Bride.

THE EARLY MORNING

The first time that LOVE is mentioned in the Bible is here: "Take now thy son, thine only son, Isaac, whom thou lovest." It is the love of the father to the son, and it typifies for us the first and the greatest of all loves, and the source from which all true love has flowed, the love of God the Father for His Son. This is a most wonderful theme, and we must consider it, for we should never have been brought into these most blessed relations to the Lord in which we now stand, and are yet to stand, apart from it. I believe that we may justly say, that all the grace that has come to us, as those who are espoused to Christ, and all the glory that we hope for, as those who are to be part of His bride, find their spring in this, "the Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into His hand" (John 3: 35). This love is shown to us very clearly in John's Gospel where Jesus is called "the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father," and where, when speaking to His Father, He said, "Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world" (John 17). He was worthy to be loved by the Father, and this was surely what the Father meant when twice He declared from the excellent glory, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." Out of this love of the Father to the Son has sprung up this great purpose for the joy and glory of the loved One, which we are considering, and for the fulfilment of this purpose God had to awaken into activity, if we may be permitted with the greatest reverence to use such an expression in regard to Him. This is set before us in figure when Abraham rose up early in the morning, to lead his only son, Isaac, whom he loved, to the place of sacrifice.

THE EARLY MORNING is the beginning of the day's work AND THE EVENTIDE sees its completion or failure. The day of God's work for the fulfilment of His great purpose began when His beloved Son, the Word, "became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth." John, the forerunner, knew what this coming of the beloved Son meant, for he said to his disciples, "I am sent before Him. He that hath the bride is the Bridegroom: but the friend of the Bridegroom, which standeth and heareth Him, rejoiceth greatly because of the Bridegroom's voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled. He must increase, I must decrease." John may not have looked beyond Israel when he spoke, but we may take up His words and read them in the light of the full revelation of the truth.

How bright was the dawning of that day! The true light then shone in its gracious fulness for every man. How the hearts of men ought to have thrilled to it! What expectations ought to have awakened within them! Alas, the darkness did not comprehend the light, and the world did not know its Maker, but that did not turn the Father from His purpose. The day of His great work had begun, and He could do no other than work while it was day. The Father and the Son had risen up and started forth on the journey that led to the place of sacrifice — Golgotha, for judgment and death and Satan's power lay between the morning and the eventide. We learn as we read John's Gospel, how the Father and the Son "went both of them together," in an absolute and indivisible oneness of purpose. This oneness is seen in the Lord's words, "My Father worketh hitherto and I work. . . . What things soever the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise, for the Father loveth the Son, and showeth Him all things that He Himself doeth" (John 5).

The time came in the journey of Abraham and Isaac to the land of Moriah when the young men were left behind, and the wood for the burnt offering was laid upon Isaac; and as we read the story we are reminded of the words of Jesus to His disciples, "Behold the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the FATHER IS WITH ME" (John 16: 32); and then "He, bearing His cross, went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew, Golgotha." (John 19: 1). We who are parents may have some conception of what Abraham's feelings must have been as he walked with Isaac to the place of sacrifice, and as they communed together on the way, but what heart of man can conceive what it cost the Father, when in obedience to His will, His well-beloved went forth unflinchingly to death; and when in their communings together on the way the Son said to the Father, "Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say, Father, save Me from this hour? but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name." There was an instant answer to that cry, not that the Lord Himself needed it, for His confidence in His Father's love was absolute, but for the people's sake, that they might know that that lonely Man whom they hated was heard and beloved by the Father in heaven.

Isaac was delivered from the uplifted knife and there suffered in his stead the ram caught by its horns in the thicket, but no substitute was found for God's beloved Son; it was impossible that He could be delivered from the stroke of death. God's purpose must be realized and there was only way by which it could be, the Lamb of God must die, if ever the marriage of the Lamb was to take place; and Jesus, the Son of God, was the Lamb of God.

We believe that we are right in saying that it was not far from the place to which Abraham led Isaac that Jesus suffered, and Abraham called that place Jehovah-Jireh — the mount of the Lord who sees and provides. The place was well and truly named, for we see at Golgotha how God, who saw the end from the beginning, provided a Lamb for Himself, and by the death of His Lamb laid an immovable foundation for eternal peace and joy and glory, and the fulfilment of all His will.

How wonderfully the purpose of God unfolds in this story. Abraham had said to the young men, "I and the lad will go yonder . . . and come again to you." He knew that He would not come back alone; his faith laid hold upon God and he knew that He was able to raise up his son even from the dead, "from whence also he received him in a figure." How blessed it is for us to know that the fact infinitely exceeds the figure, and the fact is that, "Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father" (Rom. 6: 4), and as the risen Son of God He could send His disciples that triumphant message, "I ascend to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God." Beyond the suffering of death and the darkness of the grave we see the Father and Son moving on together to the great end that the Father has in view.

THE HEAT OF THE DAY

"Thou shalt go unto my country and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac." — Genesis 24: 4.

This brings us to Genesis 24, where Abraham declared what was in his heart for Isaac's joy; it was that he should have a bride worthy of his love to share all his wealth. She had to be brought from a far country, and a servant who could be trusted had to be sent to fetch her. In Abraham's own household there was such a servant, who, without any thought of himself, would carry out all Abraham's desire. I am not stretching the Scripture unduly when I say that this devoted, unselfish servant is a figure of the Holy Ghost: indeed, nothing could be clearer. The story teaches us the Father's purpose for the joy and glory of His beloved Son, the Risen Man, Christ Jesus, which will be brought to full realization by the work and power of the Holy Ghost. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost all have their part in this great matter.

It is an enthralling story. How well Abraham's servant carried out his mission, journeying through the heat of the day on his great quest; how well and wisely he spoke of his master's son; how charming was the grace of Rebekah, and how ready was her response to the servant's appeal. All these features in the figure are found in the great antitype of it. The Holy Ghost has come from the Father to bear witness to the blessedness and unsearchable riches of Christ, and to win hearts for Him. He has come to take of His things, and show them to us, and to glorify Him, as John 14: 15, 16 shows us. He works within us to produce a response in our hearts to the attractiveness of God's beloved Son, that just as Rebekah was willing to leave her father's house and her own land and to go to Isaac whom she had not seen, so we may be made willing to turn from the world and choose Christ instead of it, and say in response to the demand, "Wilt thou go with this man?" "I will go." And thus it comes to pass that we are espoused to one husband that we may be presented as a chaste virgin to Christ. Happy indeed it is for us if this work of the Holy Ghost has been effectual in us, and if it can be said of us in regard to the Lord, "Whom having not seen, ye love, in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory" (1 Peter 1: 8).

THE EVENTIDE

The meeting of the Bridegroom and the Bride.

"And Isaac went forth to meditate in the field at eventide, and he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and behold, the camels were coming, and REBEKAH. . . ." — Genesis 24: 63.

The day of these divine activities is drawing to its close, we are surely very near the eventide when the Lamb will meet His bride. And that hour fills His thoughts. The place that it has in the closing words of Scripture is significant. Three times over in the last chapter of the Bible our Lord says, "I come quickly." It is true that two of these times have to do with the rewards that He will give to His faithful servants, and He will find a peculiar joy in this, but when that side of things has been dealt with in every phase of it, and He is free to allow the feelings of His heart to break out, without any question of gain or judgment, He says — "I JESUS . . . AM THE BRIGHT, AND MORNING STAR." This is the last presentation of Himself before He comes. It does not show Him in His majesty and power, with eyes as a flame of fire and feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace, and a sharp two-edged sword going out of His mouth. It is Himself, the Saviour, who in His measureless love went down into death for His bride; it is Himself, so meek and gentle, so full of grace and truth; it is Himself, the altogether lovely One, and the great Lover of His church. By this name we have come to know and adore and love Him. He presents Himself in this personal way, to stir the affections of His bride, and to make her cry in unison with the Spirit, "Come" (Rev. 22: 16, 17). Then He gives one final word. The very last that He has addressed to His church, it is His final love-word to his espoused and longed-for bride. "He which testifieth these things saith, 'SURELY, I COME QUICKLY.'" There can be but one right response to that word, and may it break forth from every one of our hearts, "Amen, even so, come, Lord Jesus."

"And Isaac went out . . . at eventide . . . and behold the camels were coming, and Rebekah." What joy awaits us when the fact that our story prefigures actually comes to pass, but what will the joy of our Lord be? Let us see how the Scripture puts it. "The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout." It will be a shout of triumph and of joy — as I hope to show on another page — for then the time of waiting will be past, the day's work will be finished, the eventide will be reached, the church completed, and the true Isaac will rest in His love for her. Father, Son and Holy Ghost will rejoice together as the Lamb sees of the travail of His soul and is satisfied.

Thus shall this acceptable time, this great day of grace reach its climax. There is joy in the presence of the angels of God as one by one those who have wandered afar from Him are reached by His grace and gathered in. And that joy has been continuous and ever increasing in its greatness since Pentecost, but here it comes to a fulness that cannot be exceeded, for here the object and aim of all the activities of the grace of God throughout this day of grace is reached, and the heart of the Triune God exults, and overflows with joy. That joy is shared by every heart within the universe of bliss, for we read: "I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and give honour to Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come and His wife hath made herself ready" (Rev. 19: 6, 7).

The Catching up of the Church

"For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord . . . the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord." 1 Thessalonians 4: 15, 16, 17.

The Lord's Last Words. — Satan's Complete Defeat — The Law of Gravitation. — That Blessed Hope.

"They that are Christ's at His coming."

The presentation of the church to Christ will take place in heaven, and of course it must be caught up into heaven for that great event, and further, that the Scripture may be fulfilled, He must come for it Himself. Moreover, it must be there in its completeness or it would not be a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. This fact alone is enough to show how false is the doctrine which some hold of the "partial rapture" of the church. We may be sure that when the marriage of the Lamb takes place His wife will not be a partial or mutilated wife. Again we speak of the fact that the last words ever spoken by the Lord to His church are, "Surely I come quickly." They show what a place His coming for His blood-bought church has in His thoughts. When He had communicated the whole revelation that God had given Him to His servant John, He added this last personal word of tender, yearning love, "I come quickly." And surely that word goes directly to the heart, and calls for this response, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus"?

One of the strangest things in the church's history is that this great hope seems to have been entirely forgotten for centuries. These words which should have lived in the hearts of the church, seem to have been little treasured or understood. It is strange that even now they should affect so little those who know and understand them. Yet we have not to go far to find the solution of this strange thing. It is revealed in the Lord's words to the assembly at Ephesus, "I have against thee that thou hast left thy first love." The church has backslidden and has ceased to watch, and though the cry, "Behold the Bridegroom cometh" has gone forth with the greatest clearness, the mass of believers continue to be indifferent, as though they understood not the meaning of that midnight cry, nor wished to. Yet the moment is drawing on when the Lord will fulfil His word, and will "descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel and the trump of God." That shout will be a shout of pent-up joy, that will burst from His heart and lips, because the time of waiting is over at last. It will be a shout of triumph and power, an assembling shout, that shall ring through heaven and earth and down into the grave; and in response to it, "the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord." What an hour of triumph that will be!

The air is the seat of Satan's power now, he is the prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2: 2). But there in the very seat of his power the Lord will meet His church. The powers of darkness will not prevent the meeting. How they will cower and tremble in complete defeat, as the triumphant Lord meets His triumphant church in the very region where they thought themselves supreme!

Unless we are prepared to argue that words do not mean what they stand for, or that the Lord uttered vain words when He gave this revelation to His servant Paul, we must believe that the moment is coming when the dead in Christ will be raised up, and with them millions of people, the whole of the blood-bought church, gathered out of every nation, tribe, and tongue, will be caught up from the earth to meet the Lord in the air, to be for ever with Him. They will disappear suddenly and completely from every place, condition and pursuit, in which they have lived, to be seen no more by the world until they return with Him to reign over the earth.

That this appears an impossible thing to the human mind unenlightened by the truth, we admit; it is incredible to everything but faith; and we are quite prepared to hear the scoffer contend that the law of gravitation would prevent such a thing. But by the Word of the Lord it is revealed to us, and faith lays hold of that and says, "With men it is impossible, but with God all things are possible." And what says the Word? "The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout," and the shout of the Lord is mightier than the law of gravitation, for in that shout will be the power by which He is able to subdue all things to Himself. The law of gravitation is a natural law, and controls natural bodies, and the scoffers overlook the fact that we are to be changed in that hour of the Lord's triumph. Our natural bodies are to be transformed by His mighty power into bodies of glory, like unto His own glorious body, and what law will control them? Not any natural law, but the law of the glory. Natural laws for natural bodies, but the law of the glory for bodies of glory; and the law of the glory is that Christ is supreme, and that He will draw up to Himself everyone that is of Himself and like Himself.

This is that "blessed hope." It is not the improvement of the world, as men dream, for "evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived" (2 Tim. 3: 13). It is not the conversion of the world by the gospel, for the Lord Himself asked the question, "When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18: 8). And when He does come back to the earth with His glorified saints He will not be welcomed by glad and rapturous multitudes, but "all tribes of the earth shall mourn" (Matt. 24: 30). "And all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him." It is not the universal revival of divine life and energy in Christendom, for "the love of many shall wax cold," and "the time shall come when they will not endure sound doctrine" (2 Tim. 4: 3), "when they shall have the form of godliness but deny the power" (2 Tim. 3: 5). This blessed hope is not centred in the world, or in Christendom, but in Christ; it is the hope of His coming, it is centred in Himself — in "THE LORD JESUS CHRIST OUR HOPE" (1 Tim. 1: 1). "And everyone that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure" (1 John 3: 3).

"Oh! bright and blessed hope!

When shall it be

That we His face, long loved,

Revealed shall see?

"Oh! when — without a cloud —

His features trace,

Whose faithful love so long

We've known in grace?"

The Marriage of the Lamb

"And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God: For true and righteous are His judgments: for He hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand . . . And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready." — Rev. 19: 1, 2, and 6, 7.

The Judgment of the False Church. — Great Joy and its Cause. — The Lamb. — His Wife hath made Herself Ready. — The Marriage Robe. — How it is being Prepared.

THE JUDGMENT OF THE FALSE CHURCH

"And her smoke rose up for ever and ever."

A woman arrayed in purple and scarlet, called in the plain language of Scripture "the great whore", and the Lamb's wife clothed in fine linen, clean and white — these two we see in these latter chapters of the Revelation; and they stand out in startling contrast the one to the other, both as to their character and destiny. Chapters 17 and 18 describe for us the magnificence, the power, the far-stretching influence, the horrible corruption and terrible doom of the former. Chapter 19 shows us the purity and blessedness of the latter — her destiny is the glory of the Lamb. The former, whose names are given to us in capital letters in our Bible, is, "Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth." IT IS ROME. She professes to be the true church, the faithful spouse of the Lamb, but she is false, and denies in principle and practice His name, character and word. She will become, as shown in these chapters, utterly apostate, and upon her must fall the overwhelming and righteous judgments of God.

This mystery, described in its two-fold character of the great whore and Babylon, is not popery stripped of its temporal power, as we have known it — which power is now being restored to it, a definite sign of the times — but popery triumphant. In the time described in these chapters it will have gathered into a magnificent but corrupt unity the whole profession of Christianity, and will have brought into complete subjugation the western nations. It will not only have enslaved the consciences of men religiously, but will also have control over their politics. The woman rides the beast. The kings that she will dominate will hate her for her arrogance, and will eventually destroy her and so fulfil the will of God, but for a while she will hold undisputed sway over them all. This is all plainly taught in chapter 17.

Rome is working for this universal supremacy now, but she cannot achieve it while the Holy Ghost who dwells in all who are truly the Lord's is here; His power and work prevent the full development of the apostasy. But at the coming of the Lord, as given in 1 Thess. 4, the true church, which is the body of Christ, and which is to be the wife of the Lamb, will be caught up to heaven. Then not a true Christian will be left on earth, for the Lord knoweth them that are His, and the outward shell of the profession of Christ will be left behind, and Rome unfettered and unhindered will speedily reach the goal of her ambition.*

{*Note: It is not denied that there are many sincere believers in the one and only Saviour, the Lord Jesus, in the Romish Church, and these are members of the body of Christ, and will be caught up at His coming. There is a present call to them, "Come out of her My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not her plagues." — Rev. 18: 4.}

The true church, that which the Lord spoke of in Matt. 16 as "My church," is not a great organization held together by human power and wisdom, but is made up of all who have in sincerity owned Jesus as their Lord and Saviour; all such have a vital link with Him as the Son of God, and are not Christians by profession only. They are united in one body to Christ, who is their Head in heaven. This is a unity that is of God, and it will abide for ever; the other is a unity that is of the devil and it will perish in the depths of perdition. The mystery of iniquity doth already work, and Rome is making rapid progress towards its desired end, clearly showing that we are in "the last days." The growing love of ritual and popish practices in the English and other state churches are an evidence of this, and of the power and influence that it already wields. Oh, Christians, let us be fully awake to the situation. There are two great unities in Christendom, and they are growing to completion. The Spirit of God is the power in one, and the spirit of evil works in the other. We must be wholeheartedly in that which is of God and separate from that which is corrupt and of the devil. "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing" (2 Cor. 6: 1).

"Behold the Bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet Him."

GREAT JOY AND ITS CAUSE

"Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to Him" (Rev. 19: 7).

Revelation 19 opens with the adoration of the host in heaven; they rejoice and praise God that He has judged the false and corrupt church which, instead of being faithful to Christ and a witness for Him in the earth, and so the channel of blessing to men, has corrupted men with its own terrible corruption. "True and righteous are His judgments," they say, as they turn from beholding the destruction of the evil thing, to rejoice in that which is eternally good. They celebrate the supremacy of the Lord God omnipotent, and since He reigneth none can thwart His eternal purposes. These purposes have their centre in Christ and His church, the Lamb and His wife. Before the worlds were made it was in the heart of God that His beloved Son should have a bride; and in this chapter the hour has arrived, and all heaven rejoices with a great joy. "I heard," says John, "as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings." "Let us be glad," say they, "and rejoice . . . for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready." It is the joy of God that fills every heart and rolls in its matchless melody to the uttermost bounds of heaven. The Father rejoices, for the hour has come for the consummation of His purpose for the joy of His Son; the Son rejoices, for the hour has come in which He will see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied; the Holy Ghost rejoices that His work is completed, and that the wife of the Lamb is ready for the marriage. The hour has arrived of which Eph. 5 speaks" Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it; that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, THAT HE MIGHT PRESENT IT TO HIMSELF A GLORIOUS CHURCH, NOT HAVING SPOT, OR WRINKLE, OR ANY SUCH THING; BUT THAT IT SHOULD BE HOLY AND WITHOUT BLEMISH."

THE LAMB

"The marriage of the Lamb is come."

It is the marriage of the Lamb. We have no difficulty in identifying the Lamb. It is Jesus who died for us. In this Book of the Revelation He bears many great titles. In chapter 5 He is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah; in chapter 12 He is the Man-child that shall rule the nations with a rod of iron; in chapter 16 He is the King of kings and Lord of lords; in chapter 22 He is the Alpha and Omega. Great and varied are His glories, upon His head are many crowns, but when the marriage comes, it is not by any of these titles that He is known, but as the Lamb. The joy of the marriage day is linked up with the sorrow of Calvary. It is the One who bowed His head beneath the judgment of God in death who is to see of the travail of His soul, and receive to Himself His church, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. The Lamb was the sacrifice. He became sacrificially what those who were to be His bride were actually, for He was made sin for them, that they might become the righteousness of God in Him.

We have no difficulty in identifying the Lamb, who is the centre and object of this scene of glory and joy, as once He was the centre and object of man's hatred and scorn, and of all suffering and shame at Calvary. But who is the wife of the Lamb, who now appears with Him, the object of His love and the sharer of His glory? Not angels, not Israel, not the nations of men, but the church, that has been gathered out of all nations — it only can fill this place of closest relationship to Him. The church which is the great anti-type of Eve and Rebekah, the church which He called "MY church," the pearl of great price for which He sold all that He had, the church which He loved and for which He gave Himself, that it might be to Him a glorious church, "not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing ", the church which was in the Father's counsels for the joy of His Son before ever the world was made, the church in which true bridal affections have been developed by the mighty working of the Holy Ghost — this is the wife of the Lamb. And now she appears as His wife, to be entirely for Him, His joy and His help-meet, enough to compensate Him for all His sorrow and woe. And she is also all that He desires her to be — all her hopes realized and her desires satisfied in Him.

"O Bride, the saints in glory shine,

Can they not fill that heart of thine?

No, were the Lamb, their light, withdrawn,

The saints, in gloom, would weep and mourn.

Can the Son of God then comfort thee?

Yes, Christ and none besides for me,

For mine is a soul of noble birth,

That needeth more than heaven and earth;

And the breath of God has drawn me in

To the heart that was riven for my sin,

For the Sun of the Godhead pours His rays

Through the crystal depths of His manhood's grace,

And the Spirit sent by Father and Son,

Hath filled my soul and my heart hath won."

HIS WIFE HATH MADE HERSELF READY

"To her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousnesses of saints" (verse 8).

She could not make herself fit or ready for heaven; her fitness for that spotless home of eternal love is Christ Himself, for He "is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption." But she makes herself ready for the marriage; and that by being clothed in fine linen, clean and white, which is the righteousnesses of the saints. The word should be in the plural, it is righteousnesses, not righteousness. Christ alone is our righteousness, but being made righteous in Him, the saints of God are enabled to produce good works on earth, and these are the fine linen, clean and white, that shall be the marriage robe of the wife of the Lamb on that great day. In eastern lands, I suppose, the bride is presented to the bridegroom in the garments her own fingers have wrought. It shall be so with the wife of the Lamb, for to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, her own work. But how and where could this material be produced?

Suppose a great prince wished to appear on some great state occasion in a garment designed and made by himself, but when he looked round for the material that would suit his design, he could not find anything that satisfied him, nor any loom on which it could be woven. What must he do? He must invent a loom that can produce the material, and then when his cloth is ready he must fashion it as he will for his own satisfaction and the praise of his genius. So it is; God determined, when He purposed that the Lamb should have a wife, the very sort of garment she should wear; it was to be of fine linen, clean and white, the righteousnesses of saints — but where on earth, among men, could it be found? In Old Testament days God gave men the opportunity of bringing it forth. He gave them the law, a perfect loom upon which to do it. But they miserably failed in their efforts, and after centuries of patience with them, God had to say, "ALL YOUR RIGHTEOUSNESSES ARE AS FILTHY RAGS." "They that are in the flesh cannot please God."

Then was God's intention to fail? No. If I may use my illustration — He has brought into being a new loom capable of producing that which He desires. But first He shows the design and the pattern. The Lord Jesus came into the world to do the will of God. He lived a life of complete obedience to God, and near the end of it He took three of His disciples into the holy mount and there He was transfigured before them, "and His raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them" (Mark 9: 3). This was an unearthly, heavenly whiteness, emblematic of the life of righteousness He had lived on earth. And God's great purpose is to reproduce that life in His saints; and so we read: "FOR WE ARE HIS WORKMANSHIP, CREATED IN CHRIST JESUS UNTO GOOD WORKS, WHICH GOD HATH BEFORE ORDAINED THAT WE SHOULD WALK IN THEM" (Eph. 2: 10). If we do not understand that statement we shall not understand how the fine linen can be produced. We are not saved by works, but we are saved for works. It is grace that has saved us through faith, but that same grace has fashioned us for the production of good works. GOD HAS A LOOM NOW, and upon it He is producing fine linen, clean and white, He is reproducing in His people now the graces that shone in all their perfection in Jesus. The life of Jesus is being manifested in their mortal flesh (2 Cor. 4: 10).

We all know how cloth is produced. There is the loom, the weaver, and the raw material. As a matter of fact, the raw material goes through a series of processes before it reaches the loom, but there it is at last, and as the weaver works the warp and weft into the loom, the loom works out the finished article. And that is what we get in Philippians 2: 12, 13: "WORK OUT YOUR OWN SALVATION WITH FEAR AND TREMBLING. FOR IT IS GOD THAT WORKETH IN YOU, BOTH THE WILLING AND THE DOING OF HIS GOOD PLEASURE." God is the great weaver, we are the loom, and as He works in we must work out the fine linen, clean and white. When we see this we must acknowledge that He is, He must be, deeply interested in our lives and ways with the marriage of the Lamb in view — are we also interested?

But what is this fine linen? Says one, "I should like to serve the Lord Jesus, but I cannot stand upon the platform and preach to multitudes, or do any great work for Him; I am ignorant and poor, and my life is lived in obscurity." Do not think that this fine linen is preaching, or doing some spectacular service. Many a man preaches to large congregations and produces nothing but filthy rags, for self is the end and aim of his efforts. But there is a poor woman who loves the Saviour, she is producing fine linen in abundance. Happy in His love she starts her arduous day with a song of praise and thanksgiving to God — that is a bit of fine linen. When spoken to harshly she answers with meekness, and overcomes evil with good — that is another bit of fine linen. You need not be great and famous for this; if you can be patient and forbearing when you are not treated well, and if you can FORGIVE — ah, that is difficult, is it not? He spoke so ill of you. She was so spiteful. And you have already been kind and forgiving. Your patience is exhausted, and you can't forgive again! Can't you? You who have been forgiven so much! Yes, grace can enable you to do it, and if you do it will be fine linen, clean and white, for that is what Jesus did. When He was reviled, He reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not, and when His foes did their worst, He prayed, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance — all these are the threads of this beautiful fabric, the fine linen, clean and white, and not one thread will ever be lost. God Himself will preserve it, it is imperishable. You may not have thought when you did that kind act for Jesus' sake that it would live for ever, but it will; and that word of cheer and comfort spoken to a tried and sorrowing saint will never be forgotten, nor will that effort to win a soul for the Saviour. All these things will go to make up the marriage garment. Every Christian has the privilege of contributing to it. How important it is that we should be walking in lowliness of mind and obedience to God, that His gracious work may go on in us and through us. He has left us in the world for this — may we not forget it. Do not say that this is beyond us. We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus with this end in view. We have been saved by His grace, and fitted by Him to produce this fine linen.

This garment of fine linen, clean and white, will be a wonderful triumph for God. He will be able to show in that day the reality of His work in His saints. He will be able to show that in spite of the world, the flesh, and the devil, that beset His saints on earth and conspired to make them false to Christ, they have brought forth these righteousnesses. So will the devil be defeated and the accusations that are brought against the saints be silenced. How wonderful it is, that, in this filthy place, a world reeking with moral putrefaction, this work is going on, and that we may have our part in it. We have but to keep near to our Lord and His love will constrain us to be very diligent in this matter.

After the marriage the Lord will come forth as King of kings and Lord of lords, but when He does His saints will come with Him in this same raiment (verse 14). They will share His triumph and glory and live and reign with Him a thousand years (Rev. 20).

The Holy City

"And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb's wife. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal." — Revelation 21: 9-11.

The Bride the Lamb's Wife. — Having the Glory of God. — The Wall of the City. — Four Square, and ever-open Gates. — The Street of Gold. — God is the Light and the Lamb the Lamp. — The Pure River of the Water of Life. — The Tree of Life. — The Lord God giveth them Light.

THE BRIDE OF THE LAMB.

"I will show thee the bride, the Lamb's wife."

We have considered the church as the wife of the Lamb — what it is to Christ, how it will fill His heart with a satisfaction and joy which will be eternal.

Now our subject is the same church as the holy city — not so much what she will be TO Christ, but what she will be FOR Christ. In the first aspect of the church the great thing is LOVE, the love of Christ fully known by the church, and responded to without reserve; but the church as the New Jerusalem, the holy city, is not so much LOVE as LIGHT — light for the nations. It is love, divine love, filling it with a wonderful radiance, but shining out as light for all. The nations are to walk in the light of the holy city, but the city is the bride, the Lamb's wife. There is love Christward — there is light manward.

Notice how this holy city is introduced. The angel said to John: "Come, I will show the bride, the Lamb's wife. . . . And he showed me that great city, holy Jerusalem." When the church is all that she ought to be to Christ, for this is what the bride, the Lamb's wife, indicates, then she will be all she ought to be as light to man — the city under the administration of which men will live — and the measure of her love to Christ will be the measure of her light to men. I want to give these things a present and practical application. It follows, if this is true, that just in that measure in which we love Christ now, are we really witnesses for Him here below. Our light in the midst of the prevailing darkness is measured by our love to Christ, and our love to Christ is measured by our knowledge of His love to us. If we keep ourselves in His love, if we keep ourselves near to Him, separate from those things that can mar us for His pleasure, we shall enjoy His love, and we cannot enjoy His love without responding to it, and just in that measure that we respond to His love shall we be witnesses for Him in the world. Our light manward is measured by our love Christward.

HAVING THE GLORY OF GOD

"Her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal" (verse 11).

First we are to enter into the glory of God; for us it is the Father's house, and we are made meet for it by the Father's grace and the blood of Jesus, and then we are to come out of it all radiant with the light that fills it, to shed that light upon the earth during the millennial reign of Christ. The church is to be the vessel of the glory of God. What is the glory of God? The glory of God, in the moral aspect of it, is the display of His own blessed nature; He has revealed Himself. How has He done that? He has done that in the Person of His beloved Son, and having done it the great fact has come into evidence that GOD IS LOVE. That is the glory of God. You would not know it by simply scanning the heavens. They declare His handiwork, His wisdom, His divinity, His power. Men did not learn this great fact at Sinai, for there in the presence of the thunderings and fire of that dread mount they were filled with terror. This great and blessed revelation was made by the beloved Son when He came into the world and passed through it to the cross of Calvary. The light that He brought into the world is to be contained in the holy city, and that light will radiate from it to the utmost bounds of creation, and all creation will rejoice in the fact that God is love.

"Each heart its praise outpouring,

To Him all praise above,

Each voice in strains adoring,

Re-echoes — 'GOD IS LOVE.'"

This is our testimony to-day, for it is this fact that has changed, enlighted, and blest us. But how has it been manifested towards us? "In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4: 9, 10). The love of God has been made manifest in relieving us of our liabilities and removing the load of sins that oppressed us, and by bringing us into love and light and liberty. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." This is the gospel that we have to preach. This is the light we have to bear in the darkness. This is the glory that will shine from the new Jerusalem, and in the light of which the nations will walk. They will get an entirely new conception of God, even as we did when first we were enlightened and learned that God is love. They will learn what wisdom and righteousness in administration are, and every national and international question that can arise will be solved in the light in which they walk. This will be the glory that excelleth: GOD IS LOVE.

THE WALL OF THE HOLY CITY

"And had a wall great and high."

It is remarkable that more is said of the wall of the Holy City than of the city itself (Rev. 21); there must be an important reason for this. Why is it there? The wall is not there to exclude from that city a single saint of God; for "they that are written in the Lamb's book of life, shall enter in." The wall will be an inclusive wall; everyone whom sovereign grace has chosen and called to heavenly glory, everyone who has been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, will be enclosed in its shining embrace. "A GARDEN ENCLOSED IS MY SISTER, MY SPOUSE," says the Bridegroom, in the Song of Songs, meaning, that she was all for Him, and it is this that the wall of the city, great and high, teaches us. If it includes all whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life, it also indicates that the city is exclusively for God. When a man purchases an estate and puts a wall about it, he says, "That is mine; I want that for my own pleasure" — and so it is. The city will be for God's pleasure in the first instance without restraint and in perfect complacency He will walk in its golden street, and though its gates are opened wide to every point of the compass, and will never be closed either night or day, there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth.

The wall indicates that there will be, even in that millenial age, some reserve on God's part. No wall will be needed to encircle the city in the eternal state, when God will be all in all. Then He will dwell with men, and His will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven, and no fresh invasion of sin will ever cause Him to retire behind a veil. But in the millennial age sin will not be wholly banished from the earth, and while God will be active towards men in goodness and blessing, there will still be reserve as far as His relations with them are concerned. His temple and dwelling-place will be walled about. But within the wall all will be as He would have it — holy and unblameable before Him in love.

The wall will not be a frowning battlement, grimly reared for defence or defiance, raised against great foes and manned by intrepid warriors, for from those heavenly places in which the city will appear, the foe will have been cast down, and the devil chained in the bottomless pit (Rev. 12 and 20). The city will be the church triumphant, and nothing that defiles will threaten the peace of it, and it will fear no attack from without, and will be free to enjoy the riches of God's grace within. It will be God's enclosure, within it He will show His glory, and every created intelligence will learn from it what pleases Him. And through the wall the glory will shine; it will not obscure the glory or hide its beauties. And in the foundation of it will be every manner of precious stones, cut by the supreme art of the Divine Lapidary; the all-varied wisdom of God will radiate there, not to repel, but to attract all nations in admiring worship to it.

How great the glory of the city will be — THE GLORY OF GOD. How great is the grace that has given us a part in it — THE GRACE OF GOD.

FOUR SQUARE, AND EVER-OPEN GATES

"And the city lieth foursquare . . . and had twelve gates."

The city will be four-square, facing without fear or shame every point of the compass. It will be equal on every side, and on every side there will be three gates, gates that shall not be shut at all by day, and there is no night there. I must link together the four-square city and the twelve gates in the wall of it. It is the city that is equal in every part of it that can open its gates to every quarter of the wide earth. But what for? A great city like London keeps its gates open perpetually, for it is dependent upon every part of the earth for its very life. From north, south, east, and west, supplies are continually pouring into it; but the gates of the holy city will be opened, not for supplies to flow into it, but for blessing to flow out of it, blessing for the whole earth. This city of God will look out in every direction, and wherever it looks it will pour out its blessing. Our aim must be this four-squareness now. What we are to be according to God's own purpose must affect us now. But, alas! how often it is otherwise with us. A man may be intelligent in the Scriptures, and even prominent in ministry and in service, and be anything but Christ-like in his home or business. He is not four-square and just in that measure in which he lacks in this he is enfeebled in his testimony, and as a channel of blessing to men.

Suppose I act in an unchristian, ungracious way in the home or business, or in the presence of unconverted men, or I am harsh and ungracious with my brethren; on that side in which I have failed of the grace of God the gate is shut and the blessing cannot flow out, for I am ashamed, and my mouth is closed. But if I keep myself in the love of God and maintain a conscience void of offence before God and man, then am I four-square, unashamed, and can face men and bless them. This our Lord was in all the holy perfection of His Person. He was all that He said, and none could convict Him of sin, hence wherever He went the blessing flowed in divine freeness.

The names of the twelve tribes of Israel are upon the gates, because according to promise, Israel is to have the honour of administration on earth, and all the blessing that flows to the nations from the heavenly city will flow through Israel as the channel of it to the nations.

AND EVERY GATE IS PEARL. The pearl is not an Old Testament figure, it does not belong to Israel. It is not mentioned at all in the Old Testament.* It is a New Testament figure, and is a similitude of the church taken out of the sea of the nations (Matt. 13). The merchantman sought goodly pearls, and finding one of great price, sold all that he had to possess it. Christ is the merchantman and the pearl is His church. In His eyes it is pure, precious and one. The church is to have this character in all her outgoings in witness and blessing. The gates of pearl emphasize what I have already stated, that when the church is what Christ would have it to be — pure, answering to His thoughts of its preciousness to Him, and undivided — then it will be the channel and the centre of blessing for all.

{* Job 28: 18 should really read "crystal."}

THE STREET OF GOLD

"And the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass."

Not streets of gold, as some of our poets have sung, but one street, a street of gold like unto transparent glass. Here is gold of a new sort. There is nothing so opaque, nothing so blinding to the eyes as the gold that men crave and labour for how devious are the ways by which they get it. But this street will be transparent gold, there will be nothing shady in it, no double dealing, no defilement there. And who will walk on this street? It will be laid for the feet of God, and where He walks the street must be of gold. His way must be a way of righteousness which is of Himself and where He can display His character in all His ways, for this surely is the meaning of the street of gold. A man is known by the way he walks, and where he walks, and God will make known His character when He walks in this street, and there will be nothing hidden and dark in it, it will be like unto transparent glass.

It has always been His desire to walk with men. He came down into the garden to walk with Adam in the cool of the day. But there was no street of gold there, and Adam hid away in his fear of God behind the trees of the garden. He was a sinner and God could not walk with him. And when God gathered Israel out of Egypt and brought them to Himself in the wilderness, He desired to walk in and with them, but there was no golden street in the midst of them. His commandments were on their lips but not in their hearts, and He could only be with them in the angel of His presence behind the veil of the Tabernacle — there was no liberty there either for Him or for them. But when we come to the New Testament, we have the revelation of God in Jesus; God was in Christ, and walked in Him displaying all His grace; and God's intention is that the life of Jesus should be continued in His saints. We have some wonderful words at the end of 2 Cor. 6. The saints of God are commanded to be separate from evil things, to come out from among evil men and their ways; for what communion can there be between the believer and the unbeliever, between light and darkness, Christ and Belial, between the temple of God and demons. Then come the wonderful words, "God hath said, I will dwell in them, and WALK IN THEM." Not only dwell in them, we often stress that, but walk in them — He would form and find within them a street of gold where He could walk and show His character through them.

We may know little of this now — alas, that we should know so little — but in the day of which this vision of glory speaks it will be known in its fulness, for God shall walk in the holy city, and we shall walk where God walks, for we shall be holy as He is holy.

A street is for common use, and in holy communion with God, Himself delighting in the display of His own character, and in us, and we delighting in Him, we shall walk with Him.

"There in effulgence bright,

Saviour and Guide, with Thee

I'll walk, and in Thy heavenly light

Whiter my robe shall be."

GOD IS THE LIGHT AND THE LAMB THE LAMP

"And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof" (margin).

God gives light to the city, but all that light is in the Lamb, for He is the lamp, as the word should be. There is no light, no knowledge of God apart from the Lamb of God. No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. So John tells us in the first chapter of his Gospel. Yes, but when public witness was borne to Him in that Gospel it was, "Behold the Lamb of God." He was the Light of the world, but to be this, and so that the light could reach us, He had to come as the Lamb.

What blind fools men are when they refuse the cross of Christ. They desire a gospel without a sacrifice, without the blood. God has no such gospel for men. He can give no light or blessing apart from the Lamb. The Lamb is the lamp — all the light of God abides in Him and shines forth from Him, and that light is for blessing of men.

THE PURE RIVER OF THE WATER OF LIFE

"And He showed me a pure river of water, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb."

There is to be blessing unrestrained in the power of the Holy Ghost, but it flows from the throne of God and the Lamb. The throne indicates God's supremacy, but the Lamb is there. What a sight it will be for the world which crucified the Lamb when He appears in the throne of God! The cross of a malefactor on earth, the throne of God in heaven! But that cross and His place on that throne secure blessing for men. The pure river will flow forth from the throne, but that were impossible apart from the Lamb, and its streams will carry refreshment and life and healing wherever they flow. God in the supremacy of His grace, as the redeemer God, enthroned in righteousness for man's blessing, will be acknowledged as the Source of all good. And if any ask how God who is eternally just can bless from His throne a world that had sinned so foully against Him, the one and only answer is — the Lamb is there.

THE TREE OF LIFE

"In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." (Rev. 22: 2).

The tree of life is Christ — and the fruit is God's portion in Him, the food of the privileged dwellers in that city. He is enough for God and He will be enough for them. None shall hunger there, nor will they tire of that heavenly food, for there is no monotony in Jesus for the heart of one that knows His love and walks in the Spirit. And He is enough now. He brings forth His fruit in His season now. He is able to meet every fresh need, every fresh longing of the soul now. He is enough the heart and mind to fill. We shall not tire of Him there. May we be satisfied with Him now, and sit under His shadow with great delight and find His fruit sweet to our taste.

Fruit is God's food, it is ever so presented symbolically in Scripture, it is for His delight. We are to share God's thoughts of Christ, and this will yield us joy and satisfaction for ever.

Then there will be no more curse, for the Lamb bore the curse. Thorns the earth was to bring forth when man sinned, and thorns were placed upon His sacred brow. He bore the curse that He might remove it. And His servants shall serve Him — they shall see His face and His name shall be in their foreheads. What a prospect! Especially for those of us who feel how feeble our service here is! But there His servants shall serve Him. Love cannot be satisfied unless it is serving, and the Lord will give His servants the joy and opportunity of serving Him in all the power of the Holy Ghost — without any faltering or failure.

THE LORD GOD GIVETH THEM LIGHT

"There shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither the light of the sun; for the Lord giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever."

We shall have no need of either natural light or artificial light in that holy city — God will be enough. The light of our lives for ever will come from God Himself. It is what God is that will fill that scene with radiance and fill our hearts with joy. And He would do that now. The sun symbolizes God's natural mercies, and so full of tenderness and mercy is He, that He gives us these things richly to enjoy; for having spared not His own Son, will he not with Him freely give us all things? And these natural gifts in a certain way are light to us. But, suppose these things were taken from us, what then? Suppose every natural joy, every comfort, every earthly ray of light were removed, and suppose we lost everything that we have devised for ourselves, of which the candle would speak, could we say, "The Lord God giveth us light — He is enough"?

I heard of a Christian who was in very affluent circumstances. Suddenly, with one sweep, he was beggared, and in explaining his experience afterwards, he said, "When I was well-to-do, I saw God in everything, and now that I have nothing, I HAVE GOT EVERYTHING IN GOD." I heard of a wealthy American who was very glad he had wealth, not for his own sake, but for the sake of his wife whom he idolized. This lady was a Christian of a meek and gentle spirit. Her husband did not understand the secret of that quiet, happy life, but he greatly admired it, and was glad he could give her the comforts of life, for she was a delicate person. As time went on, the wheel of fortune turned and left him with scarcely a penny. He was very distressed about it. He had to leave the mansion and go into a somewhat mean flat, and he wondered how it would go with his wife. But he found she was able to sing, "Oh! The peace my Saviour gives," just as sweetly without the grand piano. The Lord God was her light. Oh! is it so, that He is able to do that for us? Were every earthly light removed and every prop gone and every comfort taken away from us, would He be enough? Yes, we should find Him to be enough. The Lord God is our light. Beloved Christians, what a God we have got! And the day is coming when the vast number of those who inhabit that holy city will find everything in God, and when they find everything in God, there will be no night. The best things on earth change, they wax and wane, rise to their zenith and set. But when God is everything there is no night.

The Lord Himself speaking to His servant, says, "These sayings are true and faithful." Let us lay hold of them and cherish them. Let us hold to them as the very sayings of God, true and faithful — not the fallible words of men, the fruit of a darkened imagination, but the true and faithful sayings of God. Blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this Book. If we keep the sayings of this Book, we shall be kept from the pollution of this world, and be those who are ready and watching and saying in unison with the Holy Ghost," Even so, come, Lord Jesus."

The Eternal State

"And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold! the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away." — Revelation 21: 2, 3, 4.

God All in All. — As a Bride Adorned for Her Husband.

GOD ALL IN ALL

"My delights were with the sons of men." — Proverbs 8: 31.

The hand of the Lord set the pendulum of time swinging when in the beginning He created the heavens and the earth. And one age of time after another has passed in which He has wrought to bring about the fulfilment of His own counsels of wisdom and love. He has been in no haste, for much had to be done. There was first the slow development of evil that reached its climax at the cross; there was the manifestation of good that triumphed over it there; but in both alike we see revealed God's deep interest in men — men and not angels are the object of His solicitude, with men in view He has worked from the beginning. We are surely greatly moved when we realize that all His counsels of love are centred in men. This amazing fact is declared in Prov. 8, where, in relation to creation, when it was contemplated in eternity, but not actually brought into being, WISDOM — whom we know now to be the Son of God, our Saviour, for He is the wisdom of God — says, "Then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him; rejoicing in the habitable parts of the earth, and my delights were with the sons of men." Yes, it was upon men that the heart of God was set from all eternity, and when the earth was created as their residence, and the platform upon which He would display all His love to them and what that love would do, He created them, male and female, in the image and likeness of God. But not for long could God delight in man, for though He had surrounded him by countless gifts, all proving His care and goodness, he fell before the seductions and falsehoods of that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and while God did not cease to love him, he, on his part, mistrusted and hated God. The devil had triumphed in this first battle for the possession of man — what was to be done? If God could not carry out His thoughts of love in regard to him, the devil's triumph would be perpetuated for ever. But God had His resources and the devil's triumph was but temporary, and, in fact, it did but give God the opportunity of bringing His resources to light.

In passing sentence upon the deceiver, He said, "The Seed of the woman shall bruise thy head." The Seed of the woman was the Son of God, the One who was daily God's delight, before there was any serpent, or earth, or man, or woman. And in due time He came of a woman, the virgin's Son, to undo the works of the devil and bring man back again to God. And He has carried out God's will to the letter, He has done it without any thought of Himself. He is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, and by His obedience to God's will, obedience that led Him into death, He has made it possible for God to delight in and dwell with men. And this He will do when the pendulum of time has ceased to swing, and all things have passed into that eternal now for which we wait. Rev. 21: 1-4 describes the state of blessedness that shall then be — it is a brief statement, but how comprehensive and illuminating! There will be an entire absence of all that has made the world a vale of tears. God will take the place that death and sorrow and crying and pain have had in the lives of men, and He will dwell with them. He will dwell with them as the One who in great compassion has wiped away all tears from their eyes; and they shall delight in Him for ever, and He will delight in them, and evil shall assail them no more. His eternal purpose shall then have been reached and secured through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

THE TABERNACLE OF GOD

"As a bride adorned for her husband."

In that scene of eternal blessedness, the church will have a distinct place from every other family in it, whether of angels or men. She is to be there as the special joy and prize of the great Redeemer, to whom the redeemed universe will owe its every joy. See how she is described. "And I, John," says the seer, "saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." That is to be her eternal distinction and glory. We have seen how she will radiate blessing to the nations of the earth, because she is the bride, the Lamb's wife. She will be indispensable to men during the millennial age, for no light as to God or guidance as to their lives will reach them except through her, for in her God will dwell and the Lamb will reign, and the light that does reach them through her will be enough for all their needs and joy. But in the eternal state it will be no longer what she can be as a vessel of light to men, IT IS WHAT SHE IS TO CHRIST — a bride adorned for her husband. She will be that for ever, for in eternity there will be no change or decay, and as she appears when eternity supersedes time, so shall she be as the ages of it roll on. Succeeding ages will unfold new and all-satisfying glories from God, who shall be all in all; but through all those ages the church will be for Christ, adorned with heavenly grace for His eye and heart, and never shall there be for a single instant a wandering thought or desire for any pleasure, save those that He will afford her. No rival shall ever challenge His sole right to her affections; she will receive His love into her bosom without measure and respond to it without reserve. She shall be for ever satisfied with Him.

"Yes, Jesus Lord, our hearts shall be

For ever satisfied with Thee."

Conclusion

"Behold I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this Book" Revelation 22: 7.

"Behold I come quickly: and My reward is with Me, to give to every man according as his work shall be. I AM ALPHA AND OMEGA, THE BEGINNING AND THE END, THE FIRST AND THE LAST." — Revelation 22: 12, 13.

"SURELY I COME QUICKLY."

The knowledge of the love of Christ in this special character in which we have been considering it, is the crown of all knowledge, and it is the topmost and choicest shoot in the spiritual growth of all who possess it. Let us hold it fast if we have it, lest any man rob us of it. Hear how the Lord speaks of it to the Philadelphian church, "Behold I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I HAVE LOVED THEE." They had no higher honour, greater treasure, or brighter crown than that.

It has been urged that occupation with this side of things and the "blessed hope" that goes along with it, tends to make Christians unpractical and indifferent to the welfare of others. The exact opposite is the truth. When the heart is right as to this, everything else falls into its proper place in relation to it. So that the Christian's life becomes like a well-grown fir tree. The topmost and centre branch takes the lead and shows the way for every other branch. As it advances, so do they, but it must be first. If the tree loses that branch, it loses its completeness, beauty and symmetry. That this is so is clearly indicated in Rev. 22, the last chapter of the Bible. When the Lord is first, the supreme object of our faith and hope and love, all that is right will fall into its natural order. We shall be a separate people, for "he that hath this hope in Him purifieth Himself even as He is pure," and we shall not be involved in, and waste our time on, efforts to improve the world in which Christ has no place; but we shall not be an indifferent or lazy people; there will be earnest activity in two distinct circles of service. The first circle is that of His own, whom He loves; we shall begin there; and the second is that of the poor, barren, thirsty world.

The Spirit and the BRIDE say, Come, to Him; this is the only true attitude of heart towards the Lord in any of His own. Here, as we have said already, "the unity of the Spirit" finds a blessed and practical expression. Here, also, is that first love that alone can satisfy the heart of the Lord. But when this response to the Lord breaks from the heart enraptured with Himself, there is the immediate call to others also, "Let him that heareth say, Come." The heart that is true to the Lord desires that every other heart that knows Him should be equally true to Him, and sets about with diligent labour to secure this. The heart that has heard the Lord saying, "I Jesus . . . am the bright and morning Star," and, "Surely I come quickly," not only desires to be ready for His coming itself, but must have others ready too.

A simple illustration will make this plain. It is necessary for a mother to leave her children for a while, and as she puts the goodbye kiss upon their lips she says, "I will come back soon," and if she has the opportunity of sending a message to them during her absence, the burden of it is, "I will come back soon." She knows well that nothing will stir the hearts of her children and please them more than that word. Yes, but in the message her own desire breaks out! It is because she longs for them and yearns to see and embrace them again that she sends such a message to them. And what can cheer her more during her separation from them than to know that they are longing to see her, and echoing her own message, "Come back soon." Even so it is with the Lord and every true-hearted saint in Rev. 22.

But in that little household there is Mary, the eldest of those young children. Not only is there expectation in her heart, but a sense of responsibility, too. It is love that has put both there. She loves her mother, and so she longs to see her again; she loves her mother, and so she will not be idle, for she wants everything in the home to be ready for her return. And the love for her mother and the time she has spent in her company has made her very sensible as to what will please her, so the home is kept clean and the children are dressed and ready. Mother may come any time now, she will find them waiting.

But how often they go to the door and peer out of the window; they cannot sit still — mother will soon be here, and they are eager for a sight of her, and as the day wears on they become more eager and expectant. They are a watching, as well as a waiting family, and it is their love for their mother that makes them so.

But what is Mary doing? While she waits for her mother, she slips first into this room and then into that to make sure that nothing is out of place, and most of all she keeps her eye on the younger children; not a speck must be on them when the mother returns. She must feed them and wash them and keep them out of mischief, and as their minds wander to other things — for an infant's pleasure is continually changing — she continually reminds them that mother is coming, to keep alive their interest in this greatest of all events to her. And so she waits and she watches like the rest, but she works also. She is faithful to her trust. Blessed is Mary when her mother comes. She has a twofold happiness. Not only is her mother back again, but she has said, "Well done," to her faithful daughter. She has the joy of her mother's presence, and the satisfaction of her mother's approbation.

This surely is what we get in the Lord's words in this closing chapter of the Bible: "Behold I come quickly, and My reward is with Me to give to every man according as his work shall be." And again: "Behold I come quickly, blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this Book." Has the Lord's love to me affected me as the mother's love affected her daughter? Let each reader ask himself that question. If so I shall not be an unpractical and lazy Christian, I shall be watching, waiting and working, and my heart will go out to all whom He loves, and I shall not be satisfied with being ready to greet Him myself when He comes, but I shall be anxious that all His own may be ready too, because I know that thus He would have it. There is no truth in the whole of the Scripture that could have a greater effect upon us or make us labour more diligently than this. It separates from the world and evil things that hinder in the service of the Lord, but it enlarges the heart and gives an interest in all who are precious to Him, everyone of them an integral part of His church, and I one with them all, one indivisible company — the bride that cries in unison with the Spirit, "Come Lord Jesus."

But, further, the true heart overflows to the needy world and must be evangelical. Connected with this earnest desire on the part of the Spirit and the bride for the coming of the Lord we have the last appeal of the grace of God to needy men. It comes from the heart of God, but it comes through the bride, in whom His Spirit dwells. The hearts that long for Christ yearn after others, even as His heart does. It is as though they said, "We have reached the fountain of living water and are satisfied — will you not come and drink also? There is enough for us and enough for you, and our joy will not be lessened but will be increased if we see you drink. Our Lord desires that you should, and if you do it will please and glorify Him, and this is our greatest wish." And the appeal widens out to the whole world: whosoever will, and wherever he may be, may take of the water of life freely. Instead of our affections being narrowed and our activities limited by this great truth we have the whole church for which we may care and the whole world to which we may appeal, and in which we may carry out our work of faith and labour of love and patience of hope.

How blessed is this invitation of grace. In chapter 21: 6 the Lord had said, "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of THE FOUNTAIN OF THE WATER OF LIFE freely." Not of the river, or the stream, be it noted. The river of life will flow forth in a mighty volume in the coming millennial age, but now men are invited to the Fountain. The river has been polluted; the opinions of men and "doctrines of devils" have been turned into it, and as the stream has flowed on the error has predominated: —

"Some truth there is, but dashed and brew'd with lies;

To please the fools, and puzzle all the wise."

It is not the stream that the Lord offers, but THE FOUNTAIN! There is no pollution there. There springs up the living water, pure and fresh and free! It is Christ!

"O Christ, He is the Fountain,

The deep, sweet well of love."

And if one who reads this book has not yet responded to His gracious offer, I close it with an appeal to that one. You need neither preacher nor priest to stand between you and Christ. He invites you to come to Himself, directly and at once. The work of the Holy Ghost is to call your attention to Him, and the whole purpose of the Bible is that you should take freely of the fountain of the water of life that He so freely offers; that you should believe on Him who is the Son of God, and believing have life through His name. In Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily: —

"The Sun of the Godhead pours His rays,

Through the crystal depths of His Manhood's grace."

And it is Himself He gives. He places Himself and all the blessedness that there is in Him at your disposal.

Whether for salvation or satisfaction, sinner and saint must turn to the Fountain, to Christ Himself. All else will fail, and every earth-born stream will run dry, but His sufficiency is inexhaustible and eternal, for He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.

"And ah! the Master is so fair,

His smile so sweet to banished men,

That they who meet it unaware

Can never rest on earth again.

And they who see Him risen afar,

At God's right hand to welcome them,

Forgetful stand, of name and land,

Desiring fair Jerusalem."

And these are they that cry, "Amen, even so, come, Lord Jesus."

"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with all the saints." Amen.

Shine Forth, O Lord!

Shine forth, O Lord, Thou bright and morning star!

Come, quickly come! Thy people waiting are

To see Thy light dispel the deepening gloom,

Waiting the power that vanquishes the tomb.

Shine forth, O Lord, and drive away our fears,

Fulfil our hopes, and give us joy for tears;

Shout, shout the word that bids Thy dead arise,

And calls Thy saints to meet Thee in the skies.

Shine forth, O Lord, come soon for Thy redeemed,

For those on whom Thy tender love has beamed;

Thy pilgrim saints oft weary in the way,

Cry out for Thee — Star of the coming day!

Shine forth, O Lord, by sorrow oft baptized,

We quit the world, and all things by it prized,

Shake ourselves free from every earthly care,

And onward press to meet Thee in the air.

Shine forth, O Lord, and claim Thy blood-bought bride,

Put forth Thy power and raise her to Thy side.

We wait the hour when our glad shout shall be —

That death is swallowed up in victory.

Shine forth, O Lord, and bring to pass the day,

When every clime shall own Thy rightful sway,

When all mankind before Thy throne shall fall,

And heaven and earth shall crown Thee Lord of all.  J. T. M.

God and the World

God and the World

J. T. Mawson.

Contents

Chapter 1 The Text and How Received

"I don't want it." — On Board the Mauretania. — "It's the Best Text in the Bible." — Eternal Life.

Chapter 2 "Behold the light"

The Prince and the Untouchables. — The Old Story. — The Glory in the Face of Jesus Christ. — Old Mr. Honest.

Chapter 3 The source of the blessing

Above the Clouds. — Track it from its Source. — From the Glory to the Cross.

Chapter 4 The Gospel begins with God

Sir James Jeans and the Stars. — God is Great and I am small, can He Think of Me? — How we may Know that He Cares. — The Souls of Men are of More Value than the Stars.

Chapter 5 The Gospel and the Law

The Gospel begins with God, the Law begins with you. — The One who spoke at Sinai came into the World to tell us of God's Love. — The Lawful use of the Law. — How Aidan won the Northumbrians.

Chapter 6 What sort of love is God 's love?

Is it a pallid, palliating, polite sort of thing? — A Great Sacrifice was called for. — David's Lament for Absalom.

Chapter 7 God's Love our only hope

Salvation has come from Heaven. — "His Unspeakable Gift." — What it cost. — The Effect of it.

Chapter 8 What the giving of the Son meant

Nicholas I and the Rebellion. — "They will reverence My Son." — If the death of Christ was Predetermined, why should Men be Charged with the Guilt of it? — The Death of Christ was an Atoning Death.

Chapter 9 God's kiss of love

The Death of Princess Alice. — What held the Saviour to the Cross. — The Kiss of Forgiveness. — The Devil's lie Exposed.

Chapter 10 It is the world that God loves

The World and not a part of it. — The Lady who Thought she had Sinned Away her Day of Grace. — What sort of a World is it?

Chapter 11 How the Love of God changes men

The Man who ran away. — The Text on the Wall. — Could a man who killed another be Saved? — How God's Love Changed J —

Chapter 12 "His only begotten Son"

The Only Begotten Son. — Buddha and Christ. — The Unique Glory of the Saviour.

Chapter 13 "That whosoever believeth in him"

What "whosoever" means. — Duncan Mathieson's Story. — The Mistakes that People make. — The self-righteous old Yorkshire Man.

Chapter 14 What is it to believe?

Believing a Historical Fact. — The Plague in the City and your Need. — A Northumbrian Farmer and How he Believed.

Chapter 15 What does it mean to perish?

"I'll never believe in Hell." — The Words of the Son of God. — The "Whosoever" of Revelation 20.

Chapter 16 Everlasting Life

What is everlasting Life? — "Sanctifying Doubts." — "He said it." — A Saved Jewess. — A place in God's Family. — Glory.

Chapter 17 An Appeal

A Personal Matter. — "I never knew before that God Loved me." — The Devil's Lure. — Too Late. — The Last Judgment. — Longsuffering Love.

Chapter 1

The Text and How Received

"I don't want it." — On Board the Mauretania. — "It's the Best Text in the Bible." — Eternal Life.

I do not know what it was that made the old Yorkshire woman say, "There's naught so queer as folk," but I have often said the same thing myself, when I have seen the way in which people have treated the story of God's great Love. Quite recently I was giving away Gospel booklets in a South London suburb, and I handed one to the proprietor of a prosperous-looking tobacco and sweets store. He greeted me with a smile, but when he read "God so loved the world" on the cover of the tract, he pushed it back into my hand and shouted, "I don't want it." "But," I said, "it's a message of love and friendliness." "I don't want it, take it out," he raged, and he literally danced as though I had dropped a seven-pound weight on his toes. I was sorry I had annoyed him, but very sad that he felt like that at the sight of my text, and I had to say to myself, "Some folk are queer."

I had another experience. It was on board the fine old Mauretania in mid-Atlantic. The western sky was ablaze with the glory of the setting sun, and shafts of crimson beauty were shot from the horizon across the waves. By my side stood a gentleman, delighted as I was with the splendid picture, and he talked of it as only an artist and an admirer of great sights could talk. I said to him, "Do you know, sir, that the God whose hand painted that glowing sky, loves you and me?" He drew back and looked at me for a moment with a look of anything but pleasure in his eyes, and then without a word, turned on his heel, and went to the other side of the ship, and for the rest of the week he avoided me as though I had the plague. It is a marvellous thing — it is queer, yes, queer is the word for it — that the mention of God's love should affect a man in that way, and yet we need not be surprised, for it is explained in one sentence in the Bible, "The carnal mind is enmity against God." Yet John 3: 16 remains upon the page of His Word, and is as true to-day as ever, and what a wonderful declaration of His feelings towards men it is. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." And there is no person, man or woman, rich or poor that may not find room in that "whosoever."

But the great text is not always rejected, to thousands it has been a savour of life unto life. "It's the best text in the Bible," a happy old man said once to me, and I was not surprised that that was what he thought about it, when he went on to tell me that fifty years before it had changed everything for him. It had been used by God's Holy Spirit to turn him from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, and had made his life worth living when it had promised to be a big failure. He had not heard any words in his long life in which there was so much blessing and sweetness, and it was with reverence and affection that he went over them. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." But, good as it was to hear him repeat these words, and to feel the hearty grip of his hand, which showed that, while he was old in years, he was still young in spirit, they did not affect me so much as when I heard them in very different circumstances.

I had spent the afternoon in the large ward of an Infirmary in a northern city. Every bed in that ward was occupied by a suffering man. I had sat and talked for a few minutes with each of these, and had left them all some books to read, when I came to the last bed in the ward. On it was lying a young fellow, not yet twenty. He looked very wan and ill, and as his eyes were closed, I thought he was sleeping. So I sat down by his side, hoping he might awake before I had to go. Soon he opened his eyes, and looked at me with an inquiring look as much as to say, "Who are you?" I said, "I have been giving the men some Gospel books, but I'm afraid you are too ill to read." "Yes," he said, "I am, and the doctor says there is no hope for me, but I am in the Lord's hands." Those last words came out so unexpectedly, and with so much feeling that the lump came into my throat, and I could not immediately command my voice. When I managed this, I said, "And in the very best hands you are, my dear, for He has said of all who trust in Him, 'I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any one pluck them out of My hand.'" "Yes," he answered, "He did say that, and He also said, 'God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.'" And then, exhausted by the effort, he closed his eyes and lay still, and I sat silent and thrilled. Then he began to speak again, as though oblivious of my presence; slowly but with an indescribable sweetness he repeated "Everlasting life, everlasting life." I listened for a while to that sacred communion between his ransomed soul and his God; then, giving his hand a gentle squeeze, I withdrew from his side, and the last sound from his lips that I heard was "Everlasting life." That happened on Friday afternoon, and on the following Tuesday he entered the Glory.

That dying lad had found in John 3: 16 what all the gold in the bank of England could not have gained him. Could I have carried to him the highest honours that the King could bestow, or poured out at his side the choicest treasures of the world, and this earthly life, they would have been worse than useless in the Infirmary ward; but John 3: 16 had enriched him, and God's love had put a peace into his heart that the approach of death could not disturb. "Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift," and "Thanks be unto God that giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ," and thanks be unto God for everlasting life.

Chapter 2

"Behold the Light"

The Prince and the Untouchables. — The Old Story. — The Glory in the Face of Jesus Christ. — Old Mr. Honest.

An incident during the Prince of Wales' visit to India, which was a great event in the history of the pitiful "untouchables" in that land, has been well told by Katherine Mayo in her famous book "Mother India." The fact of the Prince's kindness of heart had reached the ears of these poor outcasts and says the author of that remarkable book:

"When he turned back from his transit of the Great North Gate — the Khyber Pass itself — a strange thing awaited him. A swarm of Untouchables, emboldened by news that had reached them, clustered at the roadside to do him reverence.

"'Government ki jai!"Hail to the Government!' they shouted with cheers that echoed from the barren hills. And when the Prince slowed down his car to return their greetings, they leaped and danced in their excitement.

"For nowhere in all their store of memory or of legend had they any history of any Indian Magnate who had noticed an Untouchable, except to scorn him. And here was a greater than all India contained — the son of the Supreme Power — to them almost divine, who deigned not only to receive, but even to thank them for their homage. Small wonder that their spirits soared, that their eyes saw visions, that their tongues laid hold on mystic words.

"'Look, look!' they cried to one another; 'behold, the Light! the Light!'

"And such was their exaltation, that many of them somehow worked through to Delhi, to add themselves to the 25,000 of their kind, who there awaited the Prince's coming. The village people from round about flocked in to join them — the simple people of the soil, who know nothing of politics, but much of friendship as shown in works. And all together haunted the roadside, waiting, and hoping, for a glimpse of his face.

"At last he came, down the Grand Trunk Road, toward the Delhi Gate; and in the centre of the hosts of Untouchables, one, standing higher than the rest, unfurled a flag.

"'Yuvaraj Maharaj ki jai! Raja ke Bete ki jai!' 'Hail to the Prince! Hail to the King's son!' they all shouted together, as if to burst their throats. And the Prince, while the high-caste Indian spectators wondered, and revolted within themselves, at his lack of princely pride, ordered his car to be stopped.

"Then a spokesman ventured forward to offer, in a humble little speech, the love and fealty of the 60,000,000 of the Unclean, and to beg the heir to the throne to intercede for them with his father, the King Emperor, never to abandon them into the hands of those who despised them and would keep them slaves.

"The Prince heard him through. Then, whether he realised the magnitude of what he did, or whether he acted merely in the impulse of his natural friendly courtesy toward all the world, he did an unheard-of thing. He stood up — stood up for them, the 'worse than dogs'! — spoke a few words of kindness, looked them all over, slowly, and so with a radiant smile, gave them his salute.

"No sun that had risen on India had witnessed such a sight. As the car started on, moving slowly, not to crush them, they went almost mad. And again their Eastern tongues clothed their thought. 'Brother — that word was truth that our brothers brought us — behold, the light is there indeed! The light, the glory, on his face!'"

It was not much that the Prince could do for those almost hopeless people; he did what he could, and won their hearts by what he did. But I would seize upon the incident to illustrate what I want to tell in this book. God-so-loved-the-world. It is an old story that I am telling, and these are familiar words that I am repeating, but I ask you to consider them afresh; you know them well, but look at them again. The heart of God is behind what He has done, and it is more than sinful to ignore that fact. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." He sent Him into the world, not to condemn it, but with the light of His love shining in His face.

To the angels in heaven, this world must have seemed an unlikely place for their Creator and Lord to visit; and they must have marvelled as they saw His sacred, sinless feet treading the filthy streets of those Eastern cities; and when He touched the lepers, and looked kindly upon the outcasts, and spoke in tones of mercy even to the vilest, they must have wondered as to what the end would be. It is recorded that "He was seen of angels." But most men were unmoved by His presence among them. Proud Jerusalem asked scornfully, "Who is this?" But some beheld the glory in His face, and they bore witness and said, "He dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." God's love smiled upon sinners through the eyes of Jesus. In Him was the light. He is the Light, and those that follow Him "shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

His progress in this world was not through admiring multitudes to a glorious throne, it ought to have been, but it wasn't. Instead, He was despised and rejected of men, and God knew that He would be when He sent Him, and every step that He trod, took Him nearer to the Cross.

"That path uncheered by earthly smiles

Led only to the Cross."

And the wonder of all ages is that that Cross is the supreme witness of God's love to men. I must repeat that it is an old story that I am telling, but to those who have believed it, its charm endures, and it will live to be rehearsed when the exploits of the greatest and kindliest of men are forgotten. It is the story of a love that is eternal and unmeasurable.

"You might count all the days of the ages,

All the snowflakes come down from above,

All the flowers of summers departed —

But you cannot measure this love."

And it shines still in the face of Jesus, for, though He died, He lives again — risen from the dead, and exalted to the throne in Heaven there still shines from His face the glory of the love and grace of God to men; and I take up the words that those astonished and enraptured Untouchables spoke of the kindly Prince. I say to you, "Brother — that word was truth that our brothers brought us — behold the light is there indeed! The light, the glory, on His face!" And I can give you more reliable authority than that of any man, or of any brother of ours who has spoken to us, though tens of thousands would willingly bear their witness to you, and their witness would be true; but I turn to the Bible, the infallible Word of God, and tell you that it tells us that, "The light of the knowledge of God is in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4: 6).

And if that light shines into a heart, what is the result? Have you read the story of old Mr. Honest in John Bunyan's wonderful book? He wanted to join the Pilgrim band that was travelling to the Celestial City, and Greatheart, the leader of the band, asked him to give an account of himself. "I come," said he, "from the town of Stupidity, it lieth about four degrees beyond the City of Destruction."

"I have often wondered," said Greatheart, "that any should come from your place; for your town is worse than the City of Destruction."

"Yes," said old Honest, "we lie more off the sun, and seem more cold and senseless. But were a man in a mountain of ice, yet if the Sun of Righteousness will rise upon him, his frozen heart shall feel a thaw. THUS IT HATH BEEN WITH ME."

"I believe it, Father Honest, I believe it," cried Greatheart, "for I know the thing is true."

Yes, it is true, if but one ray of light shines from the face of Jesus into a man's heart, it melts and warms and changes it, and he becomes a new creature in Christ Jesus, a lover of God and a possessor of eternal life.

Chapter 3

The Source of the Blessing

Above the Clouds. — Track it from its Source. — From the Glory to the Cross.

I had to cross a high mountain range in a distant land. It was early morning, and the rising sun had not yet dispersed the snow-white clouds that rolled beneath me, and which were pierced here and there by giant peaks that reared upward to the tropical sky. It was a most wonderful prospect, and a new and thrilling experience for me, but what moved me most, and left the deepest impression on my mind was a fountain of water, cool as the night and clear as crystal, that sprang up from the rock, thousands of feet above the sea, and went flowing down to the sun-parched plains beneath. As I stood in those glorious surroundings, the music of that fountain got into my soul, and I felt that I must sing, and so, raising my voice, I sang to the accompanying of the flowing waters, part of William Cowper's hymn of praise to our great Saviour:

"E'er God had built the mountains

Or raised the fruitful hills,

Before He filled the fountains

That feed the running rills,

In Thee, from everlasting,

The wonderful I AM

Found pleasures never wasting,

And WISDOM is Thy Name.

"And could'st Thou be delighted

With creatures such as we?

Who, when we saw Thee, slighted

And nailed Thee to a tree!

Unfathomable wonder!

And mystery divine!

The voice that speaks in thunder

Says, 'Sinner, I am thine!'"

As I finished my song by that fountain above the clouds, I was moved to deeper praise for I thought of that greater fountain of blessing and life that is springing up and flowing forth to unhappy, sinful, thirsty, dying men. Where will you find it? If you would discover it, you must arise and travel in your search by Calvary and Bethlehem, you must pass upward above the clouds, you must go from earth to heaven and away into the heights of eternal glory to the heart of the blessed God. Then, and not till then, will you reach the fountain, the source of blessing. It springs up in the very heart of God, for God is love. In those three words we are told what God is in the absolute perfection of His eternal Being. But what is that to us, unless His love can reach us in blessing? And how can it do that? We are sinners, which is only another name for rebels; we were guilty and dead towards God; no pulse of love stirred in our souls towards Him; we had turned every one to his own way, and gone so far from Him that we needed only to take one more step and our souls had been plunged into hopeless and everlasting perdition. What could God's love do for us, and how could He show it to us? The answer comes as clear as human words, divinely chosen, can state it. "In this is manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him." But can God love sinful men, who never loved Him, and yet maintain His holiness?

And if He does love them and shows it, what of His eternal justice, upon which the pillars of His moral universe are founded? Again there comes the answer, sure and sufficient, "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4: 8, 9, 10).

Burdened and weary sinner, unsatisfied and thirsting, be glad and rejoice, that, though you have not loved God, He has loved you; and though you have not sought Him, He has sought you. He has anticipated your deep need, and has taken the only way by which you could be saved, to save you. Ponder my text again. For, "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Begin at the source of it, and track the way that the love of God has taken to reach you; see Him who was in the form of God descending from His high glory to earth; pause for a moment at the manger in Bethlehem, and join your adoration there with the worship of the shepherds from the hills, for the Babe before whom they bow is Emmanuel, the only begotten Son of God — given for the world. Travel further, for Jesus must go further if we were to be saved from perishing; keep His company as He moves amid the miseries of men, rising up day by day before the sun, to be ready to heal their sicknesses and assuage their sorrows; travel with Him through Gethsemane; it is a rough way for His feet to go, but He does not refuse to tread it, see Him move onward with steadfast face, despised and rejected of men, spit upon, scourged and crowned with thorns; follow Him through the gates of David's city as He bears His cross to Calvary. Do not stand with the mocking multitude lest you partake of their spirit, but with the mother of Jesus, and His mother's sister, and Mary Magdalene, out of whom He cast seven devils, and the disciple whom Jesus loved; you will be in good company if you stand with them to "Behold the Lamb of God" crucified for a world of sinners.

You have yet to learn the meaning of it, you have yet to learn why the giving of God's only begotten Son should have meant sorrow and sacrifice and death for Him, and salvation and life for you; but it was only on this road that the love of God could reach you. He had loved the world in vain apart from this.

Chapter 4

The Gospel Begins with God

Sir James Jeans and the Stars. — God is Great and I am small, can He Think of Me? — How we may Know that He Cares. — The Souls of Men are of More Value than the Stars.

Our text begins with God, and God is great; it tells us that He loved the world, and the world is small. Even to us it appears to be small in comparison with what we used to feel about it, now that men can fly round it in a few days; but how small it is in comparison with the universe.

Sir James Jeans commences one of his books with a staggering paragraph. He says, "A few stars are known, which are hardly bigger than the earth, but the majority are so large that hundreds of thousands of earths could be packed inside each and leave room to spare; here and there we come upon a giant star large enough to contain millions and millions of earths. And the total number of stars in the universe is probably something like the total number of grains of sand on all the sea shores of the world. Such is the littleness of our home in space, when measured up against the total substance of the universe."

Those who believe the Bible, and they are wise men who believe it, know that God, and not accident, is the Maker of those mighty stars, for the Bible begins with, "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," and as to the stars and their number and their names, it also tells us that "He calleth them all by their names" (Ps. 147: 4). And the question may well arise in the mind, "How can God, who is so great, care for a world that is so small?" and, further, and more puzzling still, how can He have a personal interest in any one of the two thousand millions of people who live on it? It was this that puzzled a man with whom I talked. He had imbibed more learning at Continental Universities than comes within reach of most English-speaking men, and he was not an atheist. He had a reverent and humble mind, and believed in the existence of God, but he could only conceive a God who was great and distant. He was impressed with the greatness of God, for he had studied. astronomy, and he owned that only an omnipotent God could be the Maker of those countless worlds that bear their silent testimony to His eternal power and divinity; but he said, "How can God, who is so great, take any notice of such an insignificant and useless man as I am?"

How shall we answer his question? There is only one way, we must believe God's Word as to it. We receive the witness of men, but the witness of God is greater. If a man brings us tidings that we are glad to hear, we believe him; why should we not believe God when He speaks? Or do we imagine, as some do, that God, having made us, is unable to communicate His thoughts to us? The notion is absurd. He that made the mouth, can He not speak? He has spoken, and His words tell of a love that exceeds all our comprehension. We may not understand it, but we may believe it, and "he that believeth not God hath made Him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of His Son." And what is the record? It is that to all that believe, "God hath given eternal life, and this life is in His Son.

There is no other way of knowing this great fact; we cannot arrive at it by studying the stars or by digging into the secrets of nature. The philosophies of men do not reach to this. "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?" No, here the best intellects are baffled, and the wisest men are fools, for the things of God knoweth no man, until they are revealed to him, but God has revealed them, and they are very real to the man who believes. God has revealed His love, and that revelation is contained in the words of John 3: 16. And they stand out, even amongst the words of Holy Scripture in an unsurpassed glory. The man whose mind is blinded by the god of this world will refuse the revelation, but the heart in which faith has awakened will receive it, and sing:

"How Thou canst think so well of us

Yet be the God Thou art,

Is darkness to my intellect,

But sunshine to my heart."

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the poet, spent a night behind a telescope at the Greenwich Observatory, and afterwards remarked, "That's the sort of thing that makes one think little of county families." And indeed it is as well to be impressed with the littleness and futility of men, who strut and pose in their pride, yet we must not judge of things by their size. We are impressed with the vastness of the stars, as astronomers descant upon them, but when we come to the Bible, they are treated in a mere incidental way. The creation chapter tells us, "He made the stars also."

And we may be sure that they were all made for a great purpose, the fact that God calls them all by name means that, and that purpose will be revealed when "the mystery of God is finished." But the souls of men are evidently of more value to God than the stars, for, for their salvation He gave His only begotten Son. It is to man that He has revealed His love in JESUS, and "there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth."

We are, indeed, small and insignificant, one blast of God's indignation against us for our sins would have been our utter extinction, yet of such value were we in His sight that He gave His only begotten Son for us, yes, for ungrateful rebellious men He gave His Son!

For men, both vile and guilty, the living stream of blessing flows! It is a wonderful story, but is it true? "If only what you have been telling us were true," said one of my hearers to me, at the close of a Gospel service. "Yes," I said, "wouldn't it be good?" He admitted that nothing would equal it in goodness. "Well," I said, "you may stake your immortal soul upon it, it is as true as it is good, and it is as good as it is true; for it is 'the Gospel of God concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.'"

Chapter 5

The Gospel and the Law

The Gospel begins with God, the Law begins with you. — The One who spoke at Sinai came into the World to tell us of God's Love. — The Lawful use of the Law. — How Aidan won the Northumbrians.

Again I want you to notice that our text begins with God, and in this it is unlike the law, which God gave at Sinai. The law began with you. The Lord Himself summed up its ten commandments in two marvellous sentences, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." We need not trouble just now about the second part of the law, important as it is, for no man can be right as to that, who is wrong as to the first part of it, and alas, all men have been wrong there. The first part of the law is the crux and test; and it begins with you and ends with God. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." It was like a golden ladder set up on the earth, and reaching up to the throne of God, but never did sinful feet mount one rung of that ladder; every man has turned away from it, for every man has loved himself more than he has loved his God.

If God's dealings with men had ended with the law, our case would have been hopeless, for its just condemnation would have been our doom; but thank God, the law was not the end. The law was given for a wise and just purpose. God had a right to say how His creatures should live, and what He expected them to be, and to refrain from doing. And every right-thinking man owns that the law is good and just and perfect. A life lived according to its standard would be a good life, even though its commandments are, with perhaps two exceptions, only prohibitive. But every man has failed, if not in every point of the law, at least in one, and having failed in one, he is guilty of all.

Now the law is like a plumb-line that exposes the crooked wall, but does not put it straight; it is like the mirror that shows a man that his face is dirty but does not wash it; it can do nothing more for a man than expose and condemn him, for "whatsoever things the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth might be stopped and all the world become guilty before God." It is good for a man to face the law; to stand in those awe-inspiring chapters, Exodus 19 and 20, and to behold the Mount Sinai wrapt in a cloud of darkness, out of which the lightnings flashed, and the thunders spoke; and to hear the voice of God there, so majestic and terrible, that even Moses did exceedingly fear and quake. It is well to consider the law, and bow before its just demands upon sinful men, for nothing could be so well calculated to make us fly from its curse to God for refuge as He is revealed to us in John 3: 16.

Could it be the same Lord who spoke in the thunders of Sinai, who, in tender accents, told Nicodemus, the Pharisee, that, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son"? Yes, it was the same, for Jesus is Jehovah. And the man who denies it does not know God, but his mind is blinded by his great foe, the devil, lest he should believe and be saved.

Our text is not like the law, it begins with God and comes down to you; it does not set you climbing up to God, but shows you how He has come down to you, to save you, and what it has cost Him to do it.

Do I then despise the law? Most certainly not. I take up Paul's words, "We know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully," and a lawful use of it would be to bring its lash upon the consciences of the ungodly, to show them their sins, and how far they have come short of its righteous requirements, then they might realise and learn that, "by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in God's sight," for so Romans 3: 20 declares. But the man who preaches the law as a means of gaining God's favour, and as a way of salvation and life opposes the Gospel, and casts a slight upon God's great gift of His Son; he despises the great love of God, or is grossly ignorant of it and what it has done. And the man who puts himself under law in the hope of getting blessing by it, brings upon himself a curse instead, as Galatians 3: 10, 11 distinctly tells us. We have yet to meet a man whose heart was won for God by the preaching of the law; and we have never heard of a multitude of people singing, "We've found our way to God by the law. Hallelujah!"

It is the Gospel, and not the law, that puts joy into the heart, and the new song on the lips. It is the revelation of God's love that wins men from their sins as ten thousand voices from the past can tell us. I give an instance. After the death of Edwin, the first Christian king of Northumbria, the country was overrun by pagans, and the people sank down into the grossest superstitions. A well-meaning, but austere Irish missionary was sent by the Christian colony in Iona to win them from their darkness to the Christian faith; but he was so appalled by the vileness of their lives and their unashamed debauchery, that he thundered the law at them and denounced their sins. They listened to him with a certain amount of curiosity, but were unmoved by his fierce words. After a while, he abandoned his mission and returned to his brethren, a disappointed man. Amongst those to whom he told the tale of his failure was a Christian brother named Aidan, who was a shining example of one who knew the Lord. He said, "Ah, Lord Jesus, if he had told them of the love of God, and of Thy Cross, they would have hearkened," and constrained by that love, he decided to go and tell the Northumbrians what he knew. He did not speak the tongue of the people, but Oswald, who was Edwin's nephew and successor, had spent some years in Ireland, and knew the language that Aidan spoke, and, his heart being first won by the matchless story of the love of God, he became the interpreter of the message to the people. Aidan's mission was not a failure as had been that of his predecessor, for the story he told enthralled the people, and what the preaching of the law failed to do, God's great love did, for multitudes "turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven;" and Aidan spent the rest of his life in that kingdom gathering those heathen hosts to the feet of the Saviour, and exhorting them to keep themselves in the love of God.

Chapter 6

What Sort of Love is God's Love?

Is it a pallid, palliating, polite sort of thing? — A Great Sacrifice was called for. — David's Lament for Absalom.

What sort of a love is this love of God? I knew a mother who said one day to her wilful daughter, "Go to your bedroom and tell God all about your naughtiness, and don't come down again until He has forgiven you." I need not say that she was not a wise mother. After a few minutes' silence, the little lady, in very pert fashion, returned to the drawing-room. "Well," said the mother, "did you tell God what a naughty girl you have been?" "Yes, I did," came the reply, "and He said, 'O, Miss E—, don't mention it.'" Does the child's fancy provoke a smile? It saddened me, for behind it, I saw that a false impression had been made upon her mind as to God and His character. To her, as to thousands of people who are grown up, and consider themselves intelligent, God is an indulgent easygoing Being, to whom sin is a minor affair, that nobody should trouble about at all, unless, of course, it becomes a menace to society — then give the sinner short shrift. God's love in their view is a pallid, palliating, polite sort of thing, as vague and invertebrate as they suppose His justice to be, so that it does not matter whether they please Him or not, He does not care, and if He does it does not matter; it will be all the same in the end.

The love of God is not like that; it is not the love of a weak and indulgent parent; it is a holy love, there is a force and energy and vigour about it that can only be found in God. His love transcends our highest thoughts, it baffles all illustration, but it reaches out to all men, and the meanest and most unintelligent may receive it, and the blessing of it. It is a love that hates sin, and yet has set itself to rescue men from its power and its penalty, and to do this righteously, in the only way in which it can be done, and at its own cost.

God must be against sin, for sin is rebellion against Himself; it would climb up to His throne, and cast Him from it if it could and crown the devil in His place; it has ruined God's fair creature man, for it has blinded his eyes to His goodness, and poisoned the very springs of his being; it has carried the multitudes who have died into death and the grave; it has forged the chains that bind souls in everlasting darkness; out of its foul womb have come forth sorrow, and crying, and pain, and death; it is the mother of weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. How could God tolerate sin as though it did not matter? And men are sinners, and willingly so, for all have sinned, and in this there is no difference.

God has come forth in Christ to woo the sinner and win him, and yet He must deal with his sins in uncompromising justice, and so we find that our great text is inseparably bound to the words that precede it, and those words are about THE CROSS OF CHRIST. There would have been no Cross if God had not loved the world, and His love could not have been effective for the world without the Cross.

Let us have, then, the words that precede our text, for they are essential to its meaning: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life." A great sacrifice was called for, and it must be holy and of infinite value. A Son of Man must stand up as the Substitute and Representative of men; but He must be sinless. He must be one who did no sin, in whom was no sin, and who knew no sin. He must be holy, harmless and undefiled, or death and inexorable justice would claim Him as they had claimed all others. He must be one over whom death had no rights, and yet able to give His life a ransom for others, and He must be "lifted up," that upon Him the righteous condemnation of sinners might fall. He must make expiation for sins to deliver men from sin's penalty, from Satan's bondage, the fear of death and everlasting perdition; and that God's eternal justice might remain unchallenged, and His throne retain its inflexible integrity. Where could this Son of Man be found? God has found Him, and given Him for the salvation of men, for the Son of Man who was lifted up at Calvary is God's only begotten Son.

There never was a more tragic and more poignant story penned than that of David and Absalom. That wayward son of an indulgent father had slain his brother, and fled the country, for he knew well that if his father acted in justice, as a king should act, he must die for his crime, even though in his case there were extenuating circumstances. And David's heart yearned for his son, and at last he sanctioned his return and kissed him. The father and the king were in conflict in the one person, and the king was beaten; a weak love triumphed over stern justice, and brought disaster on a kingdom. That son was soon in open revolt against the father from whose nerveless hand the sceptre had fallen, and nothing would satisfy him but his father's life, and his father's throne; rebellion would be king. He failed, as sin must also finally fail in its revolt against God and His throne, but when the news was brought to the aged father that that godless son of his hung dead from the branches of an oak tree in the wood, the sorrow of it broke his heart, and to his chamber over the gate he went, sorely weeping, and saying, "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!" Ah, yes, now he realised the only way; if he could himself have borne the penalty of his son's crime! if only he could have done that, but he could not, for he himself was a murderer, his own life was forfeited, and that by his own sentence; he could not have paid the price for his guilty son. But what David could not do for Absalom, God has done for us, and He commends His love to us in this, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And this was the only way in which we could be righteously free from sin's penalty.

"Inscribed upon the Cross we see

In shining letters, 'God is love.'"

At that Cross of Christ mercy and truth met together, righteousness and peace kissed each other; through the Cross God can be a just God and a Saviour. The Cross of Christ is the measure and the pledge of God's love, and at the same time it is the revelation of His holiness. God is love and God is light. How great is the splendour of the Cross, the light of it drives out the darkness from every heart that believes. And nothing else can do that.

"O the Cross of Christ is wondrous;

There I learn God's heart to me,

'Mid the silent deepening darkness

God is light, I also see.

Holy claims of justice finding

Full expression in the scene.

Light and love alike are telling

What yon woes and sufferings mean."

Chapter 7

God's Love our Only Hope

Salvation has come from Heaven. — "His Unspeakable Gift." — What it cost. — The Effect of it.

Who would have thought that our salvation would come from heaven? Naturally that would have been the last place from which we should have expected it, for it was against heaven that we had sinned. "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight," cried the penitent prodigal, and that is true of us all. Our sins were a slur upon God's majesty, a challenge to His supremacy, and a proof that we hated Him. We might have expected judgment from heaven, and wrath, and fire, and brimstone, but not love and salvation. But the unexpected has happened, and the truth must be told to all the world, that God so loved us that He gave His only begotten Son. It is more than wonderful, and it cannot be explained by any standard of human conduct; it is what God is; it is the revelation of His very heart.

And yet, to whom could we have looked for salvation if not to God? Certainly no man could give a ransom for his brother; and all have sinned, hence all were under condemnation, and no one could save another. There could have been no hope for any man apart from God. If He had not intervened for our salvation, we must all have perished. He has intervened, and we who believe, wonder and worship. He "gave His only begotten Son." This was the greatest and the best He could do, and nothing less than this would have availed.

It is by words that things are explained and understood by us, yet we feel that even the richest and fullest human words that we can command are altogether feeble and cold when this great love has to be told out. Even the Holy Spirit of God, who with divine wisdom selected and gave the best words that could be given to convey to us great truths, declared the inadequacy of all human language to express the greatness of this love gift, when He inspired Paul to exclaim, "Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift!"

Paul knew how to use acceptable words, wise preacher that he was, and when occasion demanded, he could pile superlative upon superlative, as when he wrote of "the exceeding greatness of God's power," and "the exceeding riches of His grace," and His ability "to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think," and of "a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." But when he wrote of this gift of God, there were no words that could describe it. If there had been any in human language that could have conveyed to human intelligence the fullness and immensity of it, the Holy Spirit would have known them and given them to him, but there were none. We try to encompass this great gift with words, and we call it "great," "ineffable," "wonderful," "incomparable," "boundless," and "perfect," but they all fail. All these, or their equivalents in the languages of Paul's day were duly considered and found wanting by the divinely-inspired writer. Overwhelmed by the character of the gift, he tells us in one brief sentence that it defies definition and baffles all description, that it is inexpressible, unspeakable. "Thanks be unto God," he says, "for HIS UNSPEAKABLE GIFT."

The gift is the proof and measure of God's love. We may consider it, but never fully comprehend it; we may know it, yet it surpasses knowledge; we may speak of it, yet it is unspeakable; we may search the breadth, length, depth, and height of it; yet it is unsearchable; its dimensions and magnitude are for ever beyond the creature's range! The incarnation and the Cross, the rough way that Jesus trod, His sighs and sorrows, His suffering in Gethsemane, and the shame of Golgotha, the darkness, the woe, His death and blood-shedding, were all God's voice to men, speaking with a growing intensity; they were God's utterance of unutterable love; His love declared by His unspeakable gift. Whether we think of the love that gave the gift, or the gift that the love gave, or the flood of blessing that flows to men, and will yet flow to them as a result of it, there is only one thing we can do, unless we are hardened and blinded by the devil, and that is to give thanks unto God for His unspeakable gift.

"Unto me, the vile, the guilty,

Flows the living flood;

I, an enemy, am ransomed

By the precious blood.

Prostrate at Thy feet I lie,

Lost in Love's immensity."

Who can tell what it cost God to give this great gift? Mark well how language labours and strains to express the preciousness of God's Son to Him. He is spoken of as "His only begotten Son." His only one, the object of His full and undivided love, and He was this eternally. "Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world" are the words of JESUS to His Father. There never was, and never shall be a moment in Eternity or in Time when He did not dwell in the bosom of His Father, "the only begotten Son that is in (or exists in) the bosom of the Father," is the way He is described. The Father's bosom was, and is, His dwelling place. It is by such language that we are told how dear, infinitely dear He is to the Father, and worthy of that Father's love. But He came forth from the Father to be the Saviour of sinners! And again, I ask, who can tell what it cost the Father to send Him forth? And having come into the world, how inexpressible is the love that flowed between the Father and the Son. The Father loveth the Son so well that He holds back nothing from Him, He gives Him all things (John 3: 35), and He shares all His thoughts with Him; the flow of communion was not diminished or interrupted when He came, a Man to earth (John 5: 20). And as He lived His life, fresh causes were continually emerging that called forth fresh expressions of that love, and most of all when He laid down His life, for the Lord Himself said, "Therefore doth my Father love Me, because I lay down My life" (John 10: 17). And on the part of "the SON of His love," there ever rose up a perfect responsive love to His Father. "He that sent Me is with Me: the Father hath not left Me alone; I do always the things that please Him", He said. And again, "That the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father hath given Me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence." "God is angry with the wicked every day," but in Jesus He found unceasing, never-failing delight, and Him He has given to save us and have us for Himself; so great is His love!

If there had been any other way by which sinners could have been saved, would He have done this? We are sure that He would not. If they could have saved themselves, would God have given His Son to save them? if they could have done it, He being the just God that He is, would have encouraged them to do it, and when they had accomplished the great feat, He would have put the crown upon their heads and said, "Well done"; but it was because we were without strength that Christ died for us; and "God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." There was no other way by which we could be rescued from darkness and destruction. Only the only begotten Son could save us, the work was too great for man, angel, or archangel; and God gave Him that that work might be done, and that we might not perish, but have everlasting life.

This unspeakable gift produces an unspeakable joy in all those that believe. Appreciate the gift and let it be kept by the Spirit's power before the heart, and an answering joy will be there; a joy that the heart knows for itself, deep, silent and unspeakable. It is the joy of faith, the joy of love, the joy of eternal life, the joy of the knowledge of the only true God and Jesus Christ, His sent One.

Chapter 8

What the Giving of the Son meant

Nicholas I and the Rebellion. — "They will reverence My Son." — If the death of Christ was Predetermined, why should Men be Charged with the Guilt of it? — The Death of Christ was an Atoning Death.

Long before the power in Russia was seized by apostate Jews, and the last of the Romanoffs, and his family were butchered in a cellar, the people were restless, and often on the verge of a revolt; for, though the Tsars were styled "the little father," they were tyrants with few exceptions, and some of them well deserved the title "terrible." Nicholas I was one who ruled the people with an iron hand, and early in his reign they rebelled against him. A roaring mob surrounded the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, threatening death to the Tsar and his consort, who were watching them from within. It looked as though their last hour had come, when suddenly Nicholas took up his six months-old child, the heir to the throne, and stepping out upon the balcony, he faced the multitudes that surged like an angry sea in the vast palace square. He was a young man, handsome, tall and splendid in his strength. He did not speak, he just stood there with the babe in his arms. A silence fell on the mob, which seemed more awful than its rage. Then came sobs, and then a tempest of cheers. An emotional people were moved by the sight of the solitary Tsar and his mute babe, by this confidence that he showed in them, and they sensed that the babe in his arms most surely meant peace and not war, that it was an ambassador and pledge of good-will, and not oppression. The people were won, and the dynasty was saved, and it was the showing by the Tsar of his only son to the people that saved it.

The world that God loved was in rebellion against Him, and it had no cause for its rebellion, for He is no tyrant, but the faithful Creator, and He had never left men without a witness as to His kind thoughts towards them. Paul told this to the worshippers of the idol Jupiter in the city of Lystra. Said he, "He did good, and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness." And again, he told the great philosophers at Athens that "He giveth to all, life and breath and all things." But men were not thankful for His gifts, they did not acknowledge Him as the Giver of them, they hated Him and would not hear His word. Then He said, "I have one Son, I will send Him. They will reverence My Son." It was as though God said, "I will show them My very heart, I will prove to them that I am not against them. My Son shall be the pledge and proof of My love to them. I cannot do more; this is My last and My best."

And Jesus came — He came as a Babe in the manger, the great sign that God would be at peace with men. The Babe was God's love gift to the world; His only begotten Son. He came full of grace and truth; He came preaching peace; He came not to condemn the world, but to save it. He stood before the world showing forth the heart of God who sent Him; He was not silent, but spoke of love that passes all bounds of human thought. But men had no ears to listen to His message. When they saw Him, they hated Him and His Father who sent Him, and they had no pity, but cried, "Let us kill Him," "Away with Him," "Crucify Him." The world's rebellion was not quelled by the sight of God's only begotten Son, nor was its heart changed by it; instead, His coming brought that rebellion to its culmination and they murdered Him. But the murder of the Son of God did not turn back the tide of blessing that sprang up in the heart of God; instead, it opened wide the flood-gates, that the living waters might flow forth in ever-lasting blessing. God turned the evil and hatred of men to His own ends, so that now, "Whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." That blessing is flowing still, and though millions have been supplied, it flows as fresh as ever, for it is as inexhaustible as it is blessed.

There is a question that is sometimes raised, and it is an important one, as to why, if the crucifixion of the Son of God at Calvary only fulfilled what God intended, and was the great evidence of His love to the world, why should that act be looked upon as the greatest crime of the world? Why, for instance, since "the Son of Man must be lifted up," should Jesus Himself charge the Jews with being guilty of the act, when He said to them, "When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye know that I am He"? Could man be held responsible for that which God had predetermined?

God knew beforehand, of course, that the revelation of His best would only provoke the worst that was in men, for He knew all that was in man from the beginning, though it required the supreme test to bring it out. But it had to come out, for the truth as to all things must be manifested; the truth as to God, the truth as to men, and the truth as to the devil. And all did come out at the cross, there the thoughts of many hearts were revealed. God was not responsible for the evil that was in the hearts of men, but He showed His supremacy over all by restraining that evil for a while, and then when the hour came, and it gushed forth in unrestrained and determined hatred against Him, by turning it into the channel by which it became the means of glorifying Him, and more wonderful still, the way of blessing for men. He knew what men would do, and predetermined that their act should thus turn to a triumph of His love.

But, let one suppose that what the Lord Jesus suffered at the hands of men secured redemption for us. When it says that He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, we must think deeper than of His flesh torn and bruised by the nails and thorns, and if we can say, "by His stripes we are healed," we must think of something other than the scourging to which Pilate so unjustly condemned Him. "It pleased the Lord to bruise Him," i.e. instead of the unsparing judgment of God coming with its crushing weight upon us, God chose that it should fall upon Him and He gave Him to be our Substitute and to bear it in our stead. He was lifted up by men, the object of their hatred and derision, but when they had done their worst, the sixth hour came, tolling in the darkness that was denser than that that enshrouded Egypt, and such as creation had never seen before; then there took place what no creature mind will ever fully understand, His soul was made an offering for sin, and God made Him, our sinless Substitute, to be sin for us, and He bore our sins in His own body on the Tree. "Through the Eternal Spirit He offered Himself without spot to God." It is this that explains — what is, indeed, beyond all our comprehension — that cry that will never be forgotten, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" which being interpreted is, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" The more we consider that, and the more its meaning enters our souls, the greater will be our wondering appreciation of our great text and the love of God which it reveals to us.

The death of Jesus was an atoning death; there never was, there never will be another like it. He suffered, the Just One, for us the unjust, to bring us to God, and that is why we shall sing to Him, "Thou art worthy, for Thou hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue and people and nation." For the efficacy of His atoning blood extends to the whole world, and whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

Chapter 9

God's Kiss of Love

The Death of Princess Alice. — What held the Saviour to the Cross. — The Kiss of Forgiveness. — The Devil's lie Exposed.

Princess Alice, the greatly beloved daughter of Queen Victoria, was married to the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt. She had nursed her husband and daughters, the youngest of which, just a babe, had died, through the then greatly dreaded diptheria, when her only son was sorely stricken. Though worn out by nursing, she insisted upon taking full charge of her suffering boy. One day, when the fever was at its height, he stretched his hands out to her and said, "Kiss me, mother," and she, breaking through the restraints of prudence, pressed upon his parched lips a mother's love-kiss. That kiss cost her her life. God has stooped down to put the kiss of His love upon the world, but it cost Him the life of His Son; He knew that it would when He gave Him. "He spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all." He sent Him into the world, not with flaming fire to judge it, but in lowly grace to put His kiss upon it to save it. The Son of God came forth from His Father with a commandment, and that commandment was to lay down His life and take it again. It was the only way. I will quote the very words of the Lord Jesus, for the Gospel story would be incomplete without them. He said, "I lay down My life for the sheep. . . . Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life that I might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of My Father" (John 10: 15-18).

Let no one think that it was an easy thing for the Father to give that commandment, or for the Son to carry it out. Nothing but infinite and divine love, the love of God, could have done it. In His agony in the Garden, Jesus cried, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me." It was not possible, the commandment must be carried out. It was the measure of God's love to men; He so loved the world.

But see what these words of JESUS mean. "No man taketh My life from Me." It was impossible for men to slay Him. In intent they did it, on their part no effort was wanting to bring Him down into death; their malice and cruelty knew no pity; they were indeed from that point of view His murderers, they slew the Holy One and the Just; and yet, when they had done their worst, He voluntarily laid down His life, a sacrifice for sin. He anticipated that spear thrust that ripped His side, and offered up Himself without spot to God. In their mocking of Him, they cried, "Come down from the cross and we will believe on you." He could have come down from the cross. It was not the nails that were driven through His hands and His feet that held Him there. I could not admit that, unless I am allowed to spell out one word upon them. Then the nail in His right hand shall be L, and the nail in His left hand shall be O, and the nail in the right foot shall be V, and the nail in the left foot shall be E. It was LOVE that held Him there, the love of a Saviour-God. He did not die by the violence of men, though they could not have been more violent; nor did He die from any natural cause. He cried, "It is finished," with a loud voice and yielded up His own life. So that, when the soldiers came to finish the work of that brutal day, they marvelled that He was dead already. One act on their part remained to be done, that the ancient word might be fulfilled, and that the sacrifice might be complete. One of them stepped back a pace and thrust his spear into the side of the dead body of the Saviour, and forthwith came there out blood and water. "And he that saw it bare record, and, his record is true; and he knoweth that he saith true, THAT YE MIGHT BELIEVE" (John 19: 35).

He carried out His Father's commandment by yielding up His life, He had the power to do it because of who He was; but He had also received commandment to take it again, and this He has done. And if He had not done this, God's love would have been an impotent love, it could not have saved us. "If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins." If Christ be not raised, God has lost His Son for ever, and we have no Saviour. But His resurrection is an integral part of the Gospel, for "Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and was buried, and rose again from the dead the third day, according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor. 15: 3, 4).

Death has met its Master, the power of the grave has been broken, and Jesus lives. He has carried out His Father's commandment and finished the work that He gave Him to do, and God has glorified Him with the glory that He had with Him before the world began. And all this is involved in our text; if that commandment had not been carried out, and if that work had not been finished, sinners never could have felt the kiss of God's love, and it never could have been said, "Whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Prince Ernest Louis would never forget that kiss of love that cost his mother her life, he would have been an unnatural, unfeeling son if he had; but the world cared nothing at the time for the love of God that made Him give His Son, and it cares nothing for it now. It is indifferent to the kiss of God's love. Yet if any will hear and believe the story, to them flows the rich blessing that is the result of it. And multitudes have heard and believed it, and every one of them has been kissed by the kiss of forgiveness and love. Let no one suppose that when God gave His Son His love to the world ceased. The gift did not exhaust the love; it fills His heart now as ever it did, and when a sinner, weary of his sins turns towards Him, God sees him when he is yet a great way off for the eyes of love are very keen; and He has compassion on him — for the heart of love is very tender; and He runs — for the feet of love are swift, and He falls on his neck and kisses him. Each sinner is kissed for himself and can say, as the love of God is shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost, that is given to him, "God who knows all, has forgiven all, and He loves me, yes, even me."

And what has the devil to give in comparison with that? He lied to Adam and Eve in the garden. He told them that God did not love them, that He was withholding something from them that would exalt them and do them good, and if they would but listen to him he would make them happier and higher than God had made them; he would make them as gods, knowing good and evil. They listened to his lying words, and turned their backs upon God who did love them, and followed the devil who hated them, to their ruin! John 3: 16 is the answer to the devil's lie, and the truth of it dispels the darkness that lies as a black pall upon the souls of men. For when a man believes the Gospel, he is saved and set free, the Son makes him free, for the Son came to undo the works of the devil, and set his captives free. It is the kiss of God's love that awakens dead souls to life, and that dissolves the shackles that bind them; they are no longer the dupes of the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience, but they know that God is rich in mercy, and they know His great love wherewith He has loved them, and they know that He has quickened them together with Christ (Eph. 2. ), and they know that they are united to the One who has died for them, and they know that they can never be separated from Him for ever.

Chapter 10

It is the World that God Loves

The World and not a part of it. — The Lady who Thought she had Sinned Away her Day of Grace. — What sort of a World is it?

It is the world that God so loved; not a part of it, nor any class or race or colour in it. There is a notion abroad, and we fear what is called "organised religion" must bear some of the blame of it, that God loves the cultured, and the rich and the religious, and merely tolerates the rest; but our text sweeps away such a false conception of God and tells us that He loved the world. He is no respecter of persons. His love reaches out to all men, even to the uttermost part of the earth.

But a man may accept that as a fact because he has heard it since he was a child, and yet be unaffected in any way by it, because he does not see that he personally is involved in it; or he may refuse to believe anything about it at all because any thought of God disturbs his complacency, or he may pose as an infidel; yet it is certain that no man was born an infidel. Many a man has argued himself into infidelity simply because he "did not like to retain God in his knowledge," as Romans 1 tells us. But whether indifferent, or infidel, or whatever else he may be, there is no man in the world to whom these words cannot be spoken, and they will come home in their life-giving, saving power to all who feel their need of them.

I remember meeting a young lady who thought she was an exception to this wonderful fact. She was obsessed with the idea that she had sinned away her day of grace, and that there was no hope for her. She did not doubt that others might be saved, but she, so she thought, had had her opportunity and missed it. Naturally she became very depressed, so much so that the family doctor diagnosed the case as religious mania, when it was actually deep soul trouble. He advised that she should not be allowed to attend any religious service or read the Bible. I was preaching the Gospel in the town, and a happy Christian friend obtained permission to bring her to one of the meetings. I was told about her and introduced to her. I said, "I am glad that you have come to the meeting to-night, for I have found a text in the Bible that should suit you exactly." Her face brightened for a moment at the suggestion that after all there might be a text that she had not seen, which might yield her some comfort; but when I read John 3: 16 to her, she showed great disappointment, and said rather impatiently, "I've read that text many times." "I know that." I said, "but listen to it once more. 'God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever in believeth Him should not perish but have everlasting life.' What is it that God has loved?" I asked, "The world," she answered. "Are you in the world?" I asked. "Of course I am," she replied, and her manner showed that she thought it a very silly question. "You ought to be very glad for that," I said, "for, being in the world, this great love of God is for you, and the blessing of this wonderful verse is for you, and if you want to get out of the reach of it, you must fly to the moon, or take lodgings in one of the planets, or drop down into hell; then you will be able to say, 'There's no hope for me, I cannot be saved. ' But as long as you are in the world God's love reaches even to you." "Let me look at it," she said, and taking my Bible, she eagerly read over the familiar words, and as she did so, the cloud departed from her face; she was transformed; for the light that shone into her heart dispelled the darkness of unbelief, and showed itself in a happy and grateful smile. She begged the loan of my Bible for the night, and returned it to me the next day, a happy woman. Eleven years after I received a message from her through a friend in Scotland, She wondered if I remembered the woman who borrowed my Bible to read over John 3. 16. I certainly did remember it, and she will never forget it.

But what a world it is that God has loved! It reeks with moral putrefaction, and prefers its sins and miseries to His great love and eternal life. When His Son came into it, though He was its Maker, it did not know Him, and the leaders of it crucified Him, Clearly is their guilt recorded in the Word of God; it says, "The princes of this world crucified the Lord of glory." It was not the rabble that took the lead in that great crime, but the princes, the best the world had ever produced. The rabble joined in it, for the universal cry was, "Away with Him." But the great men first raised that cry. That was what the world thought about the only begotten Son of God, but it did not change God's love to hatred, nor the purpose of His beloved Son to save men. They laid the cross upon His shoulders, but He went forth bearing it. There was no resistance on His part, for He had come to do His Father's will, and that will was that He should die for sinners. And in this was manifested the great victory of God's love over man's hatred. And now the word is going forth to all the world, to men of every colour and race, "that whosoever believeth Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their transgressions unto them, nor is He imputing their transgressions unto them now, if He did, it would mean for them unsparing judgment and everlasting banishment from His presence; but He is sending the word of reconciliation unto the world, and its message is of forgiveness and eternal life, but it must be heard and received, it is the whosoever believes that do not perish, and to them alone the blessing comes, all others grope onward in the darkness to death and judgment and the lake of fire.

Chapter 11

How the Love of God Changes Men

The Man who ran away. — The Text on the Wall. — Could a Man who Killed Another be Saved? — How God's Love Changed J—.

I remember a Gospel meeting in my native town. We had been inviting the people in the neighbourhood of the Hall to come in and hear the word of God, and among some who responded was a man who sat like a surprised listener until the preaching was over; when, waiting for nothing else, he got up and ran, and did not stop until he had reached his house. When asked why he had run away from the Gospel like that, he said, "God is in that place." But would he have run away if he had believed John 3: 16? I can understand a man running away from Sinai, but if he had realised the meaning of the words, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son," would he have fled?

And yet this fear of God must precede the knowledge of this great love. I know that from my own experience. When I was a boy, there hung in our home a Scripture text. There were only four words in it, but those four words fastened themselves on my mind and made me tremble with fear at the most unexpected times. They were, "THOU GOD SEEST ME." I was afraid as I thought of them, and wished sometimes that there was no God. I am sure that I could have repeated John 3: 16 correctly in those days, and yet I was afraid of God. Why should any boy or man, girl or woman be afraid of God and of His eyes of love? Ah, that's the question, for it is certain that the man who ran away from the Gospel preaching and I who trembled when I thought of God and His all-seeing eye, were not alone in this. Why? It is a searching question, and the answer was, I knew that I was a sinner and that God was holy, and that man knew and felt this too; and the heart of the sinner "which is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked" is enmity against God and has no desire to meet Him in any way; and in this all are alike, there is no difference.

But do I tremble now as I think of God's all-seeing eye? No, I do not, for now I know that He loved me and gave His Son for my salvation. He who saw all has forgiven all, and thus He has won my heart and I love Him because He first loved me. His perfect love to me has cast out all fear from my heart.

The Bible that tells us of God's love to men also tells us, and that just as plainly, of men's hatred of God and of His Son, whom He sent to be their Saviour. The Lord Jesus said, "They have both seen and hated both Me and My Father," and, "They hated Me without a cause." These are the two facts that stand out above all others in the Bible. God loves men and men hate God, and these two facts show what a unique place man has in God's creation.

I have met men who believed they were nothing more than beasts — cleverer, of course, than the rest of the animal kingdom through the kindly efforts of a mysterious force which they call Evolution, but still beasts to live and die and be forgotten; but one thing is certain, the beasts are not enmity against God, they do not hate Him; and another thing is certain, there has been no revelation of God's love to them, though He feeds the young lions and cares for the sparrows. It is men that God has loved,

"For man, O miracle of grace!

For man the Saviour bled."

When this great fact gets into a man's heart, it revolutionises his whole life. It changes his thoughts and feelings towards God, first of all. The hatred is cast out of his heart, and he is reconciled to God by the death of His Son. Instead of running from God, it makes him run to Him; for what could be so attractive as the love of God as seen in Jesus? If God so loved us, why should we hide with fear from Him? It is this wonderful love which makes us trust Him wholly.

I knew an old man in the North of England who was not overburdened with this world's goods, indeed he was a poor man, an old age pensioner, but a happy one. We were holding an open-air meeting, and he stepped into the ring to speak. What had he to tell us? "Friends," he said, "it's just fifty years since I came out of gaol first time. The W—s got hold of me, and I'm not going to say anything against them, they were very kind to me, but they never told me that Jesus died for me, and I was very ignorant. They told me to be a good lad, but I could not manage it; it was too big a job for me; and it was seventeen years before I found out that God loved me. Seventeen years! I've come here to tell you what it took me seventeen years to find out. God loves you, my friends, God loves you. It was this that changed things for me, and it will do the same for you."

When eighteen years old, that man, then a poor pit lad, unable to read or write, was condemned to five years penal servitude for man-slaughter. In defending a friend in a drunken row, he had killed a man. In his northern prison, the prisoners talked about their chances of heaven, and they were unanimous in declaring that Geordie had no chance at all; he had killed a man; his case was hopeless. And he, poor fellow, believed them, and thought that there was nothing but a life of sin for him and hell at the end of it. Until, during his last term in gaol, the truth reached him, that "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." What a revelation that was to that poor ignorant pitman! It changed his life and filled him with an enthusiasm for the Gospel that burned in his soul to the end of his days. I know of no one in the North of England who preached it more persistently than he, and there will be many in heaven as a result of the testimony of rough old Geordie M—.

And hear the story of another man in the same northern district, whose life was transformed by the same wonderful love. He cursed the Gospel preachers who came into his street to tell the glad tidings to the people. He sat at his window and cursed them while they preached. "J—, my man," said one of them, "God loves you." Those words went home to his miserable heart and the next night that hardened sinner turned in to the service in the nearby Gospel hall and there was saved. I met him after three years of Christian life. He had been away from home for the week-end preaching the Gospel that had saved him. It was the first week-end that he had been away from home since his conversion. He was telling me this and he said, "Before I was saved, my wife used to pray that I might break my neck, I was such a drunken brute, but when I came home this morning after being away since Saturday, she said, "J—, you'll never have to go away again, this has been the most miserable week-end I've ever spent." Yes, that is what the Gospel of God's great love can do for a man, it changes him, and it changes his home as well.

Chapter 12

"His Only Begotten Son"

The Only Begotten Son. — Buddha and Christ. — The Unique Glory of the Saviour.

I shall take it for granted that my readers are thoroughly interested in our great text, and that they will wish to consider further the One who is spoken of in it as God's "only begotten Son" the One whom God has given, and in whom they are to believe. The title is of the highest glory, there does not seem to be any higher. It is used five times, in John 1: 14, 18; 3: 16, 18; and 1 John 4: 9. I should like to quote a paragraph from an old writer that has impressed me. He points out that John, the beloved disciple who leaned on the Lord's breast at the Supper, is the only one of the New Testament writers that speaks thus of the Lord; and the reason for that may be that he being the last of the New Testament writers, was inspired by the Holy Spirit to give special emphasis to the full Deity-glory of Jesus, and of His eternal relationship with the Father in God-head, which even then was being challenged. He says: "When he would impress the minds of his readers with a deep sense at once of the inscrutableness of the divine nature, and the certainty and perfection of the manifestations of God in Christ, he declares, 'No man' — no being of created mould — 'hath seen God at any time; the ONLY BEGOTTEN SON, who exists in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.'" When, again, he would exalt to the utmost glory of the Word in flesh, he styles it, "the glory as of the ONLY BEGOTTEN from the Father." When he would illustrate the benevolence of God with the highest splendour, he says, "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his ONLY BEGOTTEN SON into the world, that we might live through Him." With a similar purpose is the epithet used by Christ Himself, "God so loved the world, that He gave His ONLY BEGOTTEN SON, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." And, finally, when our Lord would represent unbelief as the last extreme of human guilt, and as anticipating the judgment of a future world, He finds no stronger argument than that conveyed in this appellation, "He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the NAME OF THE ONLY BEGOTTEN SON OF GOD." And this is He whom God hath given and in whom we are to believe unto eternal life.

There have been and will still be many anti-christs in the world. Men who will challenge the unique place that the only begotten Son of God fills. The devil will see to that, for the one thing that he hates above all others is that the Son of God, the One who has stormed his stronghold of death and mastered him, should be magnified and praised. And the devil's work is clearly manifested in the fact that in these last days there are those who call themselves Christians, who put Confucius, and Mahomet, and Buddha, and other historical figures, on the same platform as the Lord Jesus Christ.

Our ship put in to Colombo for a day for coal and supplies, and we all were glad to go ashore after three weeks of ship board life. When we returned at night everybody was full of the day's adventures. One lady told me that she had been to a Buddhist temple, on the walls of which were paintings depicting scenes in the life of Buddha — they had all been explained by the priest in charge, "And," said the lady, "they were so much like what we read about Christ, that I have come to the conclusion that there was no difference between Buddha and Christ, and if these people believe in Buddha, that is all that is required." "And what about your believing in Buddha, too, if there is no difference between him and Christ?" I asked. "Well, of course, I belong to the West, and so I believe in Christ, but I do not see any difference between them," she replied. "In those pictures depicting incidents in the life of Buddha," I asked, "did you see one of Buddha dying on a cross for sinners?" "No," she said; "there wasn't one like that." "Then, of course, there would not be one of Buddha, having died, rising again from the dead." "No," she said, "there was not." "Then," I said, "Buddha cannot be like Christ, for the two great facts of Christ are that He died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures." I was glad that the lady finally agreed that Buddha was not like Christ.

I proclaim the unique glory of the only begotten Son of God. In Time and Eternity He has no rival. "There is none other Name given under heaven among men, whereby we must be saved," for He only could die for sinners, and rise up again from the dead. O that men would understand this and turn to Him wholly!

It is 6,000 years since Adam opened the door for sin to enter into the world and death came in with sin (Rom. 5: 12). At his surrender to Satan in the Garden he became a sinner by nature and practice, and he has transmitted that nature to his posterity, and death has passed upon them all, "for all have sinned." Great men have arisen in the world's history, who have dominated other men, like Nimrod, and Buddha, and Mahomet, but they have all died, because, like Adam, they were all sinners. Not one of them, even if he had desired to, could stand up as the substitute for others, and bear sin's penalty so as to take from death its dominion. The dark tide of death has rolled on and risen up against every man, sweeping away the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the wise and the fool. There was no hope or help for men in any of Adam's children. Then it was that God intervened by giving His only begotten Son.

His coming was predicted of old. "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His Name Immanuel." This was the sign. It was the sign of man's utter impotence for his own redemption, and that God would undertake his cause, and that this should proceed from Himself and be entirely apart from any aid that men could give. "A virgin shall conceive." "It is impossible," cries the infidel. Yes, it is impossible with men; that is the very lesson that God would teach us by the manner of His intervention. It is impossible that men should devise or evolve any scheme or system of redemption, or deliver and uplift themselves from the damning effect of sin; they cannot set themselves free from the law of sin and death, with men it is impossible, but not with God. He stepped into the scene of man's utter ruin, and said, "Stand still, stand aside, and see the salvation of God," and so, in due time, Mary brought forth her firstborn Son, "And His Name was called Jesus." He was Immanuel — the only begotten Son — "Whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." The Son of the Father's love by whom all things were made (Col. 1). "Who is over all, God blessed for ever." "How do you know that Jesus Christ is God?" asked a scoffer of a man who had confessed the Saviour's Name. "How do I know that Jesus Christ is God? Why, He saved me," was his simple, yet conclusive, answer.

It is He, the Son in the God-head, who came forth from the Father in whom we are asked to believe. The epithet "the only begotten Son of God" tells us how eternally near and dear He is to the Father who sent Him, and He sent Him to be the Saviour, and being who He is, His mission cannot fail.

Of every other child born into the world there was a doubt as to his career and destiny. What will he become? was the question that sprang to the mind in respect to every one of them.

One might have been born a king, but who could tell whether he would ever be enthroned, or that accomplished, whether he would not be dethroned again by a more powerful rival. But Jesus came into the world to fulfil a great purpose, He came to die and rise again, and to become by His death and resurrection the Saviour of men. He has accomplished the work that God gave Him to do: It is finished; and He has gone back again to heaven, that from thence He might give everlasting life to all who believe in Him. "Now He that ascended, what is it but that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things." Of which of the great names in human history could that be said? Buddha means the Enlightened, but those who follow him grope in impenetrable darkness. Jesus is the Light of the world, and He appeared once in the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, and to dispel the darkness, and reveal what God is in the fullness of His love. He is the eternally worthy object of the Father's love, He is the worthy object of every sinner's trust.

Chapter 13

"That Whosoever Believeth in Him"

What "whosoever" means. — Duncan Mathieson's Story. — The Mistakes that People make. — The self-righteous old Yorkshire Man.

The first half of the verse is God's side of it, the second half is yours. God's love is for the world, but it is the "whosoever that believeth" that receives the blessing of it. You had no hand in moving God to love and to give, but everything depends for you whether you do or do not believe. That "whosoever" is a great word and wonderful; it stretches out its long arms of welcome to all men and would enfold them all in its embrace of love. It makes its appeal to the reader of this book, as it made its appeal once to the writer of it, in his case not in vain. It tells us that God is no respecter of persons, "but that the same Lord is rich unto all that call upon Him"; for there is no difference now, Jew and Gentile, bad and good, poor and rich, old and young may all come and believe and be saved, but every man must do it for himself.

The happy and believing "whosoevers" are being gathered out of all nations, for in these days the word of the Gospel is running with swift feet; it is travelling north, south, east, and west; and multitudes who have been bred in heathen darkness are hearing it with amazement and joy, and they shall sit down in the kingdom of God, for faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. It would be well if the men and women of these "Christian" lands awoke to the solemn fact that they are in danger of being shut out of the blessing for ever because of their indifference and unbelief. "There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out."

It was by this "whosoever" of John 3: 16 that light dawned upon the heart of Duncan Mathieson, the Scottish evangelist, who carried the Gospel to the suffering Britishers in the Crimean war, and did for their souls what Florence Nightingale did for their bodies. For many weary days he had searched for faith, which he thought was some mysterious thing that he would have to possess if ever he was to be saved from perdition and have peace with God. He often told the story of how the blessing came to him, and I will give it here in his own words:

"I was standing at the end of my father's house," he said, "and meditating on that precious word that has brought peace to countless ones: 'God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' I saw that God loved me, for I was one of the world. I saw the proof of His love in the giving of His Son. I saw that 'whosoever' meant anybody and everybody, and, therefore, me, even me. I saw the result of believing, that I would not perish, but have everlasting life. I was enabled to take God at His word. I saw no one but Jesus only — all in all in redemption. My burden fell from my soul, and I was saved. Yes, saved! That hour angels rejoiced over one more sinner brought to the Saviour, and new songs rang through the courts of that city to which I had now got a title, and of which I had now become an heir. Bunyan describes his pilgrim as giving three leaps of joy as his burden rolled into the open sepulchre of Christ. I could not contain myself for joy. I sang the new song, 'Salvation through the blood of the Lamb.' The very heavens appeared as if covered with glory. I felt the calm of a pardoned sinner; yet I had no thought of my safety. I saw only the person of Jesus. I wept for my sins that had nailed Him to the Cross; but now it came freely as the tear that faith wept. I had passed from death unto life; old things had passed away, and all things had become new.

"I wondered that I had stumbled at the simplicity of the way. I saw everything so plain that I longed to go and tell all the world. I felt that if I had met a thousand Manassehs I could say, 'Yet there is room.' I went everywhere telling the glad story. Some even of the saints looked incredulous. Others, like the elder brother of the parable, did not like the music and the dancing. They had never left their Father's dwelling; they had never been sin-sick, and knew not what it is to be healed; no fatted calf had been killed for them. These warned me against enthusiasm and exhorted me to be sober-minded. One old man told me that I was on the mount, but that I would soon be down again. Another said I needed great humility. But I went on singing my song. Prayer had given place to praise, and night and day I continued to thank God for 'His unspeakable gift.'"

But though the words are so plain, thousands miss the meaning of them, or are so blinded by their own opinions, or it may be by the devil, that they treat them as of no value; they prefer their own way to God's. They are acting as though the word was "whosoever worketh," when it is "not of works"; or "whosoever does his best," when "there is none that doeth good;" or "whosoever prayeth, or payeth, or does penance," but it is none of these things but, "whosoever believeth." It does not say whosoever loves God, it is God who has done the loving; or, whosoever giveth, it is God who has done the giving: but, whosoever believeth. But it is not whosoever believeth a text, even this greatest of all texts, or whosoever believeth in the Bible, or in the Christian faith, it is whosoever believeth in HIM; a living Person, the Son of God!

The text tells us about Him, the Bible tells us about Him. We should not, and could not, know anything about Him at all if we had not the text and the Bible; we who have believed, thank God for the Bible; it is a priceless treasure. We do not wonder that men who loved it in former days preferred to burn in the fires of Smithfield rather than give it up. It is God's own Word to us and we value it as such. But you may have the Bible and remain unsaved; you may say that it is a good Book, and yet perish. It is JESUS alone that saves. The Bible holds Him up to us as the object of faith; it says, "Whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish"; in Him alone can you find everlasting life; "neither is there salvation in any other," so the Bible tells us, and the Bible is true; it is the infallible Word of God.

That self-righteous old sinner in Yorkshire who told a friend of mine that he would go boldly up to the gates of Heaven, and show himself there, and expect to be welcomed, because he had done no harm to anybody, was as silly as he was proud, he was duped by the devil; but so also are all who hope to reach Heaven by any other way than this. The "whosoevers that believe" are those who have abandoned self-trust; they have thrown away their own self-righteousnesses as filthy rags. They have come to the Saviour as perishing sinners with:

"Naught to plead

But God's great love

And their exceeding need."

And they have got Christ instead of self; and through Him they have everlasting life, and shall not perish. Is not this what the Word of God tells us? It is, and happy is he who believes that sure Word. "Blessed is she that believed," said the saintly Elizabeth of her young cousin Mary; "for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her of the Lord."

Chapter 14

What is it to Believe?

Believing a Historical Fact. — The Plague in the City and your Need. — A Northumbrian Farmer and How he Believed.

I have met people who have said, "You talk about believing; I believe; but it has made no difference to me, what does it all mean?" And their belief has turned out to be something about Jesus and not faith in Him at all. This sort of belief is the same as they have in regard to some outstanding character in history. I, for instance, have read of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell; that period of English history always interested me more than any other, and I often debated in my mind as to whether Cromwell was a regicide and traitor or a benefactor and liberator: it was an exhilarating mental exercise, but, of course, nothing more, and that is how it is with these "believers" in the Bible facts about the Lord Jesus Christ. Many of them are orthodox, religious and estimable, they are not infidels; they believe that Jesus lived and died and rose again and ascended into heaven, these are all items in the Creed, and they do not question them. They will tell you that these are very interesting facts that have had a decided effect upon the history of the world, but they are unmoved and unchanged by them: they have yielded them a mental assent, but not the faith of their hearts that saves; and if thou shalt believe in thine heart, is an important word. Their idea is that since they have lived what they call a moral life, and do not altogether neglect religion, nothing more can be expected. The Son of God is not to them a vital reality; they do not believe that without Him they must perish, that He is indispensable to their eternal salvation.

But what is this living faith in Him that is so necessary; the faith that appropriates the blessing, and without which it is impossible to please God? Let me illustrate it. The plague is raging in your city, and the people are dying by scores and hundreds, and all the efforts of the doctors to check its ravages are in vain, for they have discovered neither the cause of it nor the remedy. One day you awaken to the fact that you are stricken; there can be no doubt about it, the symptoms are unmistakable. You are surely doomed, and are on the verge of despair, for this fell disease has rarely, if ever, been known to release its grip upon any of its victims. But just when you have abandoned all hope there steps into your room a man of whom you have often heard; he is a great physician, and as kind as he is great. He tells you that after long research he has discovered the virulent germ, and has conquered it, and that if you will submit your case to him he can and will cure you. Do you hesitate? Not for a moment. How eagerly you watch him as he measures out the dose of the precious fluid that is to heal you. And when he hands it to you and says, "Now drink that," do you say, "All right, doctor, I believe all that ever I heard about you, and I believe what you say about this medicine, put it down there, I'll take it sometime, but I want a little while to think about it"? No, you don't! That dose, and that only, as far as you know, can save your life, and you waste no time in vain talk, but with your heart beating at more than its usual rate, you stretch out your hand and take the life-giving draught and drink it down, and as all the doctor has said is proved to be true, how sincerely you thank him. You are a very grateful man, and never tire of telling others of the doctor's skill and of his infallible remedy.

Do you understand the illustration? Sin, like a plague, has stricken you: your only hope is the great Physician, who "came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Have you awakened to the fact that your soul is in danger of perishing, and that it must perish unless God's only begotten Son saves it? If so, you will want Him; your soul will cry out for Him; you will not rest until you find Him; you may even take up the cry of the disciples in the storm, "Lord, carest Thou not that we perish?" Of course He cares, and you will realise that He cares for you, if you will put your case in His hands and trust Him wholly to save you. That is what believing in Him means, and nothing less than that. And He has never failed one who has believed in Him like that.

An old friend of mine proved this, when he discovered that he was a sinful man and in danger of perishing. It was Christmas Eve, and he had been invited to join in the festivities of the season. There was to be dancing and drink and music and singing, and though very miserable, he started out for the great house at which the night was to be spent, but he hesitated at the gate. One of his mates took him by the arm and said, "What's the matter with you? Come on." And that did it. He told me that it seemed to him as though the very devil was in that tug at his arm, and that that "Come on" was the devil's invitation to him to forget that he was a sinner and that his soul needed saving, and to reject the Saviour. He pulled away from the temptation, and leaving his friends he ran home to his bedroom. He was alone in the house, and falling on his knees he cried out, "Lord, I'm in danger of perishing for ever, and I deserve to perish because of my sins, but if I have to perish, I'll perish at Thy feet." Did he perish? No, how could he when he cast himself like that into the Saviour's hands? Does not our text say, "that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish"? He did not perish, but became one of the brightest, happiest farmers in the county of Northumberland. He is now with His Saviour whom he trusted, but his happy Christian life was spent in pressing on others the claims of the Lord, and telling them of the joys of everlasting life that He gives to those who believe.

And how does a man acquire this faith that saves? It comes by hearing, for the Scripture says, "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God;" and Jesus said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life."

Believing in Him is a vital thing. It is living faith in a living Saviour. Simon Peter had it, when speaking on behalf of his friends, he said to the Lord, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."

Chapter 15

What does it Mean to Perish?

"I'll never believe in Hell." — The Words of the Son of God. — The "Whosoever" of Revelation 20.

God has done a great thing that men might be saved from perishing. He could not have done a greater. He has given His only begotten Son. And after such a proof of His love, who would dare to question what Peter tells us in his second Epistle, chapter 3: 9, that He is "not willing that any should perish." Yet our text and many another show plainly enough that men are in danger of perishing; and if this is so, it is surely an end to be escaped if that is possible, and since it is possible, no man ought to be indifferent about it.

But what is it to perish? I heard a preacher spell out the word like this P-E-R-I-S-H — to Pass Eternally Ruined Into a Sinner's Hell, What a terrible doom that must be! And almost too solemn a matter to be turned into an acrostic, Yet that is exactly what it is to perish. Let me hasten to say that hell was not prepared for man, the paradise of God in Eden was his prepared dwelling place; I am quoting the Lord's own words as to hell: He spoke of "everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels" (Matt. 25. 41). Then why should men be condemned to such a doom? Because they will follow the devil in his revolt against God. The turnover from God to the devil was deliberate on Adam's part, for he does not seem to have been deceived as Eve was, and by him sin entered into the world and death by sin, and death has passed upon all men for that all have sinned. There has been no difference in this, we have every one turned to his own way. The devil was the first to take that self-willed rebellious road, and Adam was the first man to follow the devil's lead, and, like sheep, we have all gone the same way; and the end of that road is hell.

I own that this is not a subject upon which I can write with pleasure; it is a solemn and awesome subject. Men do not like it, and I do not wonder; and many modern preachers, in order to be popular, and please men, have cast it out of their theology; but can they stamp the fear of it out of the consciences and souls of men? Some years ago, I was introduced to a man in a Yorkshire town, who wanted a talk with me. He was a working man with more than ordinary intelligence, and instead of backing horses and handing his weekly surplus over to the bookmaker, he spent it in books and possessed a library of which he was proud. But most of his books were on Eastern philosophy, for he had become a Theosophist. I pressed upon him the great fact that God had highly exalted JESUS, and given Him a Name above every name, and that every knee must one day bow to Him and every tongue confess that He is the Lord. He, on his part, was quite willing to own that He must have been a good man — His teaching and works he thought proved that, but he would admit nothing more than that. As I had not spoken of hell, it seemed strange to me that he should declare several times during our conversation, "I'll never believe in hell," and as often as he did so I replied, "I am not asking you to believe in hell, but to confess Jesus Christ as your Lord."

We parted late that night, and it was a long time before he was able to sleep, his confidence in the "wisdom" that he thought he had acquired had been shaken, and he was perturbed and restless. He dosed off at last, but was suddenly awakened in the early morning to find his bedroom alight with a lurid glow, and his first thought and exclamation was, "I'm in hell." It was a great factory on the opposite side of the road that was ablaze, and it was the flames that were pouring out of the windows of it that lighted up his room. But why should his first thought have been of hell, when but five hours before he had asserted at least half a dozen times that he would never believe in such a place? Ah, it was his conscience that spoke out before he had time to marshal his arguments. Deep down in his soul he knew that there was a hell and judgment to come, and the Eastern philosophy that he had imbibed had been unable to stamp that knowledge out of him. I am glad to say that within a week, he had thrown to the winds his false theories, and had bowed down before the great Saviour; he had become one of the "whosoevers" that believe; and he made a bonfire of the books that had deceived him, for, said he, "Now I have found the solution of all my difficulties in Christ."

It is out of the lips of the Son of God, who came from heaven to tell us of God's great love, that the most solemn warnings as to hell have come. He said to His followers, "In My Father's house are many mansions, if it were not so, I would have told you." If there had been no heaven to win, He would have told us, and if there had been no hell to shun, would He not have told us? But it was He who said to the self-righteous, hypocritical Pharisees, "How shall ye escape the damnation of hell?" He it was who warned men of "Gehenna, where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched." He told His hearers of one rich man who, after death, lifted up his eyes being in torment. You see, I am not giving you my opinions on so solemn a subject as this, I would not do that, for my opinions would be of no more value than yours. I am giving you the words of the Son of God, and His words are truth. He said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away" (Mark 13: 31). Have you believed them? His words are spirit and life, those that warn of judgment to come equally with those that tell of the love that saves.

Why did He who was the gift of God's love to men utter these solemn warnings? Why does a mother warn her child of the dangers of the road, or command him not to play with matches? It is her love for him that makes her do it, and it is the same love that made God give His only begotten Son that men might have a way of escape from perishing, that warns them of the irrevocable and everlasting consequences to them of neglecting His great salvation.

This "whosoever" of John 3. 16 is not the only whosoever in the Bible. It is the whosoever of blessing and salvation and eternal life; but there is another. It occurs in the account of the last judgment, at the great white throne; it is the whosoever of damnation and the second death. We read "The dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works . . . and whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire." And again, "The fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death." AND THAT IS WHAT IT IS TO PERISH.

Chapter 16

Everlasting Life

What is everlasting Life? — "Sanctifying Doubts." — "He said it." — A Saved Jewess. — A place in God's Family. — Glory.

Everlasting life is everlasting. It is a life that no one can ever lose who has received it as the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Think of the Giver of it — God; think of the One through whom it comes — Jesus Christ our Lord, and then say whether it can be forfeited or withdrawn. If it were something that was granted to us in return for some merit or faithfulness, then we might fear that if the merit ceased, the blessing would be forfeited, but since it is the sovereign gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, it is ours for ever, for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. And further, this life has not been deposited in us for us to keep it, with the danger of losing it always near. See what the word of God says about it, "And this is the record that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son" (1 John 5: 11). Can I lose that which is treasured up for me in the Son of God? There is no "Safe Deposit" nor strong room on earth, but what thieves may succeed in breaking in, but what thief can take from Christ what He holds for me? He has met every foe and overthrown every adversary. His hand has smashed the power of death itself, and it is that hand which holds the believer in everlasting security; and to every one of them, He gives eternal life and they shall never perish. We have this life, if we have it at all, by having Him, for "He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life" (1 John 5: 12).

But again, He Himself is the life, and He is our life. "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14: 16). "Christ who is our life" (Col. 3: 4). "This is the true God and eternal life" (1 John 5: 20). We may not understand what all that means, but if we have believed in Him, we shall delight to consider it and meditate upon it, and the Spirit of God will unfold its meaning to us.

Now God wants every believer to know that this life is his. There are thousands who are believing and doubting; they have an uncertain sort of hope that all will be well in the end, but they cannot go further than that. One old lady in the North of Scotland, who was a sincere and devout believer, declared to a friend of mine that "she would never give up her sanctifying doubts." But hear what the Word of God says, "These things have I written unto you that believe on the Name of the Son of God that ye may know that ye have eternal life" (1 John 5: 13). Not "hope" or "doubt," nor even "feel," but "know." Who amongst all who have cast the burden of their sins at the feet of the great Saviour, and who have looked up to Him in simple, unquestioning faith can doubt His Word? It was He who said of His sheep, of all those who have believed on Him, "I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand." Is not that enough? I remember a woman in Canada, who seemed as miserable as a sinner could be out of hell. And her misery arose from the fact that she knew that she was a sinner, but had not turned wholly to JESUS. One day I met her and saw at once that there was a change in her, and she told me how it happened. It was His Word that had done it. "He said it," she said. He said, "I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish," and that was enough for her, and she was astonished at the wonder and simplicity of it.

But everlasting life is more than a new life that can never be lost; it brings its possessor into new relationships, and herein lies the joy of it. A baby when born into a family does not at first know its father, yet it is a member of the family, and its father's child. And every one that is born into God's family is one of His children. "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God." In God's family the babes know their Father from the very beginning. They can look up to the great God and address Him with the happy freedom with which a child addresses its father, and they may know, not only that God loved them, when they were far from Him, and gave His Son for their Salvation, but now He loves them with a Father's love, they are His children and infinitely and eternally dear to Him.

I met a Jewess. The light of the Gospel had shone into her heart, and she had become a happy believer in JESUS. She had learnt that the Nazarene, whom the leaders of her nation had rejected and crucified was the only Saviour, and that God had made Him both Lord and Christ. I asked her what verse in the Bible she loved most, and she quickly answered," John 3: 16. And she explained to me that she had been reared in the belief that God was great and terrible, and that her nation was suffering under His stern hand, and she had feared Him greatly, and John 3: 16 had shown her how great His love was, and had changed her view of Him entirely, and so she treasured it and loved to repeat it. I said to her, I have another verse for you, which, perhaps, you have not seen, and I read John 16: 27, "The Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved Me, and have believed that I came out from God." It was a few minutes before she began to realise what it meant, but when she did understand it, tears rolled down her cheeks, tears of joy they were, for she saw that she was loved as a child. She was cast off by her relatives, but she was not an orphan, God was her Father. No longer did she stand afar off in fear and trembling, but she could draw nigh, indeed she had been made nigh by the Blood of the Cross, she was a child in God's family, loved with a Father's love.

"So dear, so very dear to God

She could not nearer be.

The love wherewith He loves His Son,

Such is His love to me."

I must quote here the words of the Lord Jesus on the great resurrection day; said He to Mary, "Go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God." It is this that He spoke of, when He said to His Father, "This is life eternal to know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."

Eternal life is a most blessed present possession, but it has to say to the future also. Those that believe in the only begotten Son of God shall not perish, death cannot rob them of eternal life. Their destiny is eternal glory with Christ. "When Christ, who is our life shall appear, then shall we appear with Him in glory" (Col. 3: 3). "It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is" (1 John 3: 2, 3). He said, "In My Father's house are many mansions, if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, ye may be also" (John 14: 2). When these glorious words are fulfilled, all the ransomed hosts shall have everlasting life in its full and unhindered power, and will be in the home and sphere of it.

But while the believer waits for the full glory of eternal life, he has it now as a life that triumphs over the power of death, if he is called to die. The body of the Christian is still subject to death, but not his spirit, for eternal life is an overcoming life. Death is the king of terrors to them that believe not, but it is not that to those who are God's children through faith in Christ, for death has met its Master; it is a defeated, throneless, crownless king; wrenched from its grasp are the keys of its stronghold; annulled is its power; and delivered from the fear of it are those who were once in bondage to it. The believer shares in the triumphs of Christ, who is his life, and can say, even in view of death, "Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

An old Christian, and a valued friend of mine in Adelaide, Australia, was stricken with paralysis, and it was clear that his service for Christ was done and his life on earth was drawing to its close. The last hour had come, and his family, Christians every member of it, were gathered in his chamber. The paralysis had robbed the dying man of the power of speech, but not of his joy in the Lord; his family could see that, and had no misgivings for him. Yet they longed for some final word, some cheer and comfort that would abide with them when he was gone, and it was quite right and natural that they should. In the hope that, at the very last his speech might be restored to him, they asked if he had anything to say to them. But he could say nothing with his mouth; articulate he could not, yet they were not to be disappointed, for his last word was to be given to them in a more deliberate and thrilling way than by mere speech. He had learned to spell out the deaf and dumb alphabet upon his fingers in order to preach the Gospel to some deaf mutes who lived near his home, and now this knowledge came into blessed use, for upon his fingers he spelt out one word, slowly and with emphasis, and his family, as they eagerly watched the dying fingers, read all they desired, for the word spelt upon them was G-L-O-R-Y.

Chapter 17

An Appeal

A Personal Matter. — "I never knew before that God Loved me." — The Devil's Lure. — Too Late. — The Last Judgment. — Longsuffering Love.

Now I come to the end of my little book, and in this last chapter I must make an appeal to you, my reader. I have not done so before, for I wanted you to read on, and I know that when some readers come to a personal appeal in a book of this sort they will read no further. Yet the matter is intensely personal, for it is certain that no man can be saved by proxy, every man will be saved or lost for himself. It is strange how differently people are affected by this Gospel of God's love, some are entirely unmoved by it; I am reminded when I think of them of the words of an old preacher. He said, "When Jesus died, the rocks were rent and broken, and if a man is unmoved by that death, then his heart must be harder than the rocks," and that is most surely true. How is it with you, my reader? Has your heart been moved by it? If not, you may judge for yourself how hard it must be. Others are profoundly moved and saved by it the very first time they hear it.

I had this story from the lips of a great friend of mine, a retired army officer. It was his own experience. He was a young lieutenant at the time, and as wild as any of his brother officers, when God saved his soul and changed his life. Not only he, but several others were affected in the same way, but his conversion was the greatest surprise because it was the least expected.

These young officers felt they would like to tell others of the love that had blessed them, and preach the Gospel that they had believed. So, they rented a hall in the South of England town in which their regiment was stationed and started their preaching, and my friend's turn came to tell the story. He decided to take John 3: 16 for his text, and I give it for the last time in this book. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

He could not have chosen a better text. But when he had read it and looked up from his Bible to the crowd before him, he could not think of anything to say about it. Anyhow he would repeat the text if he could remember it, and so he began, "God — God — God — loved the world — God, God so loved the world — yes, God so loved the world that — that and that was as far as he got, for, catching sight of an open door at the back of the platform, he made a dash for it and disappeared through it to the astonishment of his audience.

He paced up and down the ante-room, abusing himself for his folly in attempting to preach a sermon, and vowing that he would never do it again, when a knock came to the door and a young woman was brought in. The tears were running down her cheeks, and she could not speak for sobs. "What's the matter with you?" said the would-be preacher, "is your father dead?" "No," came the answer that astonished him, "but Captain, I never knew before that God loved me." It was an astonishing result from what he had thought was a great failure. The stumbling words had gone home and done their work, and there knelt together in that ante-room two astonished people — she that God loved her, he that God should have used his blundering to show her this.

Why should she have believed it so readily while others treat it with such indifference? Certainly her tears of joy and grateful thanksgiving proved that she was wise, and if so, then those who are indifferent to it are fools, for how shall they escape if they neglect so great salvation? Do they hope for another chance, something better than the Gospel? God has nothing better to offer to any man.

This Gospel is God's best and His last. If men have no ear for it, it is because they are listening to the devil. Sin within them answers to his temptations without, and they are lured farther and farther from God by his false words. They go with him one mile, intending then to stop and be saved, but the way seems pleasant and they cannot stop; so he leads them on mile after mile, until the end of the downward road is reached, and the end of it is hell. They cannot see the end as they travel to it, for there are many turns and twists in it, and they come upon it suddenly and unawares, and when it is too late to turn back — TOO LATE.

In the Art Gallery of my native town there used to hang a picture that told a sad tale. The background was a rose-covered cottage. The door of the cottage stood open and within could be seen the form of an aged woman lying dead in her coffin. A young woman stood at the door, the daughter of the dead woman, and approaching the gate was a young man, evidently a wanderer, and a dissipated one, a prodigal son. The young woman pointed with one hand to the dead mother, and the other was stretched out accusingly at her brother, and on her face there was a mingled look of sorrow and reproach. Every figure in the picture cried, "Too late"; but the lines upon it added to its pathos and told of a disappointed love.

"She waited long for you

But now you are too late."

In his case, love had watched, and waited, and died. In your case, my unsaved reader, love is watching and waiting for you. It is not yet too late.

"Long-suffering love waits, wanderer, for thee,

Oh! hear the sound of Heaven's sweet melody.

Come Home, oh! Come,

The love of God believe."

But you may soon pass beyond the reach of that love. It offers you forgiveness, life, and heaven now, but to-morrow may be too late. You are here to-day, and God's Word says, "To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts." To-morrow you may be in eternity. To die is a solemn thing for anyone, but for the one who has despised and rejected the Gospel, it is terrible beyond words. It means to perish, to drop into hell, to be lost without hope, to be for ever without God and without Christ. To-day is the day of mercy; to-morrow may be the day of doom.

And what will you do in the great judgment day when you stand, raised up from the dead, before God, the Judge of all, before whose face the heavens and earth will have fled away; and when the books are opened, and your life's record is unfolded there, for the dead are to be judged out of the things that are written in the books; and when it is plainly shown that your name is not written in the book of life, when it might have been, and would have been if you had believed the Gospel; and when with all those who shared in your rejection of Christ you are cast into the lake of fire? Remember it is the same love that has provided salvation for you that warns you, and as you remember that, face this question.

I was asked, "Why don't you compromise with modern thought on this question?" But how can I, or any one else who believes the Bible, compromise upon it? If it were a theory spun out by a certain school of thought we would abandon it with alacrity, if it were our own opinion, it would be of no more value than any other man's; but since it is the word of God, we cannot compromise. We are only stewards of that faithful Word, and we must pass it on as we receive it, for it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful.

Once more God commends His love to you. He wants you to know the greatness of His interest in you. He could not have saved you at the expense of His righteousness, He must be just; a sacrifice for sin was a necessity, and this called forth the full energy of His love, He gave His Son for your salvation.

God's love led the Saviour to Calvary. God's love finds its delight in blessing the worst and cleansing the vilest. God's love has filled millions with joy and it will be their theme for ever. God's love lingers over you, it yearns for you, yes, even for you. "And there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth."

The Grace that Saves

The Grace that Saves

J. T. Mawson.

Foreword

Here are a few stories of some who have proved that the grace that saves is no myth, but a blessed, satisfying reality. They are personal incidents, and true, and are put together in this form that their united testimony to a living Saviour may be a blessing to many. There are also words of warning and entreaty, but whether the former or the latter their object is the same, as all who read may see.

The Best Friend.

On a brilliant day in August just before the war, a friend and I were distributing Gospel booklets at the cottages of a small fishing-town in Northumberland. Having finished this delightful work, we went down to the harbour to watch a fleet of boats sail out for a night's fishing. There were a lot of men about, mainly Scotsmen, and some of them were God-fearing men, who went out to their night-toil upon the great deep in prayerful dependence upon the God of earth and sea, and returned when it was over with thankfulness for His mercies to them. There was one of them, a rugged old man of not less than seventy years, who seemed specially glad to see us, and when he read the title of the book that we gave him, "A Friend in need is a Friend indeed," his old face brightened up into a radiant smile, making a rare study for an artist, and he said, "Yes, and the best Friend is Jesus."

He needed to say no more to make us thoroughly at home with him, for his Saviour was our Saviour, we were brethren in Christ. We asked him how long he had known the Lord Jesus Christ, and in reply he told us the story of his conversion. He had been a rough fellow, scoffing at God's truth and persecuting His people, but some cottage preachings were being held in his native town, and he heard that the Christians were praying that God would save his soul. This aroused a strange and strong desire in his heart to see what these meetings were like, so he went, and in that meeting, as he listened to the story of the love of Jesus, and His death for sinful men, he looked in faith to that wonderful Saviour for salvation and he was converted to God.

That, he told us, took place more than forty years ago, and said he, "I have weathered some stormy seas since then, but the Lord has never failed me." As the tears rolled down his rough cheeks we thought that he must have a tale to tell, and so asked him to tell us about some of the storms.

He said: "We had four sons and lost them all in two years. They were 28, 26, 24, and 21 years old. It was sore work parting with them, but they all belonged to the Lord Jesus and we shall meet them again."

"When the last one came to die, his mother and I were sorely troubled, and he said to me, 'Father, you and mother look very down: what's wrong with you?'

"'Why,' I said, 'my boy, we don't like the thought of losing you; it's that that makes us down.'

"'But,' he replied, 'you're not going to lose me, Dad. I belong to Jesus, and I'm going home, and you and mother'll come soon, and we'll all be united again; but give me the hymn-book, and I'll sing a hymn to cheer you up a bit.'

"'You're too weak to sing, my boy,' I said. But he at once replied, 'Give me the book and let me try.'

"And so the book was given to him, and he opened to that sweet hymn, and began to sing:

"Jesu, Lover of my soul,

Let me to Thy bosom fly,

While the waters near me roll,

While the tempest still is nigh;

Hide me, O my Saviour, hide

Till the storms of life be past;

Safe into the haven guide —

Oh receive my soul at last.'"

He got through the first verse of it, but he found that what his father had said was true — he was too weak to sing.

So he handed the book back again, and said, "You sing the next verse, Father, and I'll wave my hand to the tune."

The father's heart was full to bursting, and it was a hard task that his dying son had given him, but for his sake he began and with halting notes sang:

"Other refuge have I none,

Hangs my helpless soul on Thee."

And while the father sang, the dying lad, with a glad light upon his wan face, waved his hand to the tune, but ere the father finished the verse, that feeble hand fell, and the ransomed spirit rose to be with the One who had gilded his bed of death with light.

"Aye, that's the way he died," said the old man as he drew his sleeve across his tear-washed cheeks, "but the Lord did not fail us."

My tears fell with those of the bereaved father, and as we shook hands and separated, we could not help feeling, perhaps as never before, how good it was to know the Best of friends, whose love could drive the fear of death from the heart of the dying lad, and make him sing upon the borderland; and whose grace and love could also sustain the bereaved hearts left behind, so that they could say, "The best Friend is Jesus. He has never failed us."

"The day of death is the master day," a great writer has said, and it is; in it is tested every hope and refuge and possession. The dying fisher-lad's hope for eternity stood the test. He had the rock beneath his feet — the finished work of Christ. His soul was washed in the precious blood which was shed on Calvary's hill for sinners — "the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, which cleanseth from all sin"; he was ready to go, and God gave him the "victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

How a Dream Came True.

I had to travel from Glasgow to Edinburgh towards the end of the first week in January, and as is well known, traffic is very heavy during that week between those two cities. While I went to the booking office to secure my ticket, a friend kindly looked out a seat for me, and found one in the crowded train near the engine, next to a soldier. He was returning to camp after five days' leave at home in South Wales, and was in a holiday mood. Indeed, the truth is, he had taken on board rather more whiskey than was good for him, and was a little tipsy.

When the train started, he took out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to me. I thanked him for his kindness, but declined, as I am not a smoker. He seemed disappointed, and produced a bottle of whiskey and asked if I would drink with him. Again I declined, assuring him that my reason for so doing was that I did not drink.

"All right," he said, "I see you are a man of principle, and I respect you."

"No," I replied, "I am a Christian, and I wish you knew my Saviour. He would make you a happy man. He is the Lord Jesus Christ, and He died for you and me. I wish you knew Him."

He dropped back in his seat as if someone had hit him, and was silent for a minute or two. Then he took from his pocket a card on which was written a man's name and address, and said, "Do you see that? That's the name of the very best friend that ever a man had. He's a Salvation man, and none of your shams; an out-and-outer he is. I went to say good bye to him on Monday, and he said to me, I've prayed for your conversion every day for five years, and my prayers have not been answered yet, but I've had a dream about you. You're going back to Scotland; and I dreamt that you'll meet a perfect stranger, who will speak to you, and my prayers will be answered.'"

"It looks to me," said he, "that his dream is going to come true."

"It certainly does," I said, "and you could have no better time than this. Every man needs the Saviour, for all have sinned against God, but no man needs Christ more than the man in khaki, because his temptations and dangers are so great."

He asked me if I would talk to him privately when we got to Edinburgh, which I promised to do. After a while he took out his bottle again, and lowering the window of the compartment, threw it out.

We had our talk in Edinburgh. A serious talk about how all we like sheep had gone astray, and turned every one to his own way, and consequently all deserved the judgment of the just and almighty God. My soldier friend felt that what I said to him was true. He had often heard the Gospel, for he had a Christian friend and a praying wife, and he knew that his life of God-forgetfulness had been entirely sinful. When he owned this I repeated for him the words, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners" (1 Timothy 1: 15), and "When we were yet without strength, Christ died for the ungodly," and "God commendeth His love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5: 6, 8). I also showed him those wonderful words in Isaiah 53: "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed."

These were good words for him to listen to, for they were words from God's infallible Book. Words from God to sinful men. Words that he needed, and words also that you need, whosoever you are who read them here, be you officer or man, civilian or soldier — all need the glorious Gospel concerning our Lord Jesus Christ. And faith in Him alone will save you from eternal hell. Before I left my new acquaintance he told me that he would yield himself to the Saviour, for he felt his need of Him.

I have had several letters from that man since, in which he tells me of his own thankfulness for our talk in the train, and of the change that the knowledge of Christ has made in his life; of the joy of his Christian wife at the news of his repentance towards God and his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It may be that you wonder why this story is told to you, since the soldier who is the subject of it has no claim on your interest. The reason is that there is someone probably praying for you, has prayed for you for years, and the Saviour who saved the soldier has a very great claim on you. He has the claim that creation gives, for He made you. He has the claim that His sovereign rights give, for He is Lord of all. He has the claim that love gives, for He laid down His life to save you because He loved you. Will you not own His claims, bow your knees to Him, confess Him as your Lord and Saviour? If you do you will have Him as your Friend — the Friend who never fails. If you refuse His claims you will have Him as your Judge, and from this there will be no escape.

—

"FAITH in to-morrow instead of Christ is Satan's nurse for man's perdition."

"The Old Text Again."

Dreams are queer things. Ninety-nine per cent of them are probably foolish, and perhaps the result of a disordered digestion, or an anxious mind. But here and there one comes and passes, and leaves an impression because of its vividness and truth. Such a one was the following.

I was staying in Yorkshire, my native county, with a friend, who like myself believes in the blessedness and power of the Gospel. And that night I dreamed that he and I were visiting a village of that county, distributing Gospel tracts at the houses, and speaking to the people about the one great and only Saviour — JESUS.

It was a beautiful summer's afternoon, and here and there the women of the village were chatting together in groups. We handed our books to each in one of these groups, and stood talking to them for a while; they listened respectfully until I quoted those notable words, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3: 16). Then one of them said in her native dialect, "T'owd text agean," and laughed aloud, and the other women joined in her mirth.

I awoke from my dream with the scornful laughter of those Yorkshire women ringing in my ears, and it set me thinking, and my thoughts were very sad. "The old text again" was the reception given to my quotation of the most wonderful words that mortal ears have ever heard. Yes, but it was only a dream! I know it, but I also know from considerable experience that the dream was a revelation of what is sadly true.

The text is not new; it is "the old text," and to quote it moves some to laughter that any should still be so out of date as to dwell upon it. Others it leaves unmoved; to use a current and striking phrase, "It leaves them cold." And yet it tells of the best that God, the Almighty, could do; it tells of His love, His amazing love to a guilty world; it tells of His unspeakable gift and of His everlasting blessing. Surely it is strange that it should meet with such treatment

But the women of the dream may have been ignorant, and so unable to appreciate "the old text" and its story; surely the majority of mankind are glad to hear it. Is that what you think?

I was crossing the Atlantic on board the great ship "Mauretania." It was evening, and the sun was setting as in a sea of liquid fire. It was the sight of a lifetime. The western sky was ablaze with the glory of the monarch of the day, and shafts of crimson beauty were shot across the heaving waters. By my side stood a gentleman, delighted as I was with the great picture, and he talked of it as only an artist and an admirer of great sights could talk. At last I said to him, "Do you know, sir, that the God whose hand painted that glowing west loves you and me?"

He did not laugh like the Yorkshire woman of my dream, but he drew back from me, and looked at me for a moment, not scornfully, but with anger in his eyes, and then without a word turned on his heel and went to the other side of the ship, and for the rest of the voyage he avoided me as though I had some pestilence.

It seems strange that the mention of God's love should so affect a man, yet it is explained by the solemn truth that "the carnal mind is enmity against God" (Rom. 8: 7).

And yet the glorious truth remains, undimmed by man's rejection of it, "God so loved the world," and the proof of it is that "He gave His only begotten Son," and the result of it is "that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." And there is no person, man or woman, rich or poor, ignorant or refined, who may not get into that most blessed "whosoever." The arms of God's love are stretched out to all. He does not will that any should perish, and yet all will perish who reject the way of life that He has provided. Most assuredly they will; for His way of blessing is the only way, all others are ways of death.

What a subject to be treated with indifference: the love of God to guilty men; love that yearned for the self-willed sinner on the downward road, and sent the Only-begotten to demonstrate that love in saving power; sent Him into the thorny path, to taste all the sorrows of it; sent Him not for honour nor the praise of men — for "shame was His kingdom, and reproach His glory"; sent Him to suffering, ignominy, and death.

"Thieves, and a CULPRIT crucified between them,

All men forsaking Him — and THAT WAS THOU!"

Only thus could love's story be told, but thus it was told fully and victoriously by Jesus on the cross; told to the everlasting defeat of the devil; told to the eternal salvation of men; told to the infinite glory of God who is the source of it all.

—

"You cannot repent too soon, for you know not how soon it maybe too late to repent."

The Footballer's Conversion.

I will tell you the story of a friend of mine; one of the finest forwards that ever led a Rugby scrum in the West country.

The triumphant roar of the thousands who followed the fortunes of the football club of which he was captain was like music to him, for he lived for the game. He was a very popular fellow too; "a good sport," his friends called him, as well as a skilful player. He had a capital voice, was always ready with a smart story, and could be relied upon to help a man who was down in his luck. That sort always have a crowd of friends.

But somehow he began to lose his interest in the game, and his jollity settled down into that forced kind that lacks sparkle. The matter was this: his wife had been converted, and G— gradually got upset about it, she was so different from him now, and he felt that she was right and he was wrong. She prayed to God, he didn't; she read the Bible, he didn't; she loved the Lord Jesus Christ and owned Him as her Saviour; it made him angry to hear His name. Yes, there was a great difference between them, and he felt it; in fact, he began to realize that he was a sinful man, though he told this to nobody, least of all to the praying wife.

She often asked him to go to the Gospel preachings; he as often refused. But one Sunday when she was more persistent than usual, as wives can be sometimes, he said, "All right. I'll go with you to-day, if you'll let me alone in future; but only on this condition, that you go with me to the hotel, and wait until I get some beer." He did not think that she would accept the condition, but she did, to his surprise.

He left her outside, for he had too much respect for her to press her to join him inside his favourite house; in fact, he felt like a cad for having brought her so near it. He called for his drink, and raised the foaming glass to his lips, but put it down again without even tasting it. That was a queer thing for him to do — a most unusual thing — and at that moment he could not have given a reason for doing it. Again he took it up, and a second time put it down untasted; a third time he raised it, determined this time to finish it, but a third time down that glass of beer came on the counter, and though he had paid for it, he left it there untasted, and turned on his heel and joined his wife outside. He told me afterwards that the thought of his wife praying for him outside made him feel that if he had drunk that beer it would have choked him.

They said nothing to each other, and reached the place of the preaching some time before the time for the service to begin. He took up a Bible and began to turn its pages. Suddenly he was arrested by some words that seemed to stand out upon the page as though they were embossed, words that seemed entirely for him. Eagerly he read them, over and over again. Everything began to seem different as their meaning dawned upon him, his misery passed away, that misery that had been eating out his life for weeks, and he turned to his wife, and said, "I'M A SAVED MAN." Yes, before even the service began that night, sitting by the wife who loved him and prayed for him, and as a result of the light that came to him through one solitary verse of Scripture, he was able to say, "I'm a saved man."

The verse that did the work was this, "VERILY, VERILY, I SAY UNTO YOU, HE THAT HEARETH MY WORD, AND BELIEVETH ON HIM THAT SENT ME, HATH EVERLASTING LIFE, AND SHALL NOT COME INTO CONDEMNATION; BUT IS PASSED FROM DEATH UNTO LIFE" (John 5: 24).

Wonderful words are these; just how they appealed to the captain of the town's football club I cannot say, but I know that they revolutionized his life; they made him a happy man; made him rejoice in Jesus the Saviour who spoke them; made him glad to boldly preach that same Saviour at the street corners of his native town. I have stood with him and heard him, so that I know that to be a fact.

Yes, the words are words of life; they were spoken by the Saviour who died; who died for the ungodly, for sinners like G—, and the writer, and you, the reader. Yes, for you, that you might be able to say, "I'm a saved man." That you might have everlasting life.

"Something in it."

A young sceptic stood at our open-air meeting in our town, and heard our testimony to Christ.

He said to himself, "There must be something in it, after all." That was a ray of light in his darkness, and it made him ready to hear more of that Gospel and to discover, if he could, what that "something" was.

Yes, there is something in it! There is the love of our Lord Jesus Christ; there is the grace of our God; there is pardon, peace, and eternal salvation. We know these things, we want you to know them, and we say to you — HEAR AND BELIEVE THE GOSPEL OF GOD'S GRACE TO MEN.

The Kloof of the Crying Child.

I have heard a story, a story that is told at the hearthstone of the Boer homesteads when the day's work is done. There is in South Africa a kloof, called the Kloof of the Crying Child, which — so runs the story — is said to be haunted by a strange demon, from whose power some had barely escaped with their lives, and others had actually fallen victims to its malignity. Its manner of attack upon unwary travellers was generally the same. As the horseman rode his tired steed at the day's close through the haunted area, he would hear what seemed to be a child's cry. Reining his horse, he would see in the dim light a small child lying by the bridle-road — so helpless and attractive and appealing in appearance, that he could not do other than dismount and take it in his arms, and carry it with him to his home for shelter and care.

But as he travelled homeward, he found, to his horror, that it grew and grew — this thing that he had taken to his heart; nor could he cast it off. Its entrancing smile changed to a hateful scowl, and at last, with the hands of a giant, it would seize its victim at the throat — and some have been left lying strangled and dead beneath the night stars.

Thus they tell the strange story, an altogether incredible one to our less romantic minds; and yet tragedies which this story does but faintly figure, are being enacted a thousand times over, and that daily; and not in one part of the world only, but wherever men are found.

S-I-N, what a power it is, and how subtle! It appears small, a little thing, and so attractive at the start that men take it to their bosoms; youths and maidens embrace it and hug it to their hearts. Then it grows in strength, imperceptibly at first, perhaps — yet it grows and grows until at last with a vice-like grip it holds its victims and strangles their souls. It is soft as a zephyr breeze at the beginning — it is a devastating tempest at the close. It is like a smiling child at the start, — it is a strong-sinewed giant at the end, binding its dupes with thongs of steel, and casting them down to everlasting destruction.

The South African story may be entirely a fable, though it figures a terrible truth; but here is a fact. I was preaching the Gospel one night in a town in the North of England. A fine young fellow of 21 years, the son of a gentleman, was present, brought to the service by a friend. I was introduced to him, and we talked together upon what I believe to be the most important subject that can occupy the tongue of a mortal man. I said to him, "Ought you not to think of your soul's salvation, and turn to Christ the Saviour, and yield to Him as your Lord?" He replied, "No; I want pleasure." "What pleasure," I asked, "are you particularly fond of?" He said, "Oh! the horses and the theatres. I want the horses and the theatres." He had made up his mind, and my words did not move him; and a few weeks afterwards he went up to London, where he could gratify his propensities to their full bent.

A few months passed, three I believe, when I received through the post a copy of the London Daily Telegraph; round a paragraph in that paper was a blue pencil mark; and in that paragraph I read of a young man who had been found in his bedroom in a London hotel with the towel twisted round his neck. The verdict of the coroner's jury was "Felo de se."

He was the young man of my story. Sin had slain him. But who could he blame? He had put himself beneath its power, willingly and eagerly; and he had rejected the only Deliverer from its toils; for there is a Deliverer for men. He is our Lord Jesus Christ, and besides Him there is none else.

"SIN IS LAWLESSNESS," and though you love it, it is one of your chief foes. It is the determination of your heart to be insubject to God; and every sin committed is an act of rebellion against Him. Sin has spoiled the earth; it has ruined men; it is the parent of sorrow, and crying, and pain; it has made the shroud and the open grave necessities; it has forged the chains of darkness that bind lost souls in hell's deep dungeons. It would dethrone Almighty God, if it could, and, becoming supreme thereby, would fill the universe with weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth, casting every creature of God into everlasting destruction.

Sin's awful power drives men onward, corrupted and deceived, with backs upon God, and with empty, unsatisfied hearts, — onward and downward to the lake of fire.

Man, in your sins, awake! The clock of time is ticking out your days, and every swing of its ceaseless pendulum carries you nearer to Eternity. And as you travel swiftly onward, sin holds you on the downward road, and the devil whom you serve deceives you. You need a Deliverer, and there is one for you. He is our Lord Jesus Christ. He can save, but beside Him there is no saviour found.

"Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4: 12).

God Stretching out His Hands to Men.

I said one night to a hard old sinner who had come on several occasions to the Gospel services, "Is it not time you turned to Christ for salvation?" He told me that he had done so that very night, and that he was a saved man. I asked him how he knew this; was it because he had determined to give up the drink and live a decent life? He said, "No, it was not that; but while you were preaching I thought I saw God holding out His hands to me and saying, 'I will receive you just as you are.' And I just came."

That old sinner was not deceived; God is stretching out His hands to men all the day long. He commends His love to sinners; He beseeches them to be reconciled to Him; He "will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth." Oh, weary sinner, laden with guilt, sick of the world's deceptions and sins, come to the Saviour. Above the din of this restless world His voice calls to you. He says, "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Let these words enter your ears and heart; they bring a great peace and a priceless blessing.

Oh, tired heart, do not close your ears to His words; let the music of them charm you and draw you to His feet. Thousands have come, thousands are still coming. Do not you stay away. He will make you feel that He is glad to see you, and as your weary and sin-burdened soul finds everlasting rest upon His bosom of eternal love, your only regret will be that you did not come before.

"Don't Forget Eternity."

"Do you remember the last word you said to me as we said 'Good-bye' at the Central Station, twelve years ago?"

I did not remember, but the sturdy British soldier who asked the question did, as his story will show.

Since I had last shaken his hand, as he started out on a sea-faring life, he had seen a good bit of the world and its ways before settling down to a landsman's job in America. Then there came the call for men and yet more men to fill the gaps and to increase the strength of the British Expeditionary Force in France, and his English heart fired at the call, and he threw down his good job and crossed the Atlantic and joined up.

He was light-hearted and fearless, like the bulk of the men in khaki, and, also like many of them, he was careless about the future. But the war woke him up, and this is how it happened.

He was in a carrying party when the shells began to come over, and most of the men ran for cover. This roused the wrath of the sergeant-major, who shouted, "Eh, you fellows, come out here; are you afraid of shells bursting a mile away?" The words were scarcely out when he was hit, and fell dead at the feet of my young friend. Others were killed in that little band, but my friend was unhurt; but as he looked into the dead face of the sergeant-major, a fine young soldier of twenty-four, my words of twelve years before flashed into his mind, "George, don't forget Eternity."

Eternity seemed very near to him at that moment, and he trembled in the presence of it, and of God. He was no coward; no German force could have broken his spirit or made him tremble, but death and the vast Eternity that stretches beyond it, and the thought of having to meet God, and the knowledge that he was not ready, brought him to his knees, and he prayed that night.

It was early in the night when that shell did its deadly work, and when God used it to arouse that fearless young soldier to the danger his soul was in. He saw things as he had never seen them before, and realized then that, being an unforgiven sinner, he was not ready to pass into Eternity, nor to meet God. And that shell that had killed the sergeant-major might have hit him, for he was only a few feet from him; but his life had been spared, — for what?

At five the following morning he made his decision, for then it was that the way of salvation and life shone clearly before his soul. He remembered the Gospel he had often listened to at home, how that "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor 15: 3-4). And that, "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Rom. 10: 9). His wonder was that he had not seen it so clearly before, and that he had not yielded himself to this great Saviour who had loved him and died for him. It was then that he passed from death unto life, and found peace with God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

He wrote to his home telling the story, and his letters made those of us who had often prayed for him rejoice exceedingly; for this change that had come into his life was no passing emotion, it was deep and real, and his confidence was as strong as his conversion was genuine, for it rested, not upon any false phantom of the human mind, such as "death on the battlefield saving the man who dies" — a pagan and not a Christian doctrine is that! — but it rested upon the unchanging, infallible Gospel of God, plainly told us in His word, concerning Christ His beloved Son, who "died for the ungodly," whose precious blood cleanseth from all sin.

It is His death that saves the sinner, and it was love that passes all understanding that led Him to die. But He not only died, He lives again. Jesus is the risen and glorified Lord, before whom every knee must bow, and to whom all must give account.

Happy are those who yield to Him now, for all such are saved by His great salvation.

We would repeat here the words that flashed into the mind of my friend on that memorable night: "Don't forget Eternity!" Have you strong confidence as you look ahead?

Christ alone can give this. He is the only Saviour; forgiveness and justification can only be found in Him. God says, "Be it known unto you, men . . . that through this Man [Christ Jesus] is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by Him all that believe are justified from all things" (Acts 13: 38, 39).

George, who became a corporal of the tanks, got this blessing, and if you could talk with him now he would say to you, "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" (ROM. 8: 38, 39).

A Young Medical Student.

A November drizzle made the streets of Leith both cold and unpleasant, but it did not damp the fervour of a veteran Christian, who for more than fifty years had been an open-air preacher. So on the Sunday evening of which I write, we went with him to tell the Gospel story on the streets before turning into a hall hard by for a further service. As the old Scotsman of more than eighty years proclaimed salvation through the Lord Jesus, a young medical student drew near and listened. He had come to Edinburgh from an Irish home and the training of a Christian mother, but contact with other students who held sceptical views and laughed at religion had shaken the traditional faith that he held. It may have been by a process of his own reasoning (for reason never helped a man to God), or to be like his new friends; I cannot tell, but by whatever way he had arrived at it he was that night an agnostic in thought and intention.

But the plain words of this rugged old man made an impression upon him. Here was not light-hearted inexperience toying with the realities of life and death, and God and eternity, like a juggler tossing his balls at a circus; he had grown used to that kind of thing in the class and dissecting-room, but now he heard one who, near the end of his long life, was telling the people what had given him peace and joy in time, and a certain hope for eternity, and this impressed him, and when an invitation was given to all to come to the preaching in the hall he came along with others.

The preaching in the hall deepened the impression that had been made upon him in the street, and he remained in his seat when the meeting closed. A Christian man sat by his side, but after a few minutes' conversation with him, our young friend rose up to leave the hall, disconsolate and sad. I had noticed his earnest listening to the preaching, and extending my hand to him at the door asked him what his trouble was. He said, "That gentleman refuses to talk with me because I do not believe that the Bible is God's Word." "Oh!" I said, "you do not believe that this Book is the Word of God?" "No," he replied, "I don't, for even if there is a God I do not see how He could write a book for us; it is the work of men." "I see," I said; "then it is evidently useless to discuss that question, so I will put my Bible in my pocket. Now tell me, are you happy?" He confessed that he was not. "Well," I said, "if you don't mind, I should like to introduce you to some of my friends here," and I called two young men, the sons of the old street preacher, to come and sit beside us. Having introduced them to him I said, "Do you think that my friends look happy?" He thought they did. Then I said, "I am going to ask them to tell us how God made them happy."

Glad of an opportunity of bearing witness to the grace of God the elder of the two told how as a youth he attended a certain Gospel preaching, and though he did not lay hold of the sermon, the text laid hold of him. It was that wonderful word from the lips of Jesus: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3: 16).

He saw that there was room for him in that great and blessed WHOSOEVER, and that salvation from everlasting perdition and the gift of eternal life were for him. Yes, more truly for him than if his own name had been in the verse, for there were many in Scotland bearing his name, whereas God's "whosoever" stretched out its long arms of blessing to embrace all who would simply believe no matter what their name or nation. There and then he, an anxious sinner, put his faith in the only-begotten Son of God, who had died for him, and he had known from that time onward that he had a Saviour in heaven who would not let him perish.

The younger brother told us that on the same night that his brother turned to the Saviour he also found the blessing. It was at home by the fireside that his father pointed out to him a beautiful verse in the Bible. "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Rom. 10: 9).

He learnt that his sins had been laid upon the Lord Jesus, his holy substitute, that He had suffered the judgment of divine justice instead of him, that He had not only been delivered for his transgression, but had been raised again from the dead, positive proof that the work was finished, the debt paid, that God was satisfied in all His holy claims, and that the sins were gone for ever. Who, seeing this, could refuse to bow the knee and confess Jesus as Lord? Certainly he could not refrain from this, and there and then he surrendered to the Saviour, confessing Him as his Lord. He also told how that the next day he confessed the name of Christ at the dentistry establishment where he was at the time an apprentice, and that a fellow-dentist there remarked, "This is an important event, we must make a note of it," and wrote on the wall "Conversion of St. Edward, Jany. 1891," and added, "but in three weeks St. Edward will be the same as he was before." The scoffer was no true prophet, however, as the happy face of the young dentist proved that night.

I, too, had a story to tell, a story of sin and need on my part, but of love and mercy and cleansing blood on the Saviour's part, a story such as every saved soul delights to tell for the glory of God.

The young medical student listened to us with growing interest, and before we finished our tales of grace he had ceased to be an agnostic. He felt that his need was what ours had been, and that the Saviour who had saved us could also save him. And so we knelt together, just the four of us, two Scotsmen, one Irishman, and one Englishman, and we found the Saviour very near to us as that anxious sinner sought Him.

Our kneeling there together was an incident that would not have interested the ordinary man of the world, but at that moment that young man's sins were forgiven and his soul was saved, and he could say,

"'Tis done, the great transaction done,

I am my Lord's, and He is mine."

The greatest event that could happen in the history of any man.

—

God has given the abundance of the earth for the upkeep of your body, but for the salvation of your soul He has given His only-begotten Son. "Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed" (John 6: 27). "This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent."

The Salvation of the Canteen Sergeant, and his Heroic Death.

Sergeant-Major M—, of the 2nd K.O.Y.L.I., the Canteen Sergeant of our story, certainly died the death of a Christian hero. He might have saved his own life, but it would have been at the risk of the lives of the men whom he loved, and for whom he had often prayed, and whom he had constantly sought to win for his Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.

I met him two years previously in Dublin, and there heard the story of his conversion from his own lips. When the war broke out I thought that his story might be the means of blessing to other men, so wrote it as a tract for the soldiers. Not knowing where he was, I was unable to obtain his permission to do this, but the published story was sent out to him by a friend into whose hands it came, and he responded to it in a letter to me in which he said:

"I am resting under the shadow of the Almighty in an ancient town in Flanders. . . . As to the story of my conversion, I am ready to be anything at all times for my Master's sake, and am still the happy Christian whom you met in Dublin, though I should not care to call myself zealous as you do. Still never a day passes on which I do not endeavour by word and deed to show that I have Christ, and on every occasion when the men of my battalion are out of the trenches we have a Gospel, prayer, and praise meeting."

Several letters passed between us since I received that first from him. In one of them he wrote, "I would not change places with any man in the world. This is a glorious work, and not a few are coming asking the way of life; there is no need to go after men, though I do that."

Again he wrote, "Our men came out of the trenches late last night, and early this morning arrived at the base. . . . With Sergeant-Major F—, of the R.F.A., we held an evening service. . . . Hearts were prepared for the message, and at the close between 30 and 40 knelt in the ring, desirous of enlisting under the banner of the cross. It was a glorious sight and must have set heaven ringing with joy. . . . The men were loath to leave that meeting, and altogether 56 names were taken, all openly admitting that they realised that Christ Jesus had taken them to Himself."

Six days after writing that letter Sergeant-Major M— was absent from the body, present with the Lord. The story of his conversion is given herewith, as it appeared in the early days of the war, save for a few slight corrections made by himself.

* * * * *

Canteen Sergeant M —, of a famous Yorkshire regiment, had come through several fights in the Boer War without a scratch, but he did not feel like congratulating himself on this; he sometimes wished that the fate of many of his gallant comrades whose blood had been drunk by the rough country on the Modder River had been his, for he had lost all joy in life. Drink and worse things had diseased and shattered his strong frame: he was notoriously wicked, and as wretched as man could be.

One day in camp at Kimberley, in May, 1900, he seemed to reach the very depth of misery; but instead of blaming himself and his sins, he cursed God with a flood of curses, as though He were the cause of it all. And almost instantly God, who is not far from any one of us, gave an answer to his curses.

Each incident of that day will never be forgotten by him, for it left an indelible stamp upon his memory. With the oaths hot upon his lips, and red rage against God flaming up in his heart, he went into a canteen. Lying upon a table in it was a small leaflet: he did not know what it was or who had put it there, but he took it up and read it. A blow between his eyes, delivered by an unseen hand, could not have startled him more than what he read in that leaflet did; it was God's answer to his rage, an answer so strange and unexpected that the sergeant's glib tongue could find no words with which to express his astonishment. These were the words: "You may be a great sinner, but God loves you, for God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us" (Rom. 5: 8). M— had never thought of God in that way before, and as the meaning of the words entered his very soul, he broke down where he stood.

Outside the canteen was a group of his comrades; they would have laughed at his tears had they seen him, and he did not feel like meeting them then; he wanted to be alone in order to think this matter over, and so he crept out behind the canteen, and away into the gathering night.

What an astounding thing was this; God loved him, a blaspheming canteen sergeant! a sinner whose sins were like scarlet! It seemed impossible, and yet it was true, and the truth of it folded him in its warm embrace; like the light of the morning it shone in his heart, and as he thought about it he sobbed like a child. Then he came face to face with the one man in his company that he had disliked, a Christian soldier, who also that evening wished to escape the company of his comrades. It was a dramatic meeting. "What's the matter?" asked the Christian. Through his tears M— told him what had happened, and how he had read that God loved him. And they knelt together, those two men, beneath the open sky, and there the great sinner realized the pardoning grace of God and the peace that follows the realization of it. Those comrades in arms, brothers in Christ now, for they were saved by the same Saviour, talked and prayed and praised God together for a while. They talked of the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us in order to prove that God loves the sinner, who shed His precious blood that the worst of sins might be washed from our souls for ever, and who died and rose again that we might have eternal redemption in Him.

They praised God for the grace that had pardoned their sins, and prayed that He would help them to confess the name of the Saviour boldly and at once.

To confess Christ before godless companions does not seem an easy thing to do. Many a man, who would have no fear were a hundred Germans charging down upon him with bayonets fixed, has become the worst of cowards when he has thought of the jeers of his comrades in the camp. But the converted sergeant had believed in a great Saviour, who had died for him and risen again, who had delivered him from the power of the devil and sin, and of that Saviour he would not be ashamed. Straight to the canteen he went: there were many men there, some of the worst, and they all knew the sergeant. It mattered not to him what they knew or thought; he was now a forgiven man, and he was full of the fact that God loved him, and plainly and bluntly he told them the truth, and owned before them that Christ was now his Saviour.

It was no passing emotion that swept over him that night out in distant South Africa. The Saviour he found then has proved well worth knowing, and one year ago when I met him, twelve years after his conversion, Sergeant-Major M— was a happy, healthy Christian, zealously serving the Lord amongst the men of his company.

"If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved . . . for the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed" (Rom. 10: 9 and 11).

"Whosoever,"

There is not a sinner on earth, no matter how terrible or gross his transgressions, who may not be saved through the Lord Jesus Christ. If you can show me within the covers of that Bible one text that declares that you, or any other sinner, may not come to the Saviour, then I must cease from preaching, for I could not henceforth proclaim this "Whosoever" Gospel in which I delight.

But there is no such text. On the contrary, "To Him give all the prophets witness, that through His Name, whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins" (Acts 10: 43). That is enough for me. Let it be enough for you. Cast the burden of your guilt at the Saviour's feet. He is your only hope. Put your case into His hand, and you will prove for yourself that God's "whosoever" Gospel is a great reality.

"Christ has Conquered?"

While staying in Dublin I was asked by a Christian doctor to visit a young man who had been badly hit by consumption; he was lying in a small hospital in the city, with practically no hope of recovery. My doctor-friend told me that he had a Christian mother, but that he had developed atheistic notions and did not care to be spoken to about God and eternity.

He was dozing when I arrived at the hospital, but the sister of the small but exceedingly pleasant ward kindly allowed me to sit by his bed-side for a while in case he awoke.

He was not long in opening his eyes, and seemed surprised to find a stranger at his side. I explained that I had been asked to visit him by the doctor whom he knew, and asked if I might read a little to him out of my book — drawing my Bible from my pocket as I spoke.

His lip curled in scorn, and he said, "I am surprised that a sensible-looking fellow like you should believe in that book; it's a collection of old wives' fables." I replied, "I am surprised to hear you talk like that, for I hear that you have a Christian mother, that she taught you to read this book when you were a child, and has never ceased to pray for you throughout the thirty years of your life. Tell me how you came to have such notions as you now hold."

"Yes," he said, "my mother taught me that the Bible was the Word of God, and a good mother she always was. But as a lad of fifteen, or so, I began to have questions as to whether there was a God after all. Nobody could satisfy me on this point, and I decided to be a man and think for myself. I was still under twenty when I went to America, where I joined a secular society, and I have lectured on the absurdities of the Bible from New York to San Francisco." I had gained his confidence, and he told me much more than this: interesting details of a chequered life that revealed a restless spirit and an unsatisfied heart. When he had finished, I said to him, "Thank you for telling me so frankly and fully the story of your life. I also have a story to tell; I wonder if you would care to hear it?"

"Certainly," he said, "I shall be glad to hear it."

"Well, I also had a Christian mother and she taught me the wonderful Bible stories from my earliest childhood, and in those days my young heart seemed to respond to what she taught me, especially to the story of JESUS and His great love. But when I reached about the age of fifteen I also had infidel thoughts. I knew that I was a sinner, and that the Bible said I must give an account to God. And I was afraid. Then it was that the thought crept into my mind: What a good thing it would be if there were no God, for then I could live as I pleased without any fear of the consequences. The sinful wish that it might be so was father to the infidel thought." He winced most perceptibly at this point in my narrative, and I saw that the bow, drawn at a venture, had sent the arrow to the mark.

"The thought grew in my mind," I continued, "until I said, 'I do not believe that there is a God after all; who can really say for certain?' And that very day the Life of Charles Bradlaugh was put into my hand. I read it with avidity, it seemed to confirm my thoughts, and I said boldly, within my heart, 'There is no God.' Those were dark hours for me, perhaps the darkest in my life, but they did not last long, for the misery of them brought me to my knees before God to seek His forgiveness, and I afterwards found through faith in my mother's Saviour, that all the sins that had made me afraid of God were gone from me for ever, washed away in the blood of Jesus, who died for sinners."

I rose and said, "I will not stay longer to-day, but if I may return to-morrow I will."

"I should be glad if you would," he replied; "and thank you for your visit."

The next day he greeted me very warmly and said he had been looking for me, and after a talk as to his illness, I said, "Shall I read a few verses from my Book?" "Yes, I wish you would," he said, and closed his eyes tight to hide the gathering tears, I thought.

What part of the whole Book, so full of precious words for weary souls, could be more suitable for the dying sceptic than Isaiah 53? I turned to that chapter, and read:

"But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.

"All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

"He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth.

"He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare His generation? for He was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was He stricken."

We talked earnestly together for half an hour, and then with his consent I knelt at his side, and prayed that the God of all grace would make clear to him those things that we had read from the Scriptures.

I was to leave the city the next day for home, and he said to me, "Leave me your address, and if ever I get what you have got I will write and tell you."

The days passed by, but at last there arrived the letter with the Dublin post-mark, and this was the welcome tidings that the letter brought: —

"My dear Friend,

"Christ has conquered! I cannot tell you exactly how it has come about, I only know that it has, and now I have a peace in looking forward to death that I never thought possible.

"The Bible, the book that I despised, is my constant companion and I am learning wonderful things out of it. . . ."

So the letter ran, filled to the end with expressions of thankfulness to the Saviour who had suffered upon Calvary that he might be saved, and of regrets that the spring-tide of his life had been wasted in infidelity and sin.

He lived a few months, a confessor of Christ as his Lord, and went home to Him at last to be for ever a trophy of the mercy which saves the sinner without any merit on his part. By the self-same means must all be saved who are saved; those ransomed multitudes who shall dwell in God's everlasting home shall be there not because of their deservings, for every several one in the countless host were hell-deserving, but they will be in heaven through the "blest merits of the Saviour's blood."

"It Passeth Knowledge."

We were talking together, a young Scotsman and I. He was in deep soul-trouble; for he had discovered that he was a sinful man, a neglecter of God's great salvation, and he wanted to be saved.

I read to him those wonderful words in Isaiah 53: 5: "But He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."

Then I said to him: "You take my book and read the verse, and put yourself into it, as you do. Change the plural pronoun into the singular." He took the Bible, and read slowly and with a good deal of feeling. "He was wounded for MY transgressions; He was bruised for MY iniquities; the chastisement of MY peace was upon Him; and with His stripes I —." He stopped there suddenly, and burst into a big sob. I waited until he managed to control himself, and said to him, "What's the matter?" He replied, "I cannot understand why He should have loved me so much as to die for me; I haven't cared about Him at all." "Neither can I understand it," I replied, and God knew that neither of us would be able to understand it, and so He calls it in His Word, "THE LOVE OF CHRIST THAT PASSETH KNOWLEDGE."

That remark helped him and he believed what he could not understand.

The Next World.

Amongst the young men of my acquaintance who found soldiers' graves in France, was one who lived in our sea coast town. His last letter to me was a very thoughtful and interesting one, in which he told me that out there he had refaced the great problems of life and death and of time and eternity, and had found his faith in Christ strengthened thereby. The Lord was his hope and confidence whether in life or in death; and his only regret at being in France and not at home was that he could not wheel out his invalid mother on sunny days as he had been used to do. His conversion was an exceedingly interesting one, and I will try and tell it in as nearly his words as I can. He had a companion with whom he used to stroll in the country. They were thoughtful lads, and some would think them queer, for they preferred a quiet holiday of that kind to the football field or the picture palace. They had read a great deal; his friend had devoted himself mostly to socialistic and atheistic literature, and was in revolt against society as they viewed it, and both professed scepticism as to the existence of God.

They had chosen a pleasant spot for their outing, but this only added to their disgust at the state of things in general. His friend, a budding orator, said to him, "This lovely spot that we are enjoying to-day will all be spoilt in a few years' time. The capitalist will invade it, and giant oaks and peaceful walks will be blotted out, and grimy chimneys and ugly factories and wretched cottages will take their places. But that is the way everything that is beautiful in this world goes; and then there's the war! Life is not worth living. I wish I were dead."

My young friend had agreed with him up to that point, when suddenly, he could not tell why or from whence, a question flashed into his mind and was at once put into words: "And I wonder if life in the next world will be any better for us?" The young orator argued against there being another life and a next world, and with all the assurance of ignorance declared that when a man died that was the end of him.

But the question had thoroughly startled my friend, and he could not shake off the anxiety that it had produced in his mind. "The next world!" He must find out something about that, and at once; but to what book should he turn for information? He would try his mother's Bible; and so for hours on that Saturday night he read from the beginning of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, onwards. The result of that first prolonged reading of that wonderful Book was that his scepticism fell away from him, a deep conviction laid hold of him that God is, and that he had to give an account to Him as to how he spent this life; and then in the next world there was heaven and hell, and his business was to win the one and escape the other if this was within the bounds of possibility.

He did not sleep much that night, but he did better; he decided between heaven and hell, and his definite choice was "Heaven for me." Another thing He argued out with himself, and it was this: the Book that told so clearly of these two great destinations, to one or other of which every individual is travelling, would also tell us clearly how to leave the broad way and how to enter and tread the narrow way that leads to life and heaven. That was a sound argument, and he set himself to find the way from that self-same Book!

Now, as he continued to read another truth gripped him. He discovered that a wonderful person, spoken of amongst other names and titles as "Jesus," "Christ," "the only-begotten Son of God," and the "Lord Jesus Christ," had made a great sacrifice in order to save him from hell and win him for heaven. There could be no doubt about this, for he read: "The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19: 10). "Christ died for the ungodly" (Rom. 5: 6). "God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5: 8), and "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners" (1 Tim. 1: 15). Then this lad of seventeen years made another decision on his bended knees; he said, "Lord Jesus, if Thou didst make this great sacrifice to save me, the only right thing for me to do is to yield my soul and life to Thee, and I do it now." That was a grand decision, and it changed his whole outlook. It made this life worth living and gave him a bright prospect for the next.

He learnt many things after that. Amongst them was his own sinfulness, in that he had lived for his own pleasure and forgotten God his Maker, and that it was because of his sinfulness that Jesus had to die, for "without shedding of blood is no remission" (Heb. 9: 22). But the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God "cleanseth from all sin" (Heb. 9: 14; 1 John 1: 7). But this one thought governed him: The Son of God loved me, and made a great sacrifice for me, and now and henceforward I must live for Him.

I was glad that I had known him when the news came through that he had been killed; especially glad that I had heard the story of his conversion from his own lips, and that I had had that last letter from him; glad to be able to assure the distressed parents, on the authority of the Word of God, that since their boy had yielded himself to the Saviour, he was with Him now, for, for every one that believeth, it is true, that "whether we live or whether we die we are the Lord's."

Procrastination.

While travelling with a friend in Jamaica, who was a native of the place, we happened to see growing near to the roadside a curious little bush. He pointed it out to me, and suggested that I should let my clothes touch it. I did so, and at once found myself caught by a hooked thorn not unlike a fish-hook. While releasing myself from it I was caught by another, and then again by still another, and it was only with much care and patience that I got clear of it at last. "Wait a bit" is the name given to the bush by the natives of the island, and an exceptionally good name I thought it.

Has not the devil got many such bushes growing alongside the road which leads to the blessing? Indeed he has. You wake up to the fact that it is time you thought of eternity, and immediately you are caught by some pleasure, or pursuit, or sin, which holds and detains you, saying, "Wait a bit," and many are thus detained until it is too late for ever.

You mean to be saved, to have Jesus for your Saviour some day. Do it now; do not tread the road of By-and-By, for it leads eventually to the town of "Never."

The Text on the Wall.

The thing that troubled me more than anything else, as a lad in my teens, was a text of Scripture that hung in our home. Four words only was the length of it, but those four words fastened themselves upon my mind, and made me afraid on most unexpected occasions. The four words were: "THOU GOD SEEST ME."

I had been taught that "God is love"; that He sought my greatest blessing, and desired that I should be happy for ever. I knew that He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him might not perish, but have everlasting life; and yet I was afraid, and many a time and oft I wished that there were no God, and that the text were a delusion.

It may seem strange that I should have felt like that, but the reason is not difficult to find. I was a sinner, and knew that all my sins were placed on record in God's Book, that there were no mistakes in God's book-keeping, and that I could not erase a single entry therein. It was true in my case, as in all others, that, —

"The moving finger writes —

And having writ, moves on,

Nor all my piety nor wit

Can lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all my tears blot out one word of it."

I remember reading about that time a story by a famous writer, in which he suggested that the recording angel often dropped a tear of pity upon the page whereon he had recorded some sin, as though he could wash it out. I wished the suggestion were true, but I knew it was not. I read, also, in the Book that always tells the truth, of the time when the dead, small and great, shall stand before God; when the books shall be opened and the dead judged out of the things written in the books, every man according to his works (Rev. 20: 11-15). It was this that made the text a trouble to me, so much so that often at night I would bury my face in my pillow in the vain endeavour to blot it out from my thoughts.

Then there came a certain Gospel Service in which I heard old truths clearly and powerfully preached. At the close of it I was induced to stay to a second meeting, when the preacher announced that we would sing the hymn: —

"Oh, do not let the Word depart,

And close thine eyes against the light,

Poor sinner, harden not thy heart,

Thou wouldst be saved; why not to-night?"

I tried to sing that verse with the rest of the people, but I couldn't. The lump rose to my throat, and the tears to my eyes, for I felt that I had been hardening any heart for a long time against the love of a Saviour God. I hoped that nobody would see my anxiety and grief; but the preacher had a keen eye for anxious sinners, and presently he sat down by my side, and putting his arm round me, he gave me a warm hug and said, "You'll trust Him to-night, won't you, dear?" I had no need to ask him who he meant by "Him." I knew that he was speaking of JESUS, the only begotten Son of God, who had died that I might live, who had shed His precious blood that my sins might all be cleansed. So in reply to the preacher's question, I replied, "Yes, I will trust Him to-night."

The preacher asked no more questions, he took that to be my decision, which it was, and he said, We'll sing, —

"'Tis done, the great transaction's done,

I am my Lord's, and He is mine.

He drew me, and I followed on,

Glad to confess His voice divine.

Happy day! Happy day!

When Jesus washed my sins away."

I did not sing the words then, but I did before I slept that night, and I can sing them to-day as I look back to that solemn but blessed hour.

I am not now afraid of the text that once troubled me so much. On the contrary, I rejoice that every deed of mine, even the most sinful, was seen by God, that not one act escaped His notice; and my reason for this is, that, knowing all, He has forgiven all. You will understand this, I think, if you recall the story of the prodigal of Luke 15. He said to his father, "I have sinned before heaven, and in Thy sight." In other words, "I have sinned, and you know it all." But the father having kissed him with the kiss of forgiveness, brought him into his house, clad in the best robe, and then they began to be merry.

Suppose for the moment that the boy's sinfulness had not been known to the father. Then he would have lived under the continual fear that somebody coming from the far country would tell his father of his misdeeds, and that if he knew the truth he would turn him out of his doors. But no such fear affected him; he could say, "My father knows the worst about me, and has kissed and forgiven me in spite of it all. All is known and all is forgiven." And I can say the same, thank God, and so can every sinner that has come to God through Christ Jesus the Saviour. This knowledge brings a great peace to the heart.

Such a forgiveness as this God offers to all; it is a complete clearance, and it is offered freely through the Lord Jesus Christ. "Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through THIS MAN is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. And by Him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses."

—

O Lord, I bring to Thee.

O Lord, I bring to Thee

This sinful life of mine,

There is no rest for me,

Save in Thy love divine.

WEARY I come to Thee,

For Lord Thou callest me.

I own to Thee my guilt,

No merit can I plead,

But Lord, Thou canst, Thou wilt

Meet e'en my deepest need.

SINFUL I come to Thee,

Have mercy, Lord on me.

Take Thou this ruined life,

I yield it up to Thee,

And change sin's bitter strife

For peace and liberty.

HELPLESS I come to Thee,

For Thou hast died for me.

Sinful and weak I fear,

To take my way alone,

Saviour I look to Thee,

Exalted on the Throne.

I'd draw my strength from Thee,

For Lord, Thou lovest me.

"I will."

Four of us sat one on each side of a square table in a small parlour. We were three young men and myself; two of them now lie in soldiers' graves in France. We were not there to shuffle cards or crack jokes, or even discuss the topics of the day; we had graver business in hand. These three young men had attended on the night previous a Gospel service, and there had been awakened within them a desire to hear more of the way of salvation, for they felt they were not right with God. It was interesting and remarkable that each of them, close friends as they were, had been similarly affected, and when they discovered this at the close of the service, it made them all the more eager for an interview. And so we arranged to meet at a friend's house and talk things over.

They had many difficulties which they freely aired; for instance, they were all three fond of sport, and they wanted to know whether if they yielded to Christ they would get something that would please them more. I assured them that the Lord Jesus was brighter and better than the brightest and best that the world could give. They were afraid, too, that if they became Christians they would have a hard time with their chums; they would get laughed at and scorned, and would probably lose many a merry mate. I assured them that the best friend to have is JESUS, and that they would be worse than fools if they allowed the jeers of godless men to keep them away from Him whom they knew they needed the most. There were a good many other questions; but all these, one by one, were answered, and they were brought to own candidly that they were sinful men, that they would have to meet God about their sins, and they were not ready. They went further, and acknowledged that they wanted to be ready, that they had talked the matter over, and had decided to ask me to help them.

It was easy then to tell them of the Saviour who died for sinners, and so for them; who shed His precious blood to cleanse away the sins of guilty men, and so to cleanse theirs away. I told them that the Saviour who died for them was now a living Saviour, for He had been raised from the dead, and that He claimed their confidence, and all that remained for them was to yield themselves to Him in simple faith.

The leader of the three was sitting opposite to me, and he broke in upon my talk by saying, "What's the use of talking to us about believing in Christ; how can we believe in Him unless God's Holy Spirit makes us? I tell you I can't believe."

I replied, "I am afraid it is not a question of can't but won't. But suppose you could believe in Jesus. Will you suppose that you could for three minutes?"

"All right, I will," he said.

"Well, now, suppose you could believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, WILT THOU HAVE THIS SAVIOUR TO BE THY SAVIOUR, NOW?"

I looked into his eyes, and his friends looked eagerly into his eyes, and we waited for his answer. After a pause I repeated the question, "Wilt thou have this Saviour to be thy Saviour, to-night?"

The dear fellow's eyes filled up with tears, and he stretched his hand across the table, and took mine in a warm grip, and replied, "I WILL." And with that decision every difficulty disappeared, his anxiety departed, he was saved, and saw it so clearly that his friends were astonished. One of them made a clear decision too; I could not be sure about the other. But this was plain enough to them all, that it was the "I will" on their part that was needed.

The Lord Jesus has said His "I will." "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11: 28); and "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out" (John 6: 37).

And God has said, "Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. IF YE BE WILLING" (Isaiah 1: 18, 19).

Nothing could be plainer, and when a sinner feels his need of the Saviour, and is ready to say "I will" to Him — to the Lord Jesus Christ — the great transaction is for ever done.

God will not Sell His Blessing.

Money cannot secure the blessing; if it could, the rich alone could claim it, and poor folk would go wanting for ever. But God has made His salvation free; it is an absolute gift from Him to all who get it. There are some who would like to put God in the place of the merchant in the market place, bartering His goods to the highest bidder, but their desires will never be gratified. There are two reasons why God will not sell His blessing:

1st. Men are far too poor to buy it;

2nd. God is far too rich to sell it.

But He gives it gladly and freely to whosoever will take it in simple, child-like faith.

How a Young Sapper lost his Misery.

A company of Royal Engineers were stationed at North Shields. It was a Sunday in the early part of January, the very day when the German raid was attempted which ended in the sinking of the Bluecher. The men were confined to their billets that day to be ready for any emergency; indeed they had had no liberty for a week, but on this Sunday there was one of them who was so intensely wretched that, as he said, "he could not stick it anyhow"; he felt he must do something, and so he slipped out of the fort to try and find some relief. He did not want to be seen by the regimental police, so he crossed the river by the ferry, and there he was stopped by a Christian man and invited to a Gospel service. He came and listened; listened so earnestly, in fact, that I had singled him out before the preaching was over as one who seemed anxious to be saved.

When the meeting closed, I asked any who were in trouble, especially the boys in khaki, or any who were anxious to be saved — like the jailor at Philippi (Acts 16) of whom I had been speaking — to stay and have a quiet and personal talk, as we wanted to help them. The young sapper remained and said to me, "I should like to speak to you, for I have a great sin on my soul, and am awfully miserable."

I asked him to tell me about himself, which he did. He was eighteen years old; fifteen months before his mother had died, and he had joined the army and gone to Chatham. There he had got in with an evil set of men and women, and had taken the downward way at the "double." "Seems to me," I said, "that you have got a lot of big sins on your soul." "I have," he said, "And I'm glad my dear old mother is dead; it would have broken her heart if she could have known about me." Then the poor lad, having finished his tale of sin, sobbed and wept on my shoulder.

We knelt down together and told his sorrow to God; as we did so, the story of Calvary, which he had often heard in his home as a lad, and at the Sunday School, appeared in an entirely new light to him. He had always believed that Jesus died upon the cross, now he saw that it was for him that He had suffered there, for we looked together at that verse in Romans 5: 6, "For when we were yet without strength, in due time, CHRIST DIED FOR THE UNGODLY." He had confessed that he was ungodly, and so he was able to say, "That means me, Christ died for me."

From that verse we turned to Isaiah 53. And the young soldier read the fifth verse of that wonderful chapter, changing the plural pronoun to the singular, and laying the emphasis on it as he read. "He was wounded for MY TRANSGRESSIONS, He was bruised for MY INIQUITIES: the chastisement of MY PEACE was upon Him; and with His stripes I AM HEALED." And he found that though his sins were as scarlet — the indelible dye — yet by the precious blood of Jesus, God could make them as white as snow.

Before we rose from our knees he thanked God for showing him the way of salvation; not in the same words, but meaning the same thing as a young recruit in the "Duke of Wellington's," who said in my hearing, "O God, I thank Thee for bringing this light into my life."

He said to me as I left him near his billet, "I haven't slept for nights for misery, but I can go to my bed to-night and say, 'God has forgiven me.'"

Like the father of the prodigal, God had run to meet him, had given him the kiss of forgiveness, and changed his misery to merriment.

I looked out every day for a letter from my young friend, and was very disappointed when a fortnight passed without news. But then I got a note from him, written in the trenches "somewhere in France." It told me that he was "SO HAPPY." His sins were forgiven; his guilty conscience had been relieved of its burden; he had peace with God. All this was his, not because he deserved it, not because he had made up his mind to reform his ways and live a good, clean life, but because he had come as a miserable and helpless sinner to the one and only Saviour of sinners — the Lord Jesus Christ.

The blessing that he got, all may have, for the Saviour says, "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." The drunkard, the gambler, the profligate, all may come, and Jesus will receive them, for He says, "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out." And those who have not indulged in these vices need to come to Him too, for "All have sinned." They are no exceptions to this sweeping rule. How glad we should be that "whosoever will" may come.

I did not hear again from the young sapper, and it may be that his body lies with many others of his brave comrades, beneath the sad soil of one of those awful battle fields, and we may not meet again on earth, or again we may; but whether or not, I know that he is safe, for his Saviour and mine has said, "My sheep hear My voice and I know them and they follow Me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand" (John 10: 27, 28).

The Waiting Friend.

"Will you not stay to our after-meeting and yield to Christ?" I said to a young man at the close of a preaching service.

"I cannot," he replied. "There is a friend waiting for me outside."

"And there is a Friend waiting for you inside. He has waited for you a good many years. Do you know His Name?" I remarked.

My young friend hung his head; the shot had gone home.

"You would not like to disappoint the friend outside," I continued; "but you do not mind disappointing the Friend who is waiting inside, and yet He continues to wait. Do you know His Name?"

"It is Jesus," he replied.

"And will you still keep Him waiting?"

Thank God, that night he turned to the Friend who waits to receive and bless poor sinners.

This same wondrous Friend of sinners is waiting, waiting, waiting still — waiting for you who are still away from Him. How many of you, my readers, will keep Him waiting longer?

For a moment, while reading this page, you are withdrawn from the world, and the Saviour waits so near at hand to receive you.

But outside there is the world which professes lasting friendship, but you know full well its promises are false.

Pleasure, sin, Satan, all wait outside to please you for a while, and then to cast you off, and leave you comfortless and lonely in the night of your despair.

Will you listen to the voices of the false friends outside, who would keep you outside of heaven and the blessing of God for ever; or, will you now listen to the voice of the "Friend that loveth at all times," who "sticketh closer than a brother," who, that He might have your friendship, showed Himself to be friendly, and laid down His life that He might be your Saviour?

"I own Jesus as my Lord."

For some days a young man of my acquaintance had been anxious about his soul's salvation, and now at the close of a Gospel meeting, he remained seeking that which he felt he needed above all beside.

After talking for a while with him, I said: "Now tell me just what you think about these matters." For a moment he bowed his head, and then, rising to his feet, he raised his right hand, and said: "I own Jesus as my Lord." It was well said — a glorious decision, entailing eternal salvation. Make the same decision to-day, my unconverted reader.

* * * * *

"I will never bow my knee to that Man," said a man to me in the West Indies, as I pressed upon him the claims of Christ.

Vain boast when God hath declared "that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that JESUS CHRIST is LORD, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2: 10-11).

Washed and Brushed Up!

It was a wet and raw November Sunday in Edinburgh, the sort of day that often greatly tests the preacher of the Gospel, for he knows that he is more than likely to have fewer ears to listen to his message. And yet such a day often brings some within sound of the Word who would other wise have avoided it as they would the policeman.

So it happened on this day of which I write. We were holding our Gospel services in a theatre in the city, and amongst others who came to the afternoon service was a human derelict, a man who slunk in to the service with the one hope of shelter from the biting east wind. He was good material for a Gospel service. He had been brought up in a Christian home in the North of Ireland, and while still in his teens had kicked over the traces like a young unbroken horse, and from that time had served sin and the devil with both hands eagerly. At the start he had had great hopes, for the world and the devil had promised a life of freedom and gaiety. They always do that, but they don't fulfil their promises; they don't deliver the goods, though they often damn the souls of those who listen to them. Our friend was one of their many victims, a wretched sinner, without a penny to buy a meal or pay for a bed, shivering on the brink of hell.

The story of redeeming love, of a Saviour who shed His blood for the salvation of ruined men, awakened memories of the old home, of the praying mother, and of the father who loved and served God, and he stayed to talk with us afterwards. We thought that all he sought was food and shelter, but in this we misjudged him. He told us that he would have committed suicide long ago if he had not dreaded the judgment that he knew followed after death. He told us that he knew that his sins had blasted his life, broken his parents' hearts, and dishonoured God, and this turned out to be true repentance.

We did not know how absolutely destitute he was, and he did not tell us, and we let him go away on his promising to return to the evening service. He spent the interval in the Princes Street Gardens, spending part of the time there on his knees, and there alone he confessed the terrible story of his sinful life to God, and returned in the evening to tell us that God had forgiven him. There was no doubt about it either. The early teaching had come back to him as he sat lonely and desolate in those gardens. He remembered that the Lord Jesus had said, "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest"; he remembered having heard that He had also said, "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out."

Yes, he was a changed man, and we had a long talk that night about the greatness of God's love, which led Him to give His only-begotten Son for sinners, and of the value of the precious blood of Jesus that cleanseth from all sin. And not till then did we discover how complete a wreck as to all things material he was.

He returned to our service on the Monday night with a happy face, and told us that "God was good," and that he had been successful in getting work that very morning.

We saw a good bit of him for some weeks, and everybody could see that the grace of God that had saved him was teaching him how to behave himself, and then he left the city for work elsewhere. It would be about six months after that red-letter day in his history that a dear friend who had been a good help to him was accosted at a gathering of believers in another Scotch town by a man that he did not recognize, a smart, well-dressed, happy man. "Don't you know me, Doctor?" he asked. "What!" said the doctor, "is it our old friend William?" "Yes, Doctor, it is," he replied." You see, when the Lord had hold of me, He not only saved me, but He washed and brushed me up."

If He could save an almost hopeless man like William, He can save the reader, and the reader needs His saving power just as much as William did. That "there is no difference" is not a pleasant doctrine to all who hear it, but it is true, "for all have sinned."

Oh, how thankful should we be that God has provided a way of salvation for sinners. That He commends His love to us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. Better news we could not hear. Happy is every soul that believes it.

—

JESUS, my Saviour, come I to Thee,

Take me, oh! take me, Thine ever to be;

Guilty and helpless, this is my plea,

That Thou hast suffered for sinners like me.

Nothing I bring as price for my sin,

Thy blood alone my redemption doth win.

This is my hope, none other I know;

Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

Jesus, my Saviour, to Thee I yield,

Henceforth to own Thee my Lord and my Shield;

Keep me, oh! keep me close to Thy side,

There shall I safely for ever abide.

Every Dark Shadow wiped out.

I was sitting by the couch of a dying relative, and our conversation turned on the deeply important matter of his prospects for eternity.

He had some years before attended a Gospel meeting which I had held in the town, in the course of which the well-known story of Martin Luther's dream was told as follows: —

He imagined that Satan stood before him with two huge scrolls in his hand, upon which was a true record of his sins. On being assured that all his sins were there recorded, he triumphantly exclaimed: "Take thy pen, O Satan, and write across the scrolls: 'The blood of Jesus Christ God's Son, cleanseth [ME] from all sin.'"

The dying man referred to this incident, and quietly said: "There is great comfort in that verse — EVERY DARK SHADOW IS WIPED OUT."

Dark shadows there had been in his life, or he could not have spoken of them as being wiped out. But what an unspeakable joy to find that there was something that could wipe them out. Dark shadows there are in your life, O reader! aye, darker than pen of mortal can describe. You know it, and God knows it; have you discovered yet that which can wipe them all out? Nothing but the blood of Jesus can do it, for God has declared: "Without shedding of blood is no remission" (Hebrews 9: 22); but He has also declared that "the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin" (1 John 1: 7). And were your sins as dark as the midnight of the damned there is comfort for you in words like those, for every dark sin may be wiped out.

An Old Man's Mistake.

In response to a request I called to have a talk with an old man who was too ill to leave his bed.

He assured me that he had lived a good life and so had nothing to fear for the future.

I said, "I had better read to you from God's Book; we shall get the truth of the matter there." So I read "There is none righteous, no, not one. . . . There is none that doeth good, no, not one. . . . There is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3: 10-12-23). These words seemed to startle the old man, and he said, after thinking about them for a little, "I am afraid that I have been a bit of both bad and good, but perhaps God will balance the one against the other."

"Well," I said, "let us consider that now. You go to Mr. Brown, the grocer, and you get goods from him every day for a week, and pay for all you get, that would be doing right. The next week you get more goods from him for which you don't pay, they are booked against you. Then the following week you pay for what you got, and then again the next you don't. Do you think that Mr. Brown would balance one week against another and call it square at the end of the month?"

"No, he would not," was his reply, and it seemed as though the folly of his false hope for his future was apparent to him.

There are a good many folk whose notions are very much akin to his. They hope that what they call the good in their lives will be set off against the bad in the day of judgment. But they are deceived of the devil. To begin with, that which they call "good" is base coin, it has no purchasing power; or to use the striking simile of the Bible, "All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags." Wise men and women believe what God says, even though they may not feel or understand it. And when they own that they have no goodness, but are sinners indeed, lost and helpless, then they are ready to hear those glorious gospel statements.

"Christ Jesus came into the world to save SINNERS" (1 Timothy, 1: 15).

"The Son of Man is come to seek and to save THAT WHICH WAS LOST (Luke 19: 10).

"When we were yet WITHOUT STRENGTH, in due time CHRIST DIED FOR THE UNGODLY (Romans 5: 6).

—

"GET right with God" — for life is sad and dreary

Without the sunshine of His face divine;

Turn now to Him, who offers untold blessing

To satisfy the need of souls like thine.

"Get right with God" — thy load of guilt is heavy,

And God alone can take that load away;

He gave His well-beloved Son to suffer

Upon the cross, thy every debt to pay.

"Get right with God" — no longer be rebellious

Against the love that seeks thy soul to win;

Bow down at last, and as thy Lord confess Him,

Whose blood alone can cleanse away thy sin.

"Get right with God" — Eternity's before thee,

How dark 'twill be if, banished from His face,

Thou goest forth into the night of sorrow,

A stranger ever to His saving grace.

A Warning to Neglecters.

Cold and lifeless lay one to whom I had often spoken. He was genial in disposition, and prosperous in business, but I fear he was a Christ-rejecter. It was in a Canadian city. We were holding Gospel meetings, and the one of whom I write came, listened, and seemed to be impressed. I had a long talk with him, and sought to show him the danger of turning away from the only Saviour for sinners; but as we parted, he said, "It is all true, no doubt, but I can't take Christ now." I left that city, and returned to it again after a short absence. As I stepped from the railway car to the platform at the station a friend met me, saying, "You won't have heard of poor B— this morning at two o'clock he died." The first words that started to my lips were, "Was he saved?" and sad indeed did the answer of my friend make me: "No, we could not say that; he died apparently without hope."

That evening I stood beside the coffin, and gazed upon that face, now still and dead, and sorrow surged through my heart. He might have been saved, but was he? He might have passed into realms of endless joy; but it seemed as though he had missed it. Almost he had decided for Christ — almost was he wrapped in the arms of the Saviour's love; but we fear that he had rejected this, and had gone from earth's business, pleasure, and friends to eternal loss.

I turned from gazing on that face to speak a word of comfort to the sorrowing young wife, but could not — the words would not come, though the tears did. I had to go away from the house of death with a lump in my throat, and the sorrow "without hope" for him who had gone.

Oh! to die is solemn, deeply solemn; but to die without Christ, without hope, this is truly horrible — to miss heaven, and to land in hell; to be almost pressed to the bosom of the Saviour's love, and yet to be enshrouded in eternal darkness — this is woe speechless and eternal. May this never be the portion of my reader.

Yet, if still Christless, the danger is terrible. It may be that before to-morrow's light you may be cast from this world — rudely cast by death into the great for-ever to which you are travelling. Oh! say, how will you do then? Look forward into eternity, and flee to Christ, the only Saviour, while yet you may. Will He receive you? Yes, thank God. Yes! He calls to such as you, and eternal melodies are in his voice — "Come," He says, "and I will give you rest."

Let not the world hold you. Let not your friends keep you away from the Saviour. Take Him now, and you will find Him able to bring you clear away from your danger. You will find His precious blood able to cleanse away your foulest sins. His love will fill your heart with joy, and upon your lips shall be placed the song of redemption. Believe on Him, once dead, but now alive for evermore.

"Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification" (Rom. 4: 25).

—

TO-DAY is the day of mercy; to-morrow may be the day of doom.

—

"THE road of By-and-by leads to the town of Never."

How a Strong Man Yielded.

We had decided to erect our Gospel Tent in a small Yorkshire town, as notorious for the godlessness and infidelity of its men folk, as for the smoke and grime of its foundries and mills.

We chose a fine summer's evening for the work, and had, in consequence, an interested group of onlookers. One of these, who was more than interested, for he kindly helped us with the work, asked, "Why are you putting your tent here?" We replied, "In the hope that you may be converted, and when you are we will thank God, and take it somewhere else." He laughed at this, and assured us that we should not succeed in our purpose; for he had the notion — a notion very common amongst men — that these things are all right for the wife at home, and not bad for the children, but for men — why, to back the horses, drink with a friend, and live a careless, godless life, these things suit them better.

We knew the man well who helped us to drive the stakes and pull the ropes that evening. He was the husband of a downright honest Yorkshire woman who had put her trust in the Saviour some years before, and a very decent sort of man he was in his way — kind to his wife, and a good father; always ready to help a neighbour when he could, but entirely indifferent to his soul's welfare, and quite regardless of God.

How earnestly his wife prayed for him, for she was a Christian of the right stamp; but her prayers and entreaties did not seem to move him from his determination not to attend the Gospel services.

In fact, as the meetings went on he began to turn more frequently into the public-house, and to return to his home quite drunk, sometimes more than once a week. This was unusual, and was a great trial to the praying wife and to us who were longing for his salvation.

The summer drew to a close, and the cold, damp autumn evenings made it necessary to draw the meetings to a finish. We decided on one last week of services, which week was the annual feast week of the town, part of which was a general holiday. The people who could do so went away that week, and amongst these was the Christian wife; her husband stayed at home and spent the time in carousing.

We saw him on the Saturday the worse for drink, and he continued his "celebration" of the annual holiday until the following Tuesday. On that evening we met him as we walked in the direction of the tent, and taking him by the arm, said: "You would not come to the tent sober, J—, you must come to it drunk." He protested, and did his best to get away from us, but at last we prevailed upon him to come, and when the service commenced he was sitting amongst the people.

We began by singing that very lovely hymn:

"Christ is the Saviour of sinners,

Christ is the Saviour for me;

Long I was chained in sin's darkness,

Now by His grace I am free."

J— stood up with the rest of the audience and did his best to look sober, but he had to hold on tight to the seat in front of him in order to keep his feet. Then came the preaching about the Saviour who came into the world to save sinners, and who was able to take a dying malefactor from a cross to the very paradise of God, and fit to be there, too, for the precious blood of Christ — the Lamb of God — had washed all his sins away.

Then we sang again our opening hymn, and we noticed that when we sang the chorus —

"Saviour of sinners,

Saviour of sinners like me —

Shedding His blood for my ransom,

This is the Saviour for me."

J— was visibly affected, so we sang it over and over for his sake. While we did this he sat with his head buried in his hands, sobbing like a child. He had come to the end of his resistance of God's mercy, and said to us, "Nothing but Christ will do for me." He passed through the deep waters of repentance, and when the Christian wife returned from her trip to the seaside at the end of the week, she found a God-fearing husband awaiting her, most anxious now to hear the Word of God, and to know, without a question, that all his sins were pardoned by the God whom he had so neglected. And he got that knowledge before the week was out, and could sing with joyful heart —

"Long I was chained in sin's darkness,

Now by His grace I am free."

And this was no delusion; how wretched would those who have trusted Christ be if it were. How happy and secure they are because it is not a delusion, but a reality, as faithful and true as the very throne of God Almighty.

I am writing the story of J—'s conversion seventeen years after it occurred. He still lives, not many miles from the spot of his new birth, and many a time between then and now have I seen his happy face in a Gospel meeting as he has listened to the old, old story of the Saviour's love, and if the reader of my little book could ask him what was the best news he ever heard, he would probably reply, "God commendeth His love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5: 8).

And that Christ is the

"Saviour of sinners,

Saviour of sinners like me."

"I am Saved To-night."

"I am saved to-night, sir," said a bright-faced negro boy at the close of a Gospel meeting in Jamaica. "Saved! are you; how did that come about?" I asked. "It was the word that you spoke, sir," he answered. "Will you tell me what that word was?" I enquired.

"If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thy heart that God hath raised has from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10: 9). While you were preaching I believed in my heart what you said, and when you had finished I told Tommy about it," was his ready reply, and close beside him stood Tommy to bear witness to the truth of what he had told me.

Has anything like this ever happened in your history, my reader? "THOU SHALT BE SAVED" are wonderful words when they come from the lips of God, and His salvation is much to be desired, but what are the terms? If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thy heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."

Saved on the Street.

"TELL EVERYBODY THAT CHRIST CAN BE ACCEPTED ON THE STREET, SAME AS I FOUND HIM."

So wrote an honest, sensible railway man, in one of the higher grades, to me; and while I can't "tell everybody," I want to tell YOU, my reader, about this man's good fortune.

I had noticed him at the Tent Service on the Sunday night; had, indeed, been quite impressed by his earnest listening. He was there again on Tuesday evening, and also on Wednesday. On Thursday afternoon I met him on the street. We stood and talked a bit, and he told me that he wanted to be a Christian, not in name only, but in reality. He knew that he needed salvation because he was a sinner, and he also knew that the Lord Jesus was the only Saviour.

I said to him, "You need not wait until the meeting to-night. Neither consecrated building nor penitent form are necessary. You may yield to the Lord now; and HERE ON THE STREET OF YOUR NATIVE TOWN YOU MAY BE SAVED."

He thought for a moment, and then took my hand, and said, "I accept Christ as my Saviour." That was his decision; then followed his thanks. He said, "Lord Jesus, I accept Thee as my Saviour." It was good to hear him talk like that, and to know that he meant what he said.

He had not been what would be called a bad man; he did not drink or gamble; and he was kind to his wife, and a good workman; and there are thousands like him in these respects; but he needed the Saviour; and so does every man. He needed the Saviour, because he was a sinner; and every man needs the Saviour for the same reason, for "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3: 23).

On Saturday of that week I called at his home to see him, and I got a very hearty welcome. He told me that he could say, "Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine." And his wife, who was a Christian, said to me, "It was a happy day on Thursday. He came into the house, saying, Christ must be the Head of this house.'"

There are people who are very sceptical about these things. They do not see how a man can be saved; and if any do profess such things, they look upon it as a passing emotion, caused by the excitement of a revival service. And I freely acknowledge that there is a great deal of that kind of thing; a little of which would be too much. But this man was saved on the street on a dull, wet afternoon. There was no excitement there to make him do it; and what he did then and there has lasted, for three months after that date he wrote to me, saying, "I truly thank God you came here. . . . I decided to accept Christ as my personal Saviour. Tell everybody that Christ can be accepted on the street, same as I found Him. Thank God, I have the blessed assurance that Christ is mine and I am His. Praise God! I am always telling my workmates what Christ has done for me. It was a happy day when Jesus washed my sins away."

YOU MAY BE SAVED WHERE YOU STAND, for what God has done once He can do again. But I would not have you ignorant of what it cost Him to be able to do this. He created the world by His Word; but to redeem sinners from the power of Satan and hell He had to give His Son. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3: 16). It is because Jesus died that sinners can be saved; and it is by His blood that their sins can be washed away. Not with corruptible things, such as silver and gold, could the blessing be bought, but by "the precious blood of Christ" (1 Peter 1: 18, 19).

This great price has been paid, and now the blessing is offered to you without money and without price. And I'll guarantee that if you receive it, and thank Him for it, you, too, will want others to know it.

Guilty man, away from God, in danger of hell because of your sins, take the blessing now.

A Personal Matter.

"Christianity is a religion of personal pronouns." How true this is! It is not    —   All are sinners, but — I am a sinner.

It is not — Jesus is a Saviour, but — Jesus is my Saviour.

A young man in the West Indies once said to me, "I believe all that you say, and I like your meetings, but I am not saved; how is it?"

I replied: "Have you ever got alone in the presence of God and said: O God, if there were not another sinner on earth, I am one, and as a sinner I claim Christ as my Saviour, even though every other sinner refuse Him.'"

"Well," he said, "it is that very personal way you have of putting it that I do not like." Ah! that was the secret. He had missed the blessing, because he refused to make it a personal matter.

A Great Decision.

During a series of Gospel meetings in the West of England, I invited any to whom a visit in their homes would be acceptable, to leave their names and addresses and I would endeavour to call upon them. That night a slip of paper was found on one of the seats upon which was a lady's name and address.

The following afternoon, as the clock struck three, I stood at the door of the home indicated. It was opened by the maid, who informed me that her mistress was not at home, but that if I wished particularly to see her, I should find her at her sister's house a few doors away.

Going there, the lady herself, whose address I had, opened the door, and she seemed very surprised to see me. I explained to her that her name and address had been left at the Gospel service on the previous evening, and that I naturally concluded that she was one who wished for a visit. But in this I found that I was mistaken, for she was anything but pleased, and declared that she would like to know who had done that. I handed her the slip of paper upon which her name and address was clearly written, and said, "Perhaps you know the handwriting." She examined it carefully and replied, "That's my own handwriting, but I do not know how it got to your meeting. I must have dropped it somehow." "I believe that God's hand is in this," I said, "and so I am coming in to have a talk with you."

Somewhat reluctantly she admitted me, and after telling me that her sister was out shopping, she said, "She isn't a good woman, and she never goes anywhere. I wish you could induce her to come to your meetings." "Well, we must try, but what about yourself?" I asked. "Oh, I'm all right; its my sister that I'm troubled about," she quickly answered. "Quite right, too, but had you not better first think about yourself? If you have not accepted Christ as your Saviour, you are not all right. Indeed, you are in exactly the same danger as your sister, who never goes anywhere."

But she did not want to talk about herself, and while she was doing her best to avoid the personal talk, her sister walked in, and seemed very surprised to find a stranger in her house.

I hastened to explain to her the object of my visit, and invited her to come and hear the Gospel. As she did not look at all like a woman who would care to sacrifice the theatre for the Gospel service on a week night, I suggested that she should come on the following Sunday. She gave me the most emphatic, "No" that ever it has been my lot to receive, and seemed to be a most unpromising subject. "Well," I said in response, "I think that you are wise in not promising to come to the service on Sunday evening, for long before then you may be dead, and — lost for ever; had we not better say Friday night instead?" She did not answer so readily or emphatically this time, and it was evident that the shot had gone home. Still, she declined to make any promise for Friday. I said, "The Book says, 'Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.' You had better not put off even until to-morrow, but come and hear the Word of God to-night." She did not reply, and I said to her sister, "You will bring her to-night, and may God bless you both."

There they sat, side by side, in the Gospel meeting that night, each of them listening with great interest to the lovely story of the Saviour's death and resurrection; of the precious blood of Jesus that can make the worst of sinners fit for the presence of God, and of the hearty welcome that awaits every man, woman, and child that will come to Him.

The preaching finished, we turned to Charlotte Elliot's hymn, than which none more suitable for anxious sinners was ever written in our English language: —

"Just as I am, without one plea,

But that Thy blood was shed for me;

And that Thou bidd'st me come to Thee,

O Lamb of God I come."

I said, "I will repeat this first verse to you, my friends, leaving out certain words in it; and if you are anxious to come to the Saviour put in the missing words."

So I read: —

"Just as I am, without one plea,

But that Thy blood was shed for — "

There was a brief pause, and then from the corner where the sisters were sitting there came clearly and distinctly the word "ME." It was the bad sister who "never went anywhere" who had said it. Yes, said it with her whole heart.

"Thank God!" said more than one in that audience; and I turned back and repeated the lines again: —

"Just as I am, without one plea,

But that Thy blood was shed for — "

Then we heard a duet, and in our ears, who loved the Lord and sinners for His sake, it sounded most sweet.

Both sisters put in that missing word. The bad sister and the one who thought she was good enough, together they took the sinner's place for whom the blood of Jesus was shed.

Then I continued: —

"And that Thou bidd'st me come to Thee,

O Lamb of God — "

"I COME," they said, and others in an undertone joined in the same blessed decision, making music in the ears of heaven and in ours.

It was a definite and never-to-be-regretted decision, and they found that He to whom they came was delighted to receive them, and to keep them, to never let them slip from His all-powerful hand, but to be their Lord and never-changing Friend in time, and their joy for ever.

That is the story. It interested me greatly at the time. May the telling of it interest the reader, and more, if unconverted, may he make the same decision that those sisters made in that happy gospel service.

Undeceived.

I met a man in Canada who told me that for years he had been perfectly satisfied with himself. He thought that he was quite good enough for God, and if anybody had a chance of heaven, he was the man.

One day he tried to recall all the good deeds he had ever done to assure himself that he had really merited God's favour. But to his dismay his sins in black array crowded to his memory, and he found out for the first time in his life that he was a guilty sinner before God. Then he also discovered that "CHRIST DIED FOR THE UNGODLY," and that God can freely justify all those who believe in Him.

The Door of Salvation.

I have heard of a dream that a man had. It was night, and a great storm raged fiercely about him, and he had neither home nor shelter. Presently he saw a light shining in the darkness, and struggling against the tempest he reached the door from which it shone, only to find that that light spelt in letters of fire the stern and forbidding word JUSTICE over the portal within which he had hoped to rest. Now he was not just, but unjust, a guilty, godless sinner, so that there was no welcome at that door for him, and he shrank from it in terror, for the storm outside was less to be feared than the justice within. He found another door standing open, but its name was TRUTH, and from this also he turned, for he felt that truth could only convict and condemn him. From still another door there radiated a light, but it was the light of HOLINESS, and he was sure that there could be neither shelter nor blessing inside that door for so vile a wretch as he, and so he turned away into the night and the storm a hopeless man. Then upon his weary eyes there shone another light, and he stumbled on towards it, fell almost fainting before it, but found a hand stretched out to save him and to draw him across the threshold that the light illuminated, and he found himself within the house of MERCY.

That was the dream, and it has been used as an illustration of the gospel, and has passed current as a very good illustration of the gospel too; BUT I WANT TO SAY PLAINLY AND EMPHATICALLY THAT IT IS NOT A TRUE ILLUSTRATION OF "THE GOSPEL OF GOD CONCERNING HIS SON," it falsifies it, utterly and miserably. Let us suppose that things are as the dream put them, that the guilty man is harboured in the house of mercy; but justice has claims upon him and he has sinned against truth and holiness. Can they allow their claims to be flouted and the man to escape the judgment he deserves? Impossible. These great attributes of God must be maintained unsullied whatever else may happen. Then suppose they seek the door of mercy and demand, as they must, the extradition of the guilty man that had taken refuge there, can mercy refuse their righteous demand? If it does, then there is conflict between mercy and justice; yet if it yields the man whom it has commiserated to his just deserts, it is itself saddened and defeated. This is the dilemma into which such a mis-presentation of the gospel throws us.

Thank God the true gospel involves us in no such difficulty. It tells us that there is one door of refuge, and it stands wide open for all, and from it there shines into the darkness a light — kindly, attractive and inviting; and the goodness of God is abroad in the night and the storm to lead weary wanderers to its friendly threshold. It is the door of mercy, truly, but justice, truth, and holiness are also inscribed upon it, and they join with mercy in welcoming the sinner to rest and peace.

The gospel tells that "mercy and truth are met together"; it declares God's righteousness "that He might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus." The gospel makes plain that every attribute of God is for the sinner who draws near, nay that God Himself is for us, and that without sacrificing His glory in one iota. Mercy and truth, righteousness and grace, justice and love — all these, impossible of reconciliation by any means known to men, are upheld and proclaimed in the gospel of Christ to the glory of God and the blessing of men.

But only through the cross of Christ could this be; it was there and by it that all came into full evidence, and was told out as one harmonious whole — God's full character revealed.

"And in the cross of Christ we see

How God can save yet righteous be."

It was there that the dread demands of justice against sinful men were revealed, and it was there that those demands were fully satisfied by Him who, according to the unmeasured grace of God, was "delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification."

"Stern Justice can demand no more

And Mercy can dispense her store."

Mercy can do this righteously, in full accord with the eternal justice of God, so that never for ever can the blessing that mercy bestows upon the sinner who believes be taken from him.

It is the knowledge of this gospel that gives stability to the soul and lasting peace to the conscience; it is when this is known, that we are able to advance thankfully and without fear into those deeper things that may be known by the Holy Ghost by all those who are in Christ Jesus; but until this is known there is neither peace nor progress.

"Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: that as sin hath reigned unto death, EVEN SO MIGHT GRACE REIGN THROUGH RIGHTEOUSNESS UNTO ETERNAL LIFE BY JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD" (Rom. 5: 21).

The Dying Infidel.

The doctor had spoken plainly, for his patient had wished to know the whole truth. This patient was an infidel, a bold one he imagined, but to be told that in three months' time he would be forced out of this life, had shaken him somewhat, but it was evidently only momentarily.

An infidel friend called to see him, and was very sympathetic, of course, but could only say, "Don't show the white feather, B—," and he had replied that he would not.

A Christian relative called to see him and suggested that he might be glad to have a visit from some one who could tell him of God's way of salvation.

His reply was harsh and decisive. "I do not want any one to come here talking rubbish, and if you have nothing better to say to me stay away."

This was a burden and sore trouble to the Christian; he confided it to me, and many a prayer went up to God that the dying infidel might have his eyes opened.

The weeks passed but the answer to the prayers came at last, in the shape of a request that the Christian relative would go to his bedside as quickly as possible. I went instead; be knew me by name and motioned me to a chair by his bedside, then he said to me with a thrill of earnestness that I shall not soon forget, "I have been looking DEATH in the face for two months and I am not ready."

Yes, the bravery and the infidelity had taken their flight from that sick chamber; but was this the "white feather" of cowardice in the presence of a great foe, or was it "repentance not to be repented of"? This was the question in my heart as I interrogated him as to how this change had come about.

It was evident that God had been speaking to him, however, and that this was real soul trouble and with a great gladness in my heart I told him of Jesus, God's way of salvation. I told him the story as I would have told it to a child, and he who had boasted in the breadth and strength of his mind listened to that story as a child would have listened.

Before I reached the end of it he put his hand on mine and said, "Stop." Then, while down his cheeks tears flowed fast, he said, "Lord Jesus, I trust in Thee; I trust Thee about all the past, and about all the future, and with the present." Then turning to me he said, "You told me that He would not cast me out if I came to Him, did you not?" "Yes," I replied, "I told you what He said, 'Him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out.'" "I have come to Him and He has received me. Will you pray?"

I did so, and left him, and saw him again and heard of him often. His witness to the saving power of the Lord Jesus was very sweet and clear. A few days before the end he said to his doctor, "You have done your best for me, and I thank you. I am not afraid to go, and if you will hand me that New Testament I will show you the words that showed me the way." And then he went over the life-giving words, first showing the futility of all human works (Eph. 2: 8), the sinfulness of all (Rom. 3: 23), the love of God for sinners, and the death of Jesus for the ungodly (Rom. 5: 6-8), and last of all the blessed fact that God can freely justify the ungodly (Rom. 3: 24-26), because Jesus had suffered and died in their stead (Isa. 53: 6). This was his last testimony; he sank into unconsciousness when it was finished, and did not awake on earth. But the grace of God had triumphed, the chains were broken and the darkness dispelled, and another witness to the long-suffering and saving mercy of God passed away to be with Christ.

—

Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound" (Rom. 5: 20).

The Power of the Gospel.

In a Bristol to Birmingham express I met a Christian. He told me that twenty-one years previous he was, without exception, the worst sinner in Stockton-on-Tees — a drunken, blaspheming sceptic; but God laid His hand upon him in a Gospel meeting, and he turned to the Lord Jesus Christ. He was a mechanic, and in the shop where he worked were six other infidels. They first scoffed, and often afterwards tried to draw him into argument. But his one reply was: "I will not argue with you, for you can beat me at that; but you know what I was, and you see what I am now. If you want to argue, argue with the power that saved and keeps me." That power was the power of the grace of God. They saw it, and their mouths were closed; and ere long he had the joy of grasping the hands of six of his fellow-workmen as fellow-Christians!

Something More Wanted.

At the close of a Gospel meeting in the West Indies, a woman in great distress of soul remained to speak with me.

"Will you tell me what is troubling you?" I asked.

"Oh, sir," she said, "there is something more wanted."

"Indeed ! what is it?" I enquired.

"Well," she said, "I really trust in Jesus, I know that He died for me, but something more is wanted."

"You are sure that Jesus died for you?" I asked.

"Yes, I am sure of it."

"And that He is able to save you?"

"Yes, I am sure of that."

"Do you think that He is willing to save you?"

"Oh, I know that He is willing," was her earnest reply.

"And you tell me that you really trust Him as your Saviour?"

"Yes," she said, "I do; but I am not happy; something more is wanted."

"There is nothing more wanted to make you safe," I replied. "If you have really believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, YOU ARE AS SAFE AS HE CAN MAKE YOU. Not one poor sinner who trusted in Him was ever lost. But it is one thing to be safe, and another thing to be sure about it. What you need is to have assurance, and this you may have on the authority of the Word of God."

Taking my Bible, I turned to Acts 13: 38, 39, and read: "Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; and by him all that believe are justified from all things."

"Now, here we have God's unchanging truth. He says, 'All that believe are justified.' Are you a believer?"

"Yes, I am," she answered.

"Then what does God say about you?" I asked.

"I'm justified," she answered, with a sigh of relief.

"How do you know?" I queried.

"It says so there," was her reply.

"Then do you want anything else?"

"Nothing more now, sir; that's enough," was her emphatic answer, as she saw for the first time, on the authority of God's Word, that she belonged to the justified company because she was one of the "all that believe."

Thank God! His word is true, and upon the authority of God's Word every believer may say, "I'm justified."

I quoted those same words to a young fellow in Canada who was longing to have peace with God.

"Let me look at the verse," he said, "I never saw it like that before."

Slowly he read the verse over, and then rubbing his eyes as the light broke into his soul, he said, "Praise God, I'm justified."

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"Why, THE BOOK says so," was his triumphant reply.

Yes, the Book that never lies says, "By Him, all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses."

"What does justified mean?" said a hard-headed but conscience-stricken miner in the North of England to me on one occasion.

I replied, "The man who is justified stands in God's sight as clear of all his sins as is Jesus the Saviour."

Placing his finger on the verse in my Bible, he asked, "Do you mean to tell me that if I believe that verse I shall be clear of my sins like that?"

"No," I answered. "What I say is, if in simple faith you look to Jesus for pardon and salvation, believing what the Bible says about Him, what that verse says about All that believe will be true of you."

"I see that, and I thank God for it," was his happy response.

God's Word is reliable. You may safely rest in what it asserts, beloved anxious soul. It has been written for us that we might know with certainty these blessed things, and that we might have joy and peace in believing.

If you have been in any way aroused to the need of your soul, I would earnestly entreat you not to delay this solemn question. Let no other question intervene. Lay hold of God's salvation to-day.

How can you be happy in a world that is rolling on to judgment? How can you be happy with the load of years of sins upon your soul? How can you be happy when you know not the moment when death may seize you and hurl you into a lost eternity?

Soul of man! wake up to these solemn matters and seek God's salvation.

Facts — Faith — Feelings.

Christians are the only people in the world who have a right to be happy, but they do not know that they are saved because they are happy, but they are happy because they know that they are saved. To put feelings first is to put the cart before the horse, the right order is as follows

1. GOD'S FACTS.

2. YOUR FAITH.

3. HAPPY FEELINGS.

I am aware that many deny that anyone can be sure about their soul's salvation in this world, but as ONE VERSE OF SCRIPTURE IS BETTER THAN TEN THOUSAND THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS OF MEN, we will set aside all that you and others may think, or feel, or say, and look for a moment at some of God's facts.

THE FIRST GREAT FACT which you must accept is that you need a Saviour. God speaks very definitely on this point.

You are "guilty before God" (Rom. 3: 19). You are "without strength" (Rom. 5: 6).

Death is before you, and "after this the judgment" (Heb. 9: 27).

Every Christless soul is included in these scriptures, for before God "there is no difference" (Rom. 3: 22). You may not feel that what God says about you is true, but, if so, your feelings are all astray; GOD'S FACTS ALONE ARE WORTHY TO BE RELIED UPON. Let Him be true, and every man a liar.

It is evident, then, that there is no hope for you in yourself, and that if you are to be saved, God must in perfect grace undertake for you and provide a way of salvation Himself, for you certainly cannot make or find one. This is just what God has done, and if in His Word He brings before you solemn facts about yourself, it is that He might interest you in the Gospel of His grace, which contains blessed truth concerning His Son.

THE SECOND GREAT FACT is, there is a Saviour for you. We read, "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son" (John 3: 16).

"Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners" (1 Tim. 1: 25).

"Christ died for the ungodly" (Rom. 5: 6).

It is a wonderful thing that God should be interested in this guilty world. He might have let us all go our own self-willed way to hell. He would have been righteous in consigning us to the everlasting burnings, for this our sins deserved; but then His love would never have been manifested had He done so.

Now in the Gospel we see the righteousness of God fully revealed, and His love displayed at the same time. The love of God was displayed in the gift of His Son, and we see His righteousness maintained when Jesus suffered sin's full penalty. He suffered, the Just One for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. And now God can take to Himself the glorious title of "Him that justifieth the ungodly" (Rom. 4: 5). He is "just and the Justifier of him that believeth in Jesus" (Rom. 3: 26).

Jesus accomplished the work of redemption, and God has raised Him from the dead; thus it is proved that God was fully satisfied with His work.

Now God's GLAD TIDINGS DO NOT SPEAK OF YOUR FEELINGS OR DOINGS, but about Christ; the Gospel tells you what He has accomplished for you, and of the blessing you may have through Him.

You are not to consult your own heart, for the Word says: "Say not in thine heart," but look out to Christ upon the throne of God. And while you look to Him, raised from the dead and exalted to the throne, hear God proclaiming the forgiveness of sins through Him.

THE THIRD GREAT FACT is that this blessing can only be secured by faith in Christ. He is the only Saviour, and He is willing and able to save even the vilest sinner. You may come to Him boldly; all are welcome, for God's glorious Gospel word is "Whosoever." But it is not whosoever prayeth, or feeleth, or worketh, but "whosoever believeth in Him" (John 3: 16). "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved" (Acts 16: 31). "By Him, all that believe are justified from all things" (Acts 13: 39). You say, "I am not satisfied with my experience and faith, and love for Him," but that is not the point. Are you satisfied with what Christ has done for you? God is fully satisfied with what Christ has done, so that you may be satisfied as well. PUT YOUR FAITH IN GOD'S FACTS, and the whole thing is settled; believe what He tells you about Christ, and believe what He tells you about "all that believe."

Take Him at His word; thank Him for His boundless grace; then you will not feel justified, but will feel very happy because you know, on the authority of God's own Word, that you are justified.

Then, when you have turned to Jesus — when you can say, "He is my own Saviour," you are wonderfully blest.

You have a loving Saviour in heaven caring and interceding for you. He knows all your infirmities, and is able to save you all the way home to heaven. The foes cannot take you from His hand, for if He gave His life that you might belong to Him, you are so precious to Him that He will take great care of you for ever.

Abide with Me.

Abide with me, my Saviour, Friend, and King,

To Thee my life with all its sins I bring;

Thy blood can wash me whiter than the snow;

Thy power can keep me safe where e'er I go.

To Thee I come, no goodness can I plead,

Sinful I am in thought, and word, and deed;

Yet Thou for me dost care, for me hast died.

Friend of the sinful, oh, with me abide.

When I am far from those who love me well,

And round me fierce the tides of danger swell,

Lord, be my Shield, and keep me close to Thee;

Thou art my only hope, abide with me.

Abide with me when sin besets my way,

And like a mighty foe my faith would slay;

Preserve my soul, from yielding keep me free,

I must be safe if I abide with Thee.

Three Golden Words.

A great work had to be done before the way of blessing could be opened for us, a work completely outside the powers of the best and greatest of sinful men. Only Jesus could accomplish that work. He went to the cross and suffered there for us, there He cried, "It is finished." Do not talk of your puny doings in the presence of that stupendous work, but drop your own efforts and rest in what He has done.

I called to see a man who was seriously ill, and very much dejected, for he knew that he was not right with God. I said to him, "Robert Brown, I have three words for you to-day. I will not tell you who said them, or when He said them, or why. I want you to find out those three things for yourself, but the words are these, 'It is finished.'" Then I knelt by his side and prayed that God would bless that short sentence to the sick man's soul. A few days afterwards I received a letter from a friend who was living in that district, in which he wrote: "Those three golden words have done their blessed work and Robert Brown's soul has found perfect rest." O anxious soul, will you not thank God for these words and rest in that same blessed work.

—

God loves His ransomed people with a love so wonderful that He has opened heaven for them, and will not be satisfied until they all are there. But He does not keep them waiting until they get there to enjoy it, He has given to them His Spirit that they might begin to enjoy it now.

Lord, I am Thine.

LORD, I am Thine: in mercy Thou hast broken

The fetters strong that bound me to my sin;

Thy blood was shed — of love the mighty token —

From ways of death my guilty soul to win.

Lord, I am Thine: who saw no beauty in Thee,

But spurned Thy mercy with rebellious pride;

Saved by Thy grace, I lowly bow before Thee,

And in Thy love my soul is satisfied.

Lord, I am Thine: yet sinful, weak, and fearing,

I need Thy grace to keep me day by day,

Hold Thou my hand, and keep my feet from falling,

Then shall I tread with joy my pilgrim way.

Lord, I am Thine: though sorrows gather round me,

And death's dark shadow 'thwart my path is thrown;

Saviour divine, Thine outstretched hand upholds me;

And being Thine I shall not walk alone.

Yes, I am Thine, and Thou art mine, O Saviour —

My Lord, my life, my never-changing Friend;

Nor death, nor hell, can take me from Thy favour,

Those that are Thine Thou lovest to the end.

And soon shall shine the bright and cloudless morrow

When blood-washed saints upon the stormless shore

Shall stand with Thee, beyond the reach of sorrow;

Their boast that they are Thine for evermore.

The Believer's Destiny.

When you accept the Lord Jesus by simple faith as your Saviour, you have God's testimony to the fact that you are justified — for ever cleared of every charge of guilt. Then your destiny will be the Lamb's glory. You will be able to sing truthfully —

"I have a home above,

From sin and sorrow free;

A mansion which eternal love

Designed and formed for me."

This is the destiny of every truly saved soul, and nothing can change it. The blessing comes on the ground of the precious blood of Jesus, and His blood can never lose its value. The source of the blessing is the free grace of the blessed God, and His grace can never change.

Christ Himself will be the centre of all the redeemed in God's many-mansioned home, and to dwell in the sunlight of His presence will be the blessed portion of all His blood-purchased saints.

We read, "The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Llord" (1 Thess. 4: 16, 17). "When he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3: 2).

Historical Incidents

Historical Incidents

J. T. Mawson

Contents.

"We're Saved! We're Saved!" or, The Relief of Lucknow

On which Side are you? or, the Death of Julius Caesar

The Danger of Delay! or, Mac Ian's Fatal Mistake

A Sacrifice of Love; or, How Prince Emile's Life was Saved

Besieged and Relieved; or, Mafeking, Ladysmith, Kimberley

No Surrender: or, The Siege of Derry

Sought and Ransomed; or, King Richard's Deliverance

Worthy to be Trusted; or, Lord Roberts' Mission to South Africa

Ten Minutes too Late; or, How the Prince Imperial Lost his Life

The Paths of Glory; or, the Death of Wolfe

Forgiven; or, King Richard's Last Act

The Double Choice; or, Salvation and Suffering

Set Free! or, The Emancipation Act

Unsatisfied and Unsaved; or, the Disappointed Monarch

Haul down the Flag. — The Fashoda Incident

Even unto Death; or, Durosier's Devotion

"We're Saved! We're Saved!"

or, The Relief of Lucknow.

In all English history there is no story more thrilling than one that comes to us as authentic in connection with the relief of Lucknow, and I must give it to you to illustrate the great pains that God has taken in order to save you from the terrible danger which threatens all who do not know Jesus as their Saviour.

You have all read of the Indian Mutiny, and of the terrible bloodshed that followed the rising of the Sepoys against their British officers in the year 1857. Revolting indeed were the deeds enacted during those terrible months; yet, amid all the treachery and slaughter, wonderful fortitude and bravery was displayed by the handful of English men and women. Some of them I doubt not, were sustained through their sufferings by the grace and love of the Lord Jesus Christ, for they knew Him as their Saviour.

It is a good thing to be a Christian, for Christians have a joy that worldly adversity cannot spoil, and a power from Jesus in heaven to sustain them in every trial.

The Sepoys Besieged Lucknow in the month of May; and until the end of September the siege lasted.

Awful were the sufferings of the little garrison and their wives and children. Famine and pestilence thinned their ranks from within, and the fierce foe threatened them from without. Help, long-looked for, was at last despaired of, and they almost gave up all hope of being saved. Forlorn indeed they must have been as day after day came and went, only to find and leave them again in greater danger than ever.

And do you know, dear young reader, that this is but a feeble illustration of your danger if you are still without Christ. You ARE A SINNER. And your sins, like a host of foes, are against you, and will certainly bring about your eternal condemnation if they are not put away.

Then God's Word tells us that Satan goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. He is your enemy, and you need saving from his power.

Eternity is before you. The sins you have committed deserve God's righteous judgment. How great indeed is your danger! Oh! that you would wake up to it, then you would look eagerly for salvation, as the little garrison in Lucknow did.

In this death-beleaguered city there was a corporal's wife, named Jessie Brown. Throughout the siege she had been in a constant fever, but at length she fell asleep on the stones of the street. Suddenly, with a wild scream, she awoke, and, after listening for a moment to some sound that had fallen upon her ear, she cried: "DINNA YE HEAR IT? DINNA YE HEAR IT? IT'S THE SLOGAN OF THE HIGHLANDERS. WE'RE SAVED! WE'RE SAVED!"

Those around her were perfectly bewildered. For a moment their faces brightened and they strained their ears to catch the welcome sound, but instead they only heard the cannons' roar, and they one and all sank into worse despair.

But Jessie Brown persisted that she really heard deliverance at hand. "Courage! courage!" she cried. "Hark to the slogan — to the Macgregor, the grandest of them all. The Campbells are coming! D'ye hear? Will ye no' believe it noo? They'll come through fire and water, never fear."

"Oh, they listened, dumb and breathless,

And they caught the sound at last,

Faint and far beyond the Goomtee

Rose and fell the pipers' blast!

Then a burst of wild thanksgiving,

Mingled woman's voice and man's:

God be praised! The March of Havelock!

The piping of the clans!"

There could be no doubt about it now. The weird shrillness of the Scottish bagpipes sounded above the booming of the guns and was heard by every ear.

Salvation was just at hand.

Through a veritable storm of bullets, Brigadier Havelock and his brave Highlanders forced their way, until, with a loud and ringing shout of triumph, they reached the streets of the city.

Touching it must have been to have seen the meeting between the delivered and the deliverers. Those Highlanders, with tears streaming down their rough cheeks, caught up the children in their arms and pressed them to their bosoms, while round them thronged the men and women of the garrison, eager to express their gratitude and to listen to the story of the amazing hardship they had passed through to save them. And do you think that those people would ever forget their deliverers? I think not!

Now let me tell you that One has come to save you. He came from heaven to meet the foes and overcome them that He might deliver you. Jesus could not fail in what He came to accomplish. Jessie Brown had great faith in the Campbells when she cried, "Never fear." Yet they might have failed, but Jesus could not. His love was great, but His power was also great, and His love led Him to endure the fire of wrath against sin, and to pass through the waters of judgment. Truly Jesus went through fire and water that He might save sinners. Now the news of salvation is brought to you — not of a salvation still to be accomplished, but of a glorious work already finished. Boys, if you will trust in Jesus you shall be saved. Your many sins shall all be forgiven. Satan shall have no more power over you. Instead of going to hell, heaven shall be your home for ever.

And Jesus wants to press you to His heart of love, as those brave Highlanders embraced the delivered children of Lucknow. Oh! don't reject Him. Let Him save you. Think of all His wonderful love in coming down from heaven, and, as you think of all this, put your confidence in Him. Then, like Jessie Brown, you will be able to say to those who have trusted Him too, —

"Never Fear,

We're Saved! We're Saved!"

On which side are you?

or, The Death of Julius Caesar

The knives of the assassins were stained with blood, and the hearts of the Romans beat wildly as the news passed from lip to lip that Julius Caesar — the Ruler of Rome — had been foully murdered. The city was in an uproar; men did not know what to expect next; but, one thing was certain,

They must take sides.

Mark Antony was permitted to speak at the funeral. He was Caesar's friend, and, speaking of the many good things which the latter had accomplished, he extolled him as a public benefactor. He also read Caesar's will, by which every Roman citizen was benefited, and finished his oration by laying bare to the gaze of the assembled Romans the body of the murdered man — all marred by the traitors' knives.

Then came the question, Which side would they take? Would they take up Caesar's cause, or stand by Cassius, Casca and Brutus, who had murdered him? The question scarcely needed to be put; Caesar had given his murderers no cause for their hatred; he had done great things for Rome which they appreciated; and, last of all, Antony had told the Romans that Caesar loved them and they believed it: they could not do otherwise than abhor his murderers and avenge his death.

A fouller deed than ever stained the annals of the city of Rome — black as is her history — has been committed in and by this world. The blessed Son of God has been here. He came with His heart full of love to men, yet they rejected Him. Caesar might have been charged truly with ambition and a desire to rule, but Jesus was the meek and lowly One; He had not where to lay His head in this world, though He was the Owner of heaven's eternal palaces. He never thought of Himself. His great desire was to bless, and on every hand He scattered His blessing.

BUT THE WORLD ROSE UP AGAINST HIM, they all cried, "Away with Him." They hated Him without cause, they put Him to shame and nailed Him to the cross. The world is guilty of the blood of God's beloved Son, and every man and woman, and boy and girl in it, is either for the world and against Christ, or for Christ and against the world. Now, I would put the question at the head of this paper to my young reader:

On which side are you?

Before you decide, I should like you to remember that JESUS LOVES YOU. Do you believe it? He has proved His love. He could have withstood His foes. He could have called twelve legions of shining beings to His aid, and with one mighty sweep have driven men and demons into eternal perdition, but He did not. "He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened He not his mouth." (Acts 8: 32.)

Why did He suffer thus? Ah! I find the answer in one blessed word of four letters — L-O-V-E.

He loved Sinners. His desire was to save them and fill heaven with them; but if the glory-gates were to be opened and sinners welcomed to God's home the judgment which their sins deserved had to be endured. The life of a holy, spotless Victim had to be offered instead of the guilty, if the guilty ones were to be pardoned. And so great was His love that we read Christ died for the Ungodly.

Tell me, dear lad, Can you think of the love of Jesus without being touched by it? Does not His love constrain you to say, If He loved me so much, I will by His grace love Him in return, and confess His name in this world where He was rejected and murdered?

But there is another point: MARK ANTONY COULD ONLY SHOW TO THE ROMANS THE MARRED AND BLOOD-BESMEARED CORPSE OF CAESAR. We can point to a risen Saviour, yes, —

A blessed, living Saviour in Heaven, — and tell you that He is alive for evermore. He has been raised from the dead, and is now crowned with everlasting glory at the right hand of God. He is a glorious as well as gracious Saviour, so that you have no need to be ashamed of taking His side in this world. You may be laughed at if you do, but He is able to uphold you by His grace, and to keep you from falling. Then for all who confess Him here there is a crown laid up there, and none who trust in Him can ever be shut out of heaven.

Jesus is coming again.

He is coming first to claim His own people, and to introduce them into the Father's many-mansioned home above, there to share His joy eternally. Then all who have not trusted Him will be left behind for judgment. What a terrible thing it will be if my young reader is LEFT BEHIND. Every knee will bow, and every tongue confess Him then as Lord; and throughout this world which murdered Him there will be bitter wailing because of Him.

Then, last of all, He shall sit upon the Throne to pass the eternal sentence upon every one whose name is not found written in the book of life. There will be no mercy then. Every soul unredeemed by His precious blood will be cast into the lake of fire.

Oh! dear boys, take sides with Christ now, trust in Him as your Saviour, and confess His name. Then, instead of sharing the doom of this guilty world, you will share His home and His joy. "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." (Romans 10: 9.)

The Danger of Delay:

or, Mac Ian's Fatal Mistake.

How often we find the sad consequences of delay recorded in history, and how many cases could be cited to illustrate the fact that procrastination is one of man's worst enemies.

We might fill a volume in recording instances where many lives have been thrown away because somebody was behind time. But I think we could not find any incident more striking than that which brought about the massacre of Glencoe.

Glencoe is one of the wildest and most dreary valleys in all the west of Scotland; mists hang continually over its grey and barren rocks, and the uplifted voice of the tempest and the weird cry of the wild bird are the only sounds that break the stillness.

This wild district was inhabited by a proud and brave clan, named the Macdonalds of Glencoe. In the reign of William and Mary the chief of this clan was an old man named Mac Ian; he was a rugged Highlander, with a spirit almost as untameable as the storms which so often raged about his home.

Mac Ian, like most of the Highland chiefs, sympathised with James II., who had been dethroned because of his adherence to Popery.

The Earl of Breadalbane had been appointed governor of Scotland, and on him fell the work of bringing about a peaceful settlement with these Highland chiefs; but he was hated by them, and many difficulties arose between him and them until it seemed almost impossible that his purpose could be carried out.

While things were in this state, the English government issued a proclamation calling upon all rebel chiefs to take an oath of allegiance to King William before the 1st January, 1692, and declaring that all who failed to do so would be looked upon as traitors and treated accordingly.

All the chiefs took care to take the oath before the time appointed but Mac Ian, who, in the pride of his heart, imagined that it would be a fine thing to be the last to submit. Accordingly, he put off doing so until the 31st of December, when he presented himself at Fort William. To his dismay he was told he must go to Inverary, as only a magistrate could receive the oath, and there were none nearer. Then, for the first time, the awful folly of his vanity dawned upon him, for Inverary was six days journey from Fort William, and between the two places lay rugged mountains, snow clad and almost impassable. In his desperation the poor old man set out for Inverary, and reached that place on the 6th of January.

The day of grace was passed — he was behind time, and when the Governor of Scotland heard that he had not submitted at the appointed time, he determined on the destruction of the whole clan.

Treachery and infamy marked the carrying out of this order, it is true; but it never could have happened had not Mac Ian put off his submission until it was too late.

Early on the morning of February 13th the work of slaughter began. Many of the Macdonald's were slain in their beds, and their chief paid the penalty of his folly by being one of the first to fall.

Let not this sad story from Glencoe's dreary valley of weeping be lost upon us. Let us not forget that procrastination brought about all the desolation and death that was witnessed there on that fatal 13th of February; and, while we think of all this, let us remember that the loss of a soul is an infinitely greater loss than merely that of life, for the one is for eternity and the other only for time; and yet we know that many have lost their souls and heaven for ever because they madly put off the question until it was too late.

Hear me out, for these things deeply concern you. God has sent forth a proclamation concerning His beloved Son. He has exalted Him to the highest place in heaven, and just as the Highland chiefs could only have peace by bowing to King William, so now sinners can only have peace with God by bowing to the Lord Jesus Christ. For all who do bow there is forgiveness and eternal heaven, but for all who refuse there is nothing but the devouring fire of everlasting judgment. It is now the day of grace, and in long-suffering mercy God is lingering over a rebellious world, and you may own Jesus as Lord and Saviour to-day; but, remember, IT MAY BE TOO LATE TO-MORROW. A man once told me that he would never bow to Jesus, but he will, in spite of his foolish pride of heart which made him speak thus; for God has so decreed.

Breadalbane, who had to bring about the subjection of the chiefs, was hated by them all, and this, no doubt, kept Mac Ian from submitting sooner. But there is no reason why you should not submit to Jesus, for He is all love, and has proved His love by dying for us, while we were enemies of God.

I would beseech you not to let this love of Jesus — so wonderfully proved at Calvary — be in vain as far as you are concerned; but bow your knee to Him, trust Him as your Saviour, and confess that He alone has a right to you. Then, washed from your sins by His precious blood, you will be ready for the glory of God, and you will have no fear of being too late for the blessing and heaven.

How fearful will be the awakening of those whose love for the world has kept them away from Christ until the day of grace is passed! Alas! there will be many of this class. When the door of mercy is closed, they will stand outside with sorrow-charged hearts, begging for admittance; but there will be no mercy then! In righteousness that awful word "depart" will sound from within, blasting all their false hopes and sealing their eternal doom. Oh! look about you! See the danger of delay! Flee now to Christ.

"All things are ready, Come!

To-morrow may not be;

O sinner, come, the Saviour waits

This hour to welcome thee!"

A Sacrifice of Love:

or, How Prince Emile's Life was saved.

Most of my readers will have heard of the great Napoleon Buonaparte, and how, after subduing almost the whole of Europe, he marched with a magnificent army into Russia, intending to conquer that country. He hoped to make Moscow (which was then the chief city in Russia) his head-quarters, and there he took his soldiers. On his approach the Russians fled from the city, but before doing so they set fire to it, and when Napoleon arrived he found it deserted and ablaze. The wooden houses burned quickly; the flames defied the efforts of the soldiers to extinguish them; and before long Napoleon, who had hoped to gain a great triumph, had to abandon the city and return to France, outwitted and disappointed.

So it is with everything in this world. No matter where men go for satisfaction they meet with disappointment, and even if they do gain what they desire, it is only to prove that THE GREATEST WEALTH OR PLEASURE OR FAME CAN NEVER GIVE TRUE JOY.

Amongst Napoleon's officers was a brave young soldier named Prince Emile, of Hesse Darmstadt; he was captain of a thousand hussars, and they loved him dearly, as the following story will prove.

When the French army started back for France the terrible Russian winter had set in, and the poor soldiers who had started from home in such high spirits died by thousands on the road back again.

Prince Emile's regiment suffered severely. Some were killed by the intense cold, others by the Russians who constantly harrassed the retreating army, and last of all in crossing the river Berezina all but ten were swept away. These ten remaining soldiers rallied round their captain, determined to stand by him while life lasted. For days they marched on, afraid of lying down to sleep, lest in their sleep the cold should prove fatal to them. But at length they were so completely overcome with fatigue that they could go no further, and the Prince gathered them round him and said: "As long as I have been able to overcome the desire for sleep I have made you watch with me; now the need of rest overcomes me; if God wills . . . He will wake us in the morning." He lay down and soon fell asleep. When he awoke the following day, refreshed by the rest that he had enjoyed, he found himself in a thatched shed, warmly wrapped in what proved to be the coats of his faithful men.

Their love for him would not allow them to forsake him, and they had stripped themselves and covered him, that he might not be frozen to death.

Where were they? and, How had they been able to endure the cold of that terrible night? were the questions that flashed through his mind. Rushing out of the shed in search of them, he found them STRETCHED OUT ON THE COLD SNOW OUTSIDE, HALF NAKED AND FROZEN TO DEATH.

His devoted men had died for him; they had given up their clothes, which might have saved their lives, to save his; and you can no doubt understand something of what he felt as he gazed upon their stiffened bodies. They must have loved him to sacrifice themselves thus for his sake, and surely he would never forget their wonderful devotion.

But I have a story of far greater love than this to tell you. The love of the Son of God outshines every other love, and the sacrifice that He made is the greatest that the world has ever seen. Don't throw away this book because you have heard of it many times before. If it is an old story it is the most wonderful story of love ever told, and the best part of it is, that it is for you.

Emile's soldiers died for a generous captain who loved them well. Jesus was slain for His foes, and it is a deeply solemn thing for you to remember that if you have not yet trusted Him YOU ARE ONE OF HIS FOES, and if you refuse to trust Him, you will die in your sins; then the judgment which His foes deserve will be yours for ever. But "CHRIST DIED FOR THE UNGODLY." Even before we had being He, in His great love, went to the Cross that we might be saved.

Prince Emile did not ask his men to die for him.

While he slept, altogether unconscious of what they were doing, they stripped themselves that he might live. So the blessed Lord did not wait until we sought Him. He stripped Himself, and came down from heaven to die, because He desired to save us even when we had no desire at all for Him. Oh! this was great love, and this love is unchanged: to-day He desires to bless and save you. THOSE TWELVE, FOURTEEN, OR SIXTEEN YEARS OF SIN CAN ALL BE FORGIVEN, because of what He has done. His precious blood is able to wash away every stain, and He desires to fold you in the arms of love and give you everlasting joy. Jesus alone can do this, and He wants to do it now. Oh! trust Him, take Him as your Saviour, then you will be able to say—

"He loved me, and gave Himself for me." (Gal. 2: 20.)

Besieged and Relieved or, Mafeking, Ladysmith, Kimberley.

Mafeking, Ladysmith, Kimberley, are names that will never be forgotten in British History. How thrilling are the incidents and how great have been the sufferings in connection with these places. With what anxiety were the eyes of the British Empire upon these towns and their gallant garrisons, while they were foe-beleaguered and famine-stricken; and again, into what a delirium of joy was the nation plunged when, after all the suspense and waiting, the news of relief came. And no wonder; for while these towns remained unrelieved British prestige hung in the balance, and British subjects were suffering and in great danger.

But, interested as you may have been in the relief of these places, I have something to bring to your attention which ought to interest you far more deeply. I have to write not so much of foe-besieged towns but of foe-besieged sinners. Every unconverted man, woman and child is foe-besieged; yes, surrounded by a host of foes bent upon their destruction. This is the danger that you are in if not saved. You may say that you were not aware that you had a single enemy on earth. If so, you have forgotten — (yes, sinners do forget) your sins.

How many sins have you got?

It has been said that most people will plead guilty to having committed at least three sins a day, one of thought, one of word, and one of deed. This means more than one thousand sins a year. If my youthful reader has reached the age of fifteen then there are at least fifteen thousand sins against you. FIFTEEN THOUSAND SINS! What a host! It may be you have reached maturer years. Every year, every day adds to the dreadful catalogue and increases the great host, and EVERY SIN IS A FOE. They surround you; they dog your footsteps; they seek your destruction. They have been recorded in God's Book in heaven, and there they stand against you. How formidable they are! If you have never thought of your sins before, do so now. Face the situation. Discover the strength of the enemy.

British Generals met with reverses at the commencement of the war because they underrated the strength of the foe. Don't you make this mistake or it may prove for ever fatal to your soul's safety. One sin is more than you can cope with; you cannot wash out one stain. One sin is sufficient to keep you out of heaven and put you in hell for ever. But if you cannot deliver yourself, we can tell you of relief nigh at hand.

When the news reached England that the Boers had invaded British territory, and that they were besieging British garrisons, even then relief was on the way.

It is true that deliverance was long delayed, for the enemy was powerful and strongly entrenched, and great and many were the difficulties that confronted the deliverers; but surely onward they pushed, facing wounds and sickness and death until all the world wondered at their bravery.

At length success crowned their efforts. General French entered Kimberley, General Buller relieved Ladysmith, and Colonel Mahon drove the Boers from the vicinity of Mafeking. Those upon whom the work of relief was put saw it through, they upheld the glory of their country and relieved their comrades. The agony of suspense was over. The Empire rejoiced, and we can well understand that those who had been in such danger for so many months rejoiced deeply as well.

Thus were foe-beleaguered Mafeking, Ladysmith and Kimberley relieved; and their deliverance shall help us to illustrate the wonderful story of the way in which foe-besieged sinners can be set free from all their foes. One thing is certain, and that is, we could not set ourselves free, deliverance had to come from outside. We cannot save ourselves, but there is one who can — even Jesus. How sweet it is to see that the same verse which tells us that we are without strength, also tells us that Christ died for the ungodly (Rom. 5: 6). He undertook the work of relief; He has met the foe; He has gained the mighty triumph; and now He can save all who trust in Him.

The foes that held us were strong and many, and the work to be accomplished was very great, but Jesus the Son of God has proved Himself equal to the great work. On the cross He bore the judgment that sinners deserved; there He died for the ungodly. It was by His death that the power of Satan was broken; and now as the risen, living and victorious Saviour, He offers full deliverance to all who will take it. Have you taken this wonderful salvation yet? If not, do not delay. Throw open wide the gates of your heart and give the great Captain of Salvation a hearty welcome, for He brings not only deliverance from the foe, but the full wagons of supplies. He feeds the hungry souls and satisfies the famishing.

Look at those worn and haggard watchers upon the outworks of Mafeking, Ladysmith and Kimberley; how they scan the horizon; with what eagerness they look for the coming of the relief column. They hear the battle from afar, but will victory be with their would-he deliverers? This is the anxious question. At length, along the veldt they see horsemen hotly riding, and presently hearing the ringing British cheer, they know that it is the salvation column. Do they fix bayonets and prepare to resist and repel the relieving force? Oh, no; madmen alone could do such a thing as that. They make the very air resound with their shouts of gladness; they escort their deliverers with songs of triumph into the centre of the town, and put upon them the best honours that they can bestow.

God has highly honoured the victorious Saviour because of what He has done. On the cross Jesus maintained the glory of God which the devil and sin sought to spoil, and God has taken Him from the grave, the gates of heaven were thrown open to Him, and God has given to Him the highest place in glory. The brightest crowns have been put upon His brow, and every creature in those blessed palaces above is vocal with His praise.

Will you not honour him? Oh, let Him into your heart and crown Him there. Let Him be for ever supreme, your Saviour and your Lord. Resist Him not: do not fight against Him. He brings you perfect salvation from the foes; He brings you joys from heaven above; in Him is all you need. Then yield to Him now. Own Him as your Lord and Saviour.

"Swing your heart's door widely open,

Bid Him enter while you may!"

No Surrender

or, The Siege of Derry.

Not long ago, I was in the city of Derry, in the North of Ireland, and a friend took me to see the historic bomb in the Cathedral there. This bomb brings to mind a story of wonderful bravery. In the year 1690 the city was beseiged by James II. He was a Roman Catholic, and, because of this, had been dethroned, and William of Orange, a staunch Protestant, was crowned in his place. The greater part of Ireland adhered to popery and supported James II., but the people of Londonderry had learnt the blessing of having an open Bible in their midst, and they desired to worship God according to their conscience, so they espoused the cause of William III. James was enraged, and marched against them with a large army, determined to make them yield.

The governor of the city, Lundy by name, was a great coward, and wanted to surrender the city to the Papists, and even went so far as to leave the gates open; but, as James approached, a handful of apprentice lads rushed out and closed the gates, and when James demanded the surrender of the city he was answered by the loud shout of

No Surrender!

What a glorious watchword! I thought if only every dear Christian lad would take it up in the strength of the Lord what joy he would have, and through him the Lord would get much glory. To stand for Christ thus will no doubt bring suffering and ridicule, but think of the wonderful consequences of doing this. There is a crowning day coming, when every bit of real testimony for Christ will receive a full reward.

The citizens of Derry had to suffer greatly for the stand they took. For one hundred and five days the siege lasted. The provisions ran short, famine and disease raged in the city. Still those brave men and women, strengthened by the words of a Christian man named Walker, refused to yield, choosing rather to die than give up their religious liberty.

One day the Huge Bomb now in the Cathedral was shot over the walls by James; in the inside a paper was found again demanding the surrender of the city, and telling the citizens of the awful punishment that he would inflict upon them if they refused to yield. They fired back the bomb with their answer inside; it was a very short one containing only those two words which had now become their watchword, — "NO SURRENDER."

Treachery and threats alike were useless, and at length the sentinels of the towers saw the sails of three vessels in the distance; slowly they advanced up the river, broke through the boom which James had laid across, and at ten o'clock the same night the ships were moored alongside the city quays. Then those heroic men and women, instead of feeding on tallow and the like, fed upon beef and flour and peas, while they gave thanks to God for their great deliverance. Oh! what a glorious thing it would be if my dear young Christian readers would fly their colours, and take their places in the ranks, and show to all around that they are soldiers of Jesus Christ, and determined to resist the world, the flesh and the devil, as these men resisted James.

But if this is to be so, you must learn that you have no strength in yourself, and that it is only as you live in dependence on the Lord that you can overcome. Yet what a joy it is to know that He has provided for us all that we need.

You will remember that before the Lord expected His disciples to stand up and confess Him before the world, He sent down a new power. The Holy Ghost came down and abode in each of them, and then they were able, in the power of the Holy Ghost, to confess Christ in spite of all the threats of their foes. (Acts 2)

Boys, if you have believed in Jesus, if you can say that He is your Saviour, then the Holy Ghost dwells in you, and you have no need to look to yourself or trust yourself for anything. The Holy Ghost, which dwells in you, can, and will fill your hearts with Christ if you are surrendered to Him; and then He will enable you to cry "No Surrender" in reply to all the seductions and persecutions of the world.

* * * * * * *

But you cannot take up such a watchword unless you have first surrendered to Jesus and owned Him as your Lord and Saviour, and if you have not yet done so we call upon you to

Surrender.

In one of the gallant Nelson's great sea-fights he captured a French ship. The officer in command with a smile extended his hand to his captor. "No," replied Nelson, "give me your sword first and then your hand." The Frenchman could not be on terms of friendship with Nelson until he had surrendered to him; until then he was still accounted an enemy.

As this French officer treated Nelson, so there are many treating the Lord Jesus Christ. They profess themselves to be friendly to His cause, yet they have never surrendered to Him. Now this cannot be. You cannot feel the pressure of His hand of love unless you yield to Him.

You must Surrender.

God has decreed that every knee shall bow to Jesus, and every tongue confess that He is Lord. To do this now brings blessing for evermore. But this bowing to Christ must not be merely an outward profession; there must be bowing of heart. Lip profession merely is hypocrisy, and hypocrisy is hateful to God.

With all earnestness I would ask, Have you bowed to Christ yet in this way? Can you say —

"'Tis done, the great transaction's done,

I am my Lord's, and He is mine"?

If you can say this, you have every cause to rejoice, for He who is your Lord, is the One who died for you that your sins might be for ever washed away.

But if you are not yet His, you are passing swiftly onward to the awful judgment that awaits every Christ-rejector. To be lost for ever in the depths of hell must be fearful indeed, but it is the just judgment of God upon all who refuse His blessing through Christ Jesus.

Then, turn you now, while you may. Lay down the sword of rebellion at the feet of Jesus; think of the matchless love that led Him to shed His precious blood for a sinner like you; then say —

"Just as I am, Thy love I own,

Has broken every barrier down;

Now to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,

O, Lamb of God, I come."

Then boldly confess His name before men. You need not be afraid, for the great Captain of our Salvation is mighty, and He is leading us home to glory; and, as we are dependent on Him, in His strength we shall be more than conquerors. — (Romans 8: 37.)

Sought and Ransomed:

or, King Richard's Deliverance.

King Richard Coeur-de-Lion was a great and enthusiastic Crusader, and he spent the greater part of his ten years' reign in Palestine, fighting the Saracens who were then masters of Jerusalem.

While there on one occasion the news reached him that his brother John had been plotting with the King of France to rob him of his dominions. Now King Richard was a man of marvellous courage and energy, and immediately on hearing this news he started almost entirely unattended for England. In crossing the Adriatic Sea his ship encountered a furious storm, and he was wrecked upon the coast of Austria. With only one attendant he wandered about for some time in disguise; but this attendant was an indiscreet man, and suspicion was aroused as to who his master was. He was discovered to be the King of England, and was taken prisoner by his life-long enemy, Duke Leopold of Austria.

When James VI., Emperor of Germany, heard of his capture he wanted to get Richard into his power, and paid Leopold a sum equal to £60,000. Richard was cast into prison away from his country and people, held captive by his enemies, and bound by a chain, of which he said afterwards, "A horse could scarcely have borne it."

You will agree that this was not a very pleasant position to be in, and Richard must often have sighed for his freedom and home. But if you cannot say that Jesus is your Saviour, Richard's case is an illustration of yours. You are lost and a captive, held in bondage by the cords of sin, and Satan means to have you in hell's prison-house for ever if he can. You may not feel this bondage, for the cords of sin often appear silken, but they are, none the less, terrible and strong. It is high time you discovered your position and your danger. You need a deliverer, — a Saviour, — and, thank God, we can tell you of one; — One who can break the cords of sin that bind you, and open the prison doors and set you free for ever.

There is a beautiful story told of the way in which Richard's place of imprisonment was discovered, and though some think it not true, it is as likely to be so as not, and as it illustrates the true Gospel story, I will tell it to you.

There was a minstrel, named Blondel, who was very much attached to the king, and his love for him made him travel throughout Germany in search of him. It was his wont to go from castle to castle and sing beneath the walls some English song. One day he reached a castle and commenced to sing as before, when from within a voice joined in the song. At once the minstrel knew that the one who responded to his singing was Richard, and in this way his place of captivity was discovered.

Does not this seeking minstrel remind you of One who came forth to seek poor lost and captive sinners? He said, "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." He desires that His words of tender mercy should reach your ear and heart, and if they do you will find them to be full of sweetest music. Oh! the gospel story is wondrously melodious to weary and sin-stricken hearts, and this gospel story is for you. It tells you of Jesus, the seeking Saviour, the One who seeks you because He loves you; who seeks you that He might set you free from slavery; and if you would but listen to His voice you would be constrained to respond to it as did Richard to Blondel's.

But Richard had to be Ransomed as well as sought, and his captor demanded a great price. Nothing less than 100,000 marks would satisfy him; but this price was paid by the English people that the captive might be set free. When he returned to England the whole country was given up to rejoicing, so delighted were they to have their lost King back again.

I am sure you will anticipate the application of this part of the story. If you were to be saved a great price had to be paid for your ransom: not gold or silver could do it; the wealth of all the world could not have delivered you. Your sins had made you a lawful captive — for your sins you deserved the just judgment of God — and only by the judgment being satisfied and Satan's power broken could you be saved.

Jesus has accomplished both. Gold and silver could not have delivered you; all the wealth of all the world would have failed to secure your ransom; but Jesus shed his precious blood, and this is the price that has been paid, and through His blood alone can you have redemption. He died, but He has risen again, proving that He has overcome and destroyed him that had the power of death, so that He might deliver those who through fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage.

Oh! will you not trust in this Saviour? You must be eternally lost without Him; but if you do but trust Him, if you do but cast yourself upon Him for deliverance and salvation, no tongue can tell the greatness of the blessing that shall be yours. If you trust Him now, no harp in heaven will be silent; God will rejoice over you, and the Shepherd — even Jesus — who has sought and saved you will rejoice, and Their joy tunes all Heaven to praise.

Richard met with a Glorious Reception when he reached his home and kingdom, and so will all the blood-washed and ransomed company when they reach their home above the sky to be for ever with their Lord. Attended by the heavenly multitudes they will pass onward and upward to His throne, to reign with Him. Once more, Will you be there?

"When He gathers His own

In that bright, bright home —

Will you be there, and I?"

Don't forget it! If you wish to be there your works cannot gain you admittance, nothing but the precious blood can secure an entrance into that blessed home for you, and, if you are wise, you will seek its cleansing, saving power to-day.

Worthy to be Trusted;

or, Lord Roberts' Mission to South Africa.

It is a good thing always to have someone in whom confidence can be placed, but there are times when this is specially needful: this has often been proved in history, but never more so than during the great Boer war. British territory had been invaded; British soldiers were besieged and suffering. Troops were sent out, but no success attended their operations, and from the far-off battle-fields news of reverse after reverse reached the home country. The enemy proved strong and wily and fully prepared to withstand the prowess of Britain's generals and the gallantry of her soldiers; and the heart of an empire was sorely pained and filled with distress. Those who hated England were exultant, while the foe became daily more audacious and self-confident.

A Man was Wanted, one who was worthy to be trusted, who could turn the tide of disaster and lead the arms of Britain to certain victory and unfurl the Union Jack in the capital of the enemy. But was there such a man? Lord Roberts heard his country's call; and, with Lord Kitchener as his chief of staff, went to the front.

He had been often tried before and his worth was well known: a long career of success was his; he had always been worthy of confidence; but would this be so again? Others had been trusted and failed, for the difficulties were great and the foe valiant. Would they be too great for Roberts? or, would he prove himself worthy of the confidence reposed in him?

In an agony of suspense the empire waited, but soon the suspense was relieved. The country had its answer; success crowned every movement of the veteran warrior and his capable lieutenant; the power of the Boers was broken, and eventually the British flag floated proudly over Bloemfontein and Pretoria.

Roberts accomplished his task and proved himself fully worthy of England's trust.

What a good thing it was that such a man was forthcoming in the hour of his country's need; and truly his service will not be forgotten by those to whom it was rendered.

But what is the use of recounting that which is already well known. Ah! that is the point. Have you not yet discovered that you need One in whom you can trust. It may be that more than once you have been brought to a crisis in your life when much was at stake, and you found that your own wisdom was not sufficient to guide you aright; then you looked round for someone to help you in your difficulties. But we speak not of the things of this life, but of

Your soul and Eternity.

You are in danger, unsaved reader, in positive danger of being overwhelmed by foes too strong for you to grapple with. Your sins, and death, and Satan's power are all against you. YOU NEED A SAVIOUR, and unless you find someone who can undertake your case and save you, your Eternity will be black with judgment and woe.

But there is One who can be trusted, even in this matter; to Him you may safely turn. He is the Friend of the friendless, the Saviour of sinners. You have often heard His name: it is Jesus; and wonderfully sweet is His name to those who have proved how worthy He is to be trusted. They can sing in their gladness:

"Sweetest note in seraph song,

Sweetest name on mortal tongue,

Sweetest carol ever sung,

Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!"

Will you trust in Him? The fact is that He is the only Saviour in God's universe, and you are sinful and lost; you cannot save yourself. He is the only One who can save you, and there is not a single ray of hope for you apart from Him. You are shut up entirely to Jesus, for God has said: "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." (Acts 4: 12.) But then you have no need to turn to another person for what you want. Jesus is sufficient; He came down from heaven above to die; and His sorrow, His death, His blood, all prove that He is worthy to be trusted; they speak of salvation for you.

And Jesus rose again.

Death was vanquished by His mighty power, and now in the glory of God above He is exalted and crowned, and His exaltation and glory prove that He is worthy to be trusted and that there is salvation for you.

Millions of sinners have trusted Him: their guilt was as black as yours, but they have been made white as snow in His precious blood, and heaven is their home. Could they speak to you to-day they would all tell you that He is worthy to be trusted and that there is salvation for you.

Will you not trust Him then? God has trusted Him. He entrusted Him first with creation's work and pronounced it very good; He sent Him down to show forth His grace in a world of sinners, and proclaimed from heaven that He was well pleased with Him. But He also entrusted Him with redemption's work, and Jesus accomplished that work so perfectly that God has given Him the highest glory in heaven.

Yet again He has entrusted to His hand all who will take His salvation, and Jesus will prove Himself worthy of this trust, so that not one believer shall be lost on the way. He has said: "They shall never perish; neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." They shall all stand upon the everlasting shore, white-robed and glory-crowned, and heaven will be vocal then with His praise: and if you will but turn to Him to-day, you shall find, like millions more have found, that He is worthy to be trusted.

There are many who would like to trust Him; but, strange to say, they are ashamed to take Him and confess Him; afraid of what the world would say, they go on without the blessing.

The British Nation is not ashamed of Lord Roberts

Had he failed in his mission and fled before the foe, and dragged the British flag through disaster and defeat, then would Britain have been rightly ashamed of him; but having been victorious, having scattered the foes and brought glory to the country which he served, his praise is upon every tongue. The Queen bestowed an Earldom upon him, and his country rewarded him by a vote of £100,000.

Now it is because Jesus is a victorious Saviour that we are not ashamed of Him. If he had failed to accomplish salvation's work, if Satan had triumphed, then we would never have mentioned His name; but He has conquered, He has broken the power of Satan and lives for evermore; and those that believe in Him shall never be ashamed. Oh! believe in Him. He is worthy to be trusted, worthy to be confessed; and all who do this are saved by God's great salvation.

Ten Minutes too Late:

or, How the Prince Imperial Lost his Life.

{The body of the Prince Imperial was brought to England in H.M.S. Orontes, and at Spithead was transferred to the Enchantress for conveyance to Woolwich, where it arrived on July 10, 1879. Our engraving depicts the Duc de Bassano affixing the Insignia of the Legion of Honour to the pall at Woolwich. Two days later the funeral took place at Chislehurst.}

Standing amid the tall Tambookie grass, near a dry water-course in South Africa, was a small party of British soldiers; they were chatting together all unconscious of danger, when they were suddenly startled by wild yells and the crash of rifles. More than forty swarthy and blood-thirsty savages rushed upon them from the donga near; the soldiers escaped, but the commander — a brave young officer of kingly bearing — fell a victim, pierced by sixteen spear wounds.

This young officer was the Prince Imperial, son of Napoleon III. of France. He had one great fault, and this fault cost him his life. We are told that when he was quite a boy he would plead for ten minutes delay in almost everything, so that the Empress Eugene, his mother, used to call him, "MONSIEUR TEN MINUTES." He would want to lie in bed ten minutes longer when it was time to rise, and want to sit up ten minutes after his usual bedtime, and sometimes when too sleepy to speak he would hold up his ten fingers as representing the ten minutes' delay which he desired.

As the young Prince grew older this habit grew with him; he was known constantly to plead for "JUST TEN MINUTES MORE," little thinking how terrible an end this would bring him to in after years.

I do not know how the brave Prince treated the matters which concerned his soul's eternal welfare, but I do know that some of my young readers are treating these matters as though they were not very important, and when pressed to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour, they often plead a little delay, forgetting that THAT LITTLE DELAY MAY ROB THEM OF HEAVEN FOR EVER.

In the year 1879 war broke out between England and Cetewayo, King of the Zulus, and the Prince Imperial went out with the British army to fight these fierce blacks. On the 1st of June of that year he was ordered off with seven soldiers under his command to find a camping-ground for the army. Having found a suitable place, and finished their work, they were ready for starting back to the camp, when a friendly native announced that he had seen a Zulu near the place. On hearing this the Prince proposed that they should "let their horses graze just ten minutes longer," and then start back again. That ten minutes proved fatal to him.

The Zulus had been stealthily approaching the little party along the water-course, hidden from view by the tall grass, and now with yells of fury they rushed upon them. The Prince's horse took fright and galloped off, and he — left alone to face those fierce savages — was soon slain.

Let us learn a lesson from his sad end. I expect that some of you will be inclined to say that it was very foolish to delay so needlessly in the midst of so much danger; but, to delay your soul's salvation is far greater folly; the Prince's bravery and prowess might have saved him from an untimely death, even when beset with foes, but nothing can save you from eternal woe if you neglect God's great salvation.

Eternity is before you, and, though young and strong, you may die very soon, and if you die without Christ you will be shut out of heaven. What a terrible thing it must be to be eternally lost, banished from God's presence, to bear for ever His justly-merited judgment. Oh! don't delay longer, lest you should be just too late to escape.

If the Prince had not delayed most likely he would not have perished, but there is no doubt at all in your case, my dear reader, if you delay not, but come now to the Saviour, YOU SHALL NOT PERISH, but be eternally saved. A way of salvation has been made, and though you are a sinner we can say to you, Jesus will receive you.

Jesus came from heaven to die, that sinners both young and old might be saved. "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." (1 Timothy 1: 15.) Now because of what Jesus has done, the door of mercy stands wide open, and God invites poor sinners to come to Christ for salvation. There is no other way to heaven, no other means of salvation. If you trust Him now you will be saved, but ten minutes' delay may put this wonderful blessing beyond your reach for ever.

The Lord is coming!

Coming to take His ransomed ones home to glory, where fulness of joy and eternal pleasures will be theirs. Everyone who has trusted Him will be taken then, but if you have rejected the Saviour or merely neglected this salvation, you will be left behind, shut outside, and for ever lost. "When once the Master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us: and He shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are DEPART FROM ME." (Luke 13: 25-27.) Then you will be TOO LATE for every joy and for every blessing, THE DOOR SHUT and you outside for ever. Oh! trust in Jesus now, and be saved, lest this come upon you.

"The Paths of Glory:"

or, The Death of Wolfe.

After taking a bowl of sack, on the morning of his execution, Sir Walter Raleigh remarked: "That is a good drink if a man might tarry by." Ah! but that is where the trouble lies. There are many things in this world which men would call "good" if only they could tarry by them, but that cannot be. Death comes in and hurries men away; then the world's wealth and fame and pleasures must be left behind for ever.

I should like to press this upon my youthful reader. It may be that you have very high aspirations; you would like to become a great scholar, or a gallant soldier, or famous in some other way: but remember that if you gained the highest honour that this world could put upon you, you could not keep it; death blights every worldly prospect and the grave is the end of all man's glory; therefore, how good it is to have a brighter and better portion beyond the grave!

Not very long ago I stood near the Heights of Abraham, outside the City of Quebec, Canada. I was greatly interested in the spot, for it was there that the brave Wolfe lost his life. In my younger days he was amongst my special heroes, and I had often read with great pride how he had made the courageous and perilous ascent of those almost perpendicular cliffs, and surprised and completely defeated the French army on the plains above. But as I gazed upon the spot, a very different kind of feeling took possession of me. It was no longer one of pride because of the valorous deeds wrought by British soldiers, but one of great sadness as I thought of the way in which thousands of men are rushing after fame and wealth, all the while forgetting that

"The Paths of Glory lead but to the Grave," and that beyond the grave there stretches the vast For-ever, where earthly glory is not worth a thought.

But I must tell you the story briefly. England was at war with France, and in consequence of an attempt on the part of the French to spoil England's trade with America, General Wolfe was despatched to command an expedition against them. He was ambitious and brave, and determined to allow no difficulty to stand in the way of his taking Quebec, which was then in the hands of the French.

On the night of September 14th, 1759, he took his little army down the St. Lawrence, intending to engage the French on the following day. Everybody was filled with excitement and expectancy, and as the fleet was borne almost silently down the river on the tide, Wolfe recited to his officers that well-known poem, entitled: "Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard," one verse of which reads:

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Await alike the inevitable hour,

The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

Little did he think that before another day had passed he would prove the truth of the last line quoted. The soldiers were landed and commenced to climb the precipitous cliffs (one would wonder how they managed it). At length they reached the top, and as the morning began to dawn, it found them drawn up in line of battle. The French were startled from their slumber by the approach of the foe, and at once prepared to fight. The engagement was short and decisive, as the enemy could not stand before the deadly fire and unflinching bravery of the British soldiers, and soon they turned and fled; but just at the moment of his victory Wolfe fell mortally wounded.

This victory was his highest achievement, and when the news reached England, the country rang with his praise, and honoured his name by giving him a state funeral and raising a costly monument in Westminster Abbey to his memory. But what did all this matter to him as he lay cold, and still, and dead?

He could not carry his glory with him, and in the next world not they who have done valiantly in this world are great, but those who knew and loved the Lord Jesus Christ.

Whether Wolfe knew the Saviour or not I cannot tell: all I know is that "THE PATHS OF GLORY" led him to the grave, and others enjoyed his conquest.

My object in writing is to set some better thing before my young readers. The glory of this world fadeth away and all its pleasures are fleeting. You have to exist throughout Eternity, and it will be great wisdom on your part to secure a glory that can never pass away.

Christ Jesus sits upon the throne, and in His presence is fulness of joy; everlasting pleasures are to be found in His home; but to reach that home you must know Him as your Saviour; your sins must be washed away by His precious blood. Do not imagine that these things are only for spiritless fellows who cannot make headway in the world. You will find that it will require a great deal of courage to confess Christ. In fact the reason a great many lads have not become christians before this is because they are cowards, and altogether afraid of the laugh and the jeer of their companions.

I trust my dear reader will not be found amongst this cowardly company. Just look back and think of your sins; think of the judgment that they deserve; then think of the love which brought Jesus down from heaven to die for sinners, and last of all think of the eternal glory which awaits all those who have been saved by His precious blood, and, as you think, turn to Him; trust Him as your Saviour; bow to His claims over you, and then boldly confess His blessed Name. Then, though you may not be able to gain great distinction in this world, you may be assured that the harp of gold, the palm of victory, and the crown of glory await you in heaven.

Forgiven

or, King Richard's Last Act.

Of all the English Kings, Richard I. seems to have been the bravest. History tells us that he was a great warrior, and because of his daring and prowess upon the battlefield he was surnamed Coeur-de-Lion, or, the Lion-hearted. Like many another brave man he was also very generous, and able to forgive wrongs. It is recorded that when his treacherous brother John, who had tried to rob him of his crown, pleaded for mercy, he said: "I forgive him, and I hope to forget his injuries as easily as he will forget my pardon."

After he had reigned about ten years one of his French vassals, Vidomar, Viscount of Limoges, rebelled against him. Richard at once marched his army against him, and besieged him in his castle of Châluz.

During the siege, with his usual disregard of danger, Richard approached very near the castle walls, almost wholly unattended. Seeing this, a young man, named Bertrand de Gurdun, fitted an arrow to his bow and took aim at the King.

The arrow pierced Richard's left shoulder, and proved to be a mortal wound. While the King lay in his tent, the castle was taken, and Bertrand made a captive. Heavily ironed, he was led to the bedside of the suffering and dying monarch. Richard looked calmly into his face and said: "Youth, I forgive you my death." Then, turning to his soldiers standing by, he said: "Let him go free and give him a hundred shillings." Just think what the feelings of Bertrand de Gurdun must have been as he stood beside that death-couch. I am sure that he would be moved as he listened to Richard's gracious words, and, as they took the chains from his wrists and ankles, his hatred must have died away in his heart, and love for the one he had hated most have taken its place. He did not deserve to be treated thus, nor did he expect it, for his was the greatest of crimes — the murder of his King. Yet, when Richard uttered that one word, "forgiven," all was settled. There was peace between them.

But not only was THE PAST FORGIVEN, but he was, by Richard's order, MADE FREE IN THE PRESENT, and one hundred shillings were commanded to be given him from the King's own treasury FOR HIS FUTURE ENJOYMENT.

I have something still to tell you of Bertrand de Gurdun, but I wish to turn aside and to ask: Can you say that you are forgiven? You cannot undo the past, and all its sins have been most faithfully recorded, and they are either forgiven or else they stand against you in God's book. Which? You are passing on to the great Forever, and if you die unforgiven, where Jesus is you can never go. How fearfully solemn for you.

But all your sins can be forgiven to-day. God's word says: "Though this man (Christ Jesus) is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; and by Him all that believe are justified from all things." (Acts 13: 38-39.) You may have the joy of knowing that all the guilty past is forgiven, and that the bonds of sin are for ever broken, and that you are saved from the judgment you so richly deserve.

But all this blessing is to be had through Christ alone. Prayers are not sufficient to obtain it. Resolutions will not secure it; nothing but the death of Jesus could make it possible for God to bless the guilty thus. Then think of the wonderful love which led Him to die. He allowed men, in their wickedness, to nail Him to the Cross. He gave them no cause for this, and all this hatred and wickedness did but prove the greatness of His love, for upon the cross we hear Him praying for them: He said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." In His great love He submitted to be led as a lamb to the slaughter that He might accomplish the work of redemption, and that forgiveness might be proclaimed to sinners.

If you have discovered that you are a sinner with no hope of saving yourself, turn to Him, for He is full of grace, and as Bertrand de Gurdun heard Richard's words of forgiveness, so shall you hear the pardoning voice of Jesus. He will say to you as He said to a guilty sinner long ago, "Thy sins are forgiven." (Luke 7: 48.) Then all your sins which have stood between your soul and God and barred your way to heaven, will be removed and you will be able to rejoice in the fact that THE PAST IS FOR EVER SETTLED.

And He who forgives the past will break the chains of sin that bind you, and you will be SET FREE FOR THE PRESENT.

Then He opens His treasury and bids you draw upon His resources — even upon the riches of His grace, and this grace is sufficient for ALL YOUR FUTURE NEED. This grace can keep you bright and joyous down here, then in heaven, throughout eternity, you will share the wealth of the glory with all the blood-washed ones.

Let us put these three things together so that we may have a clear view of the great blessing which Jesus gives: —

THE PAST — FORGIVEN.

THE PRESENT — SET FREE.

THE FUTURE — GRACE FOR EVERY NEED.

But King Richard died.

Then Bertrand de Gurdun found out, to his dismay, that the man who had been so powerful in life had no longer any power. The King's word, which had been law as long as the life remained in his body, was altogether disregarded now that he was dead, for the soldiers of Richard took him and put him to a cruel death, so that Richard's mercy and grace were useless, because he was unable to see that his commands were carried out.

How different are those to whom the Lord shows mercy. He died, died that mercy might flow freely to sinners, — but He rose from the dead, and, as the risen one, all power has been given to Him, and what He has spoken can never be altered. If he forgives it is for ever. If He saves, none can destroy His saved ones. He Himself said: "They shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand." (John 10: 28.)

He said, speaking of His own blood-bought ones, "Where I am, there ye may be also," and no power on earth or hell can hinder the Lord Jesus from having those whom He has redeemed by His precious blood with Himself.

He takes them up in the hand of power, and places them upon His strong shoulders, and will never put them down until He gets them home. Then He will rejoice over them, and they will rejoice with Him for ever. (Luke 15)

May my dear readers be amongst the Lord's forgiven, blood-washed, and home-bound flock; and along the way fear not to speak to those around who know not this precious Saviour.

The Double Choice:

or, Salvation and Suffering.

There is a story told in Russian history, the details of which are somewhat as follows. The Czar had died suddenly, and there were two claimants of the throne. To one of these — a princess — one of the ministers of the empire went at dead of night. Announcing to her the death of the Czar, he said, "You must come at once and take possession of the crown."

The princess saw many difficulties connected with such an exalted position, and she hesitated and would have refused altogether, but the minister said, "Sit down, princess, for one minute, and consider. You MUST CHOOSE BETWEEN TWO COURSES. You may wear the crown of all the Russias — you may reign as Empress and have the homage of the whole nation on the one hand; or you will be thrown into prison, with all its attendant horrors, and eventually be brought out to die. That is the other side of the question, and to-night your Majesty must choose between the two."

The counsellor brought the glories of one course and the suffering of the other so vividly before the mind of this Russian princess that she did not continue to hesitate.

She chose the Crown. Was she not wise? I am sure you agree that she was.

Now there is one of two destinies before every reader of this page, as there was before this princess. You must make your choice and you must do it speedily. I need not tell you that Eternity lies before you; you know it well. At the Sunday School and in the Gospel meeting this solemn fact has often been pressed upon you. You know, too, that in Eternity THERE IS HEAVEN AND THERE IS HELL. Now, consider. Which of these two destinies will you choose? Need I ask such a question? Surely no one in his senses would deliberately say, I choose hell. Yet many find themselves there for ever, not because they wanted hell, but because they delayed, and delayed, and delayed, until it was too late to choose heaven. Let me put the two sides of the question for your consideration.

1. The forgiveness of sins. Present peace and joy. HEAVEN — its crowns, and harps and song, and above all, the presence of Jesus, His love, and the light of His countenance.

2. DEATH — The judgment that your sins deserve. HELL — The gnawing worm and quenchless flame. Darkness, sorrow, and woe, for ever and for ever.

Oh! which shall be yours? Make your choice now. You will never have a better moment than the present. Your heart will grow harder as time speeds on, or you may be gone in a moment, and then all would be settled and sealed with you for ever. DECIDE AT ONCE.

You know the way to heaven. Jesus said, "I am the Way." He died upon the cross that heaven's gates might be opened wide for you; and His precious blood can make you fit for that unsullied home of light.

There is forgiveness. There is mercy. There is salvation. It is to be had through the Lord Jesus Christ. Whosoever believeth in Him shall be saved. If you will trust Him now YOUR NAME SHALL BE ENROLLED IN HEAVEN AMONGST THE SAVED.

"Oh, love unbounded, grace how free,

Heaven's gate still open stands for thee,

For thee, for thee,

Stands open wide for thee."

When you have chosen Christ as your Saviour, you have settled the question as to your destiny. His work secures heaven for you, and delivers you from the hell that you have deserved. This work Jesus accomplished alone, and He accomplished it perfectly; and your soul's salvation depends entirely upon Christ's work, and not upon yours at all.

But now, having made your choice for Eternity, I would ask you to choose again.

There are two classes of Christians in this world. One class are disciples indeed: they confess and follow the Lord in spite of scorn and persecution. The other class love not the path of discipleship. They seek ease, and fear to stand for Christ because of the consequences. To which of these two classes will you belong?

You may have read of Francisco Pizarro, the great Spanish soldier. We are told that, when on his way to the discovery and conquest of Peru, his soldiers got disheartened because of the great difficulties which they had to encounter. Disease and famine tried them sorely, and at length some of them talked of returning to their homes in Panama.

Pizarro would not force them to follow him, but he himself determined to press on to Peru. He stood out before his men, and drawing a line on the ground with his sword, east and west, he told them that south of that line there was suffering, disappointment, and perhaps death, but in the end there was great reward for themselves, and glory for Spain. On the north side of the line lay Panama — their homes, whole skins, and bread and ease. "CASTILLIANS ! CHOOSE AS BEFITS YOU," he cried. "I RETURN NOT BACKWARD. I STEP ACROSS THE LINE."

They watched him for one moment, then one soldier strode after him, then a second, then a third, until fourteen men stood on the south side of the line. The rest returned to their homes.

These faithful fourteen stuck to Pizarro through many hardships, until at length, with the help of others who joined him afterwards, Peru lay conquered at his feet.

Then was the time for their reward. They were amply repaid for all their suffering.

Now, what will you choose, young believer? If you have found out that the Lord Jesus Christ loved you even unto death, I am sure you desire to follow and serve Him. If so, count fully the cost. It may mean suffering and loss in this world, for the disciple is not above his Lord, and if Jesus was despised and rejected of men, you must not be surprised if this world scoffs at those who confess Him.

But in the midst of trial and scorn you will be sustained by the love and grace of the Lord Jesus, and your faithfulness will bring great reward to you, and glory to His peerless name. "IT IS A FAITHFUL SAYING . . . if we suffer, we shall also reign with Him." (2 Tim. 2: 12.)

We delight to speak well of those we love, and if Jesus' precious love has touched our hearts, then we must love Him.

You would not join hands with those who spoke evil of your father, or mother, or brother; instead, you would want to defend them, and prove that what was said was untrue. Now in the school and the office and shop, there are those who hate the Lord Jesus and speak evil of Him. Christian boys, join not with them, but by your ways and words exalt the One Who has loved you and given Himself for you. This is your blessed privilege now; you will not have it in eternity. If you miss it now, you will have missed it for ever. Oh! then step across the line. Decide not only to have heaven at last, but to follow the Lord Jesus now, and, be sure of this, you will not be the loser. The crown of glory, the harp of gold, and the palm of victory await the disciple, and, above all, the smile and the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. May His love and grace enable each young reader to trust and to follow Him.

Set Free:

or, The Emancipation Act.

The 7th of August, 1833, was a great day for the negroes in the British West Indian Islands, for on that day a bill passed through the House of Commons, declaring that all slavery in British dominions must cease. The lash, the iron collar, the bitter tyranny were things of the past — the slaves were free.

By the proclamation which followed, 311,050 slaves in Jamaica alone were delivered from the bondage into which they had been born. Ever since Las Casas, the Spaniard, nearly four centuries ago suggested that Africans should be shipped from their native land to work in the West Indian plantations, they had endured this bondage. Its curse was upon them at birth; they lived and toiled without the light of liberty, and died as they had lived — in slavery, and if at any time any one of them sought to escape their cruel bondage by flight, they were hunted down by fierce bloodhounds and their latter end was worse than the first.

But on the morning of the emancipation day they were free, and now Britons boast that slaves cannot breathe upon British soil, and in one sense of the word this is true, for Anglo-Saxons love liberty, and are generally ready to help the oppressed. Yet there is a slavery in which millions, on British soil as well as on foreign shores, are held, which is infinitely worse than that in which the West Indian slaves were found. Satan holds his slaves in the chains of sin; and young and old, rich and poor, black and white, are driven to their toil by him, for every soul that does not belong to Christ, is Satan's slave.

Satan is a hard task-master; never did negro smart beneath the cruel lash as some of Satan's serfs are made to smart, and his object is not only to hold them in bondage while they live, but to plunge their souls into destruction when they die.

Thank God, there is deliverance from this bondage; full emancipation is offered to whosoever will take it. The writer has got this deliverance, and can praise God for it; and if the reader is still a stranger to it, we earnestly commend to you the Saviour: He can set you free to-day.

William Wilberforce championed the cause of the Negro Slaves; he was an earnest Christian man, and his heart had been touched by the story of their sufferings. He determined to devote his life to their emancipation, and for over forty years he laboured with this in view. Ten times in Parliament his motions were defeated; but, with the help of devoted men like Clarkson and Fowell Buxton, he persevered, until at length success crowned his efforts, and just before he died he had the joy of knowing that the English Parliament had voted £20,000,000 to be paid to the slave-owners, in order that all slaves might be set at liberty, though he died just one month before the Act came into force.

£20,000,000 was a Great Price to pay, yet the English Government gave it freely; but not by such a price could sinners be delivered. All the gold of Klondyke and California would have been too small a price to ransom one sinner — it required nothing less than the precious blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God. Freely from heaven Jesus came in order to pay this price, that sinners might be delivered, and now as the risen Saviour He can send out the proclamation of rest and liberty to all.

There was great joy amongst the Slaves when the glad news reached them. We are told that when the ship bearing the news hove in sight of land, the shore was lined with thousands filled with great excitement, for they knew not whether the ship brought good tidings or bad; but when through the trumpet that grand word, "freedom" rang out, an indescribable and never-to-be-forgotten scene took place — men and women shouted and danced in their joy, and gladness beamed from every countenance. I remember, when in Jamaica, meeting an old negro who had often felt the lash during the days of slavery, and he told me that he well remembered the day when the news reached them; they had longed, and hoped, and prayed for freedom, and when it was really theirs it seemed too good to be true. But true it was; by the law of the British realm they were free, and none could take their liberty from them.

Shall freedom from slavery be your happy portion, my reader, whether young or old? It may be, if you will have it. In distant days they cried, "Shall the lawful captive be delivered?" To-day we can reply: "Yes, for Jesus has paid the price of their ransom, and delights to set them free."

But many love the service of sin, and refuse the liberty which the gospel message proclaims; they are deceived, and do not know their danger. The devil has bewitched them by the vain things of this world, so that they do not feel the weight of sin's yoke, nor long for the sweetness of God's salvation. They refuse God's free gift, and forget the while that sin's bitter wages await them. "THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH," and after this comes the judgment. Hell, with all its terrors, lies at the end of a sinful and salvation-rejecting life.

Be not like unto these, my readers; think of what it cost Jesus the Saviour to procure deliverance for you. His own precious blood was the price. Think of heaven and hell, in one or other you must be for ever; and think also of the difference between the misery of Satan's service here and the happy freedom and joy of belonging to Christ. Turn to Him now; He will receive you, and cleanse away your sins, and fill your heart with joy. Then you will delight in His service, and be able to say —

"I could not work my soul to save,

But Christ that work has done,

Yet I would work like any slave;

In love to God's dear Son."

Unsatisfied and Unsaved

or, The Disappointed Monarch.

On the 28th of September, 1556, there was an unusual stir in the small seaport town of Laredo, on the coast of Spain. A fleet of ships had cast anchor in the harbour, and in one of these — the "Espirito Sancto" — was no less a person than Charles V., Emperor of Germany. He had abdicated his throne and was on his way to the Convent of Yuste, there to spend the rest of his days.

When he was but nineteen years old his grandfather, Maximilian, had died, and he was raised to Imperial dignity. King of Spain and Emperor of Germany, he was the most wealthy and powerful monarch in Europe, and, surely, if man could have been satisfied with this world, Charles V. ought to have been. He had been a very ambitious man, and in the early part of his career he had been singularly successful, but his later schemes of conquest had failed, and he had been bitterly disappointed, and now with an aching and empty heart at the age of fifty-five, he was leaving the world and its glory behind in the hope of finding solace and salvation in the seclusion of a monastery. As he stepped from the ship to the shore, with cast-down and care-worn countenance, he eloquently though silently proclaimed the fact that

The world — big as it seems in the eyes of men — is too small to fill the heart.

Yet Charles V. might have been a happy man, for he had listened to the gospel, and had he only turned to Jesus, the sinner's Saviour, he might have been blest with heaven's best blessings, as also may you if only you will turn to Him.

It was Charles who presided at the famous Diet of Worms, when Martin Luther so fearlessly proclaimed, in the presence of so many enemies, the truth of salvation by faith alone; but he rejected the testimony of this champion for the truth, and afterwards was heard to say that he wished he had violated the safe-conduct which he had given to Luther and slain him while he had him in his power.

But having failed to find satisfaction for his heart for fifty-five years in the world, he spent eighteen months in a monastery seeking salvation for his soul; but, alas, we fear he sought it by works instead of through Christ alone, and you will remember the scripture says: "To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." (Romans 4: 5.)

It was about this time that he ordered that great artist, Titian, to paint a picture of himself kneeling at the gate of heaven; evidently, he wanted to get inside the gate, but that gate is closed to everyone, whether emperor or beggar, who seeks to gain admittance on the ground of works. But, thank God, on the other hand, the gate of heaven is open wide to whosoever will seek admission through the work of Christ.

I hope my reader will not make the mistake of thinking that what he has done will obtain a place in heaven for him — if that is so, you are deceived — the work which Christ accomplished on Calvary can alone save you. His precious blood alone can cleanse away your sins and give you a title to heaven.

Queen Elizabeth, who began to reign over England shortly after the death of Charles, had learnt something of the worthlessness of works as a means of salvation. Proud monarch though she had been in her lifetime, when she came to die her pride left her and she became sorely troubled about the future. It is recorded that she sent for the Archbishop of Canterbury to minister some comfort to her. He said: "Madam, you ought to hope in the mercy of God; your piety and zeal, and the admirable work of the Reformation which you have established afford great grounds of consolation for you."

But the queen could not be thus deceived. She replied: "My lord, the crown which I have borne so long has given enough of vanity in my time; I beseech you not to augment it in this hour when I am so near death."

Yes, it is true that in God's sight there is "no difference," all must be saved in the same way, for "all have sinned," and nothing but the Blood of Jesus Christ can cleanse the sinner.

Well would it have been for Charles had he learnt what Queen Elizabeth did; he would then have turned from his penance, his religious observances and dead works to the only Saviour of sinners.

For eighteen months he was seeking to make preparation for eternity, and at length he felt he was really going to die. Then he desired, for the good of his own soul, he said, to perform his own funeral. In the midst of a gorgeous scene, with robed monks and curling incense and beautiful flowers, he delivered up a lighted taper to his confessor, meaning to imply that he was yielding up his life. Then the monks chanted the funeral service over him. Afterwards he was conducted to his apartments, where a few days afterwards he died, holding in his hand a lighted taper and a crucifix. What poor things to lean upon in the hour of death, and how dark must the passage into eternity be for those who have no other than natural light. Many now-a-days might say, What an absurd and superstitious man Charles must have been; and yet these same people hope that the light of their reason, their charitable doings or good feelings will illuminate the darkness of death for them, and they are alike deceived. None but the One who was once dead but is now alive for evermore can drive the darkness from the valley of death; by Him alone has death been robbed of its sting, and the grave of its victory.

What a happy thing, then, it is to have this blessed Saviour, even Jesus, as our Saviour; to know that His love can satisfy the heart, and that His Blood can cleanse the soul from sin, and that what He has done secures heaven for ever for all those who trust in Him.

Then do not forget, dear reader: kings and paupers, old and young, rich and poor, must all be saved through Christ alone, or be lost in hell for ever without Him. See to it that you trust Him, and that just now.

Haul down the Flag.

The Fashoda Incident.

Lord Kitchener's brilliant victory over the Khalifa at Omdurman in the month of October, 1898, will not yet be forgotten, and it will also be remembered that, after crushing this great tyrant's power, he sailed up the Nile to Fashoda, to place there the flag of the country under which he served.

On arriving at Fashoda he found the place already occupied. Marchand was there before him to dispute his right to the place, and the tricolour of France floated from a tall mast near the river's bank.

It is evident that both flags could not fly there at once. If Kitchener was to unfurl the British and Egyptian standards then Marchand must haul down the French flag. The place could not be held by two powers.

Now I am sure that most English lads were interested in what is known as the Fashoda incident, and I want to use it as an illustration. Your heart is the Fashoda, and there is One who claims the right to fill it. His name is Jesus. He wants to gain your love, He wants to gain your whole heart for Himself, and while you read this paper we claim it for Him.

Alas! we often find the hearts of boys as well as grown-up people already filled. The banner of the world has been raised over the citadel, and a legion of things have taken possession to resist the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ.

During the Reign of Queen Mary England lost the town of Calais, her last remaining possession in France. This so preyed upon the Queen's mind that she said if they opened her breast after her death they would find the word "Calais" written upon her heart. Evidently Queen Mary's heart was set on Calais.

I wonder what is written upon the heart of my young reader. Is it pleasure, fame, or love of self? If these things are filling your heart, we fear there is no room for Jesus there, and He is the only one who has a right to be there.

Now we do not want to be misunderstood. We love to see boys happy and successful. We have no sympathy with long-faced and dolorous Christianity. We shall be glad to hear that you have passed your examinations well, or that you are getting on in your profession. We like to see boys able to handle the bat and kick the ball, for everything that you do ought to be done heartily. But if your heart is set upon any of these things to the exclusion of the Saviour, they will surely bring about your ruin.

The devil does not care what he fills men's hearts with if only he can keep Christ out. He has sin, pleasure, fame, wealth and fashion. These are the "Marchands" with which he garrisons the sinners' hearts to resist the claims of Christ, and over thousands, nay millions, his flag, the tricolour of the world the flesh and the devil, waves.

Oh! boys, if you are not yet saved, will you bow to Jesus now? HAUL DOWN THE FLAG, submit to the Saviour. He alone can give you lasting joy. Everything else must miserably fail.

Just before Cardinal Wolsey died, he said: "If I had served my God as I have served my king, He would not, in my old age, have cast me off." Ah! but that is like the world and the devil: for a few years a man may have the desire of his heart, but then, if he gains all that he desires, and loses his soul for ever, what will it profit him?

This did Wolsey; he wanted power, his heart was set upon it, and he got his desire, but lost his soul. Beware of this then, let not the world fascinate you as it has done some, but —

"Swing your heart's door widely open —

Bid Jesus enter while you may."

If you do it you shall be eternally blest.

Jesus can give you peace and liberty. If you have felt the bitterness of sin, Jesus can deliver you from its bondage. He can do this because He is the Victor.

Lord Kitchener carried freedom to the oppressed because he had crushed the great tyrant's power. He carried peace because he had gained the victory; and it is for this self-same reason that Jesus can deliver you.

Think of the love that filled His heart and brought Him down from heaven to take up your cause. He came to deliver the devil's captives, to take the prey from the mighty one, and He can do this because He has completely overcome him. He has been into the battle and has gained the mighty victory. He is a living and all-powerful Saviour, and none who trust in Him shall ever perish.

Then won't you trust Him now? He can settle every question that troubles you. If your sins make you miserable — His blood cleanseth from all sin. If it is judgment to come that you fear — He bore the judgment for all who believe in Him, and they shall not come into condemnation, but have passed from death unto life.

* * * * * *

For all who refuse to bow to Jesus now, there is a terrible future. He is Lord of all, and God has decreed that all shall acknowledge Him as Lord, if not now when they may be saved, then in eternity when there will be no mercy.

Marchand hauled down the Flag that had floated so proudly over Fashoda. Time was given to the French to consider whether they would do so or not, and they wisely decided to yield up the place to the conqueror of the Khalifa.

So the Lord has lingered for years over some of my readers. Will you not yield now? The Lord must triumph eventually, and terrible indeed it will be for you if it is in the day of judgment.

There was once an emperor of Rome named Julian. He persecuted Christians and sought to stamp out the name of Christ from the earth. He used to speak of Him contemptuously as "the Galilean." It is said that at the close of his wicked life when he felt himself to be dying, he cried out, "Oh! Galilean, thou hast conquered!" and so all must confess. May you do it now, my dear reader, then salvation and eternal heaven, present peace, and lasting joy, will be your portion.

Even unto Death;

or, Durosier's Devotion.

In the army of the Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte there was a young officer named Durosier: he was greatly attached to his leader, and always prepared to run any risk in order to serve him: often had he endangered his life in carrying out Napoleon's commands; and the only reward he sought was the approval of his master.

It happened at a very critical part of a great battle that Napoleon wished to send a despatch to a divisional general, who was hotly engaged with the enemy. The result of the battle would probably depend upon the safe delivery of the despatch, and Napoleon wanted a man in whom he could trust. He called for a volunteer, and Durosier at once offered himself for the important task.

"Spare neither yourself nor your horse, and come back at once," was the Emperor's command, as the young soldier put spurs to his horse and galloped off on his perilous ride. He was seen by the enemy and their fire was turned upon him; but on he went through a veritable hail of bullets, and safely delivered Napoleon's message to the general.

Back again he started, and in fifteen minutes' time was at the Emperor's side again.

"You have done well," said Napoleon; "I give you the rank of captain, and attach you to my person."

"Thank you, sir, but it is too late; they have shot me," replied the gallant young soldier; and opening his coat he displayed a blood stain and fell back dead.

That was a wonderful act of devotion and bravery, and when I first read of it my thoughts reverted to another act of devotion which shall never be forgotten throughout Eternity.

You may not have heard that God in heaven desired to send a message — a wonderful message of love into this world; or, perhaps, you have often heard the story and it has never really interested you yet. If so, I pray you give heed to it to-day, for it greatly concerns you.

God not only loved the world, but He wanted the world to know it; and whom, think you, did He choose to send into this world with this wondrous despatch? There was only one person who could be trusted with such an important mission, and that person was Jesus, God's beloved Son. And Jesus offered to go, for we read, He said: "Lo! I come to do Thy will, O God." He knew well what it would cost Him when He started — even His own precious blood: but come He would, that He might bring God's great love down to sinners.

Has it ever struck you, my young reader, that God loves you, and that He wants you to know it? You are far from Him if you have not yet trusted in Jesus. You are a sinner, and in danger of perishing in hell-fire for ever, but from this God longs to save you; He wants to bring you to Himself and have you in His bright home for evermore. He wants to bless you with heaven's best blessings, and, that this might be, Jesus came down from the skies.

But Jesus had to die.

Our sins deserved unmitigated wrath, and the strong foes had to be destroyed, and Jesus both bore the wrath and closed in conflict with the foes. All Satan's power was put forth to withstand Him, and all God's righteous judgment poured upon Him, but He went through it all that He might prove God's love to us. He has done it, He has delivered the blessed despatch safely. He has accomplished His work, but it cost Him His precious life. His blood flowed, but that flowing blood was the seal of God's great love. "God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5: 8.) And now the Glad Tidings can be proclaimed to sinners everywhere: God loves them; His home is open to them; "Whosoever will may be saved."

Napoleon could not honour Durosier for his devotion, but God has highly exalted His beloved Son, He has put the brightest crowns of heaven upon His worthy brow, and decreed that all shall bow to Him, and every ransomed soul — all who have received the message of God's love delight to cry —

"Worthy, O Son of God art Thou,

That every knee to Thee should bow."

But in vain, as far as you are concerned, will have been this wonderful proof of God's love, unless you trust in Jesus. God offers salvation to you through Him, but if you reject it nothing but the judgment awaits you. "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." (John 3: 36.)

We would beseech of you then to trust in this Saviour, and thank God for His great love in sending Him down to die for you.

When saved you belong to Christ.

He who saved you is your Lord, and it will be your happy privilege to serve Him; and as His Father sent Him into the world even so will He send you, that along with other christians you may show forth in this world what He is. I can understand my young Christian reader saying: Well, I should like to serve Him; He loved me and gave Himself for me, and to serve Him would give me deepest joy. If you have such a desire He will help you, and you have no need to be afraid of the consequences.

Durosier did not fear the foe, he only desired to please Napoleon, and yet he got nothing but death for his devotion; for Napoleon's rewards were only of value to those who lived to enjoy them. How different it is with those who serve the Lord Jesus Christ. They may be despised and scorned, and even slain for Christ's sake, as many have been. You have read many a time no doubt of the devoted martyrs who sealed their love to Christ by their own blood — shall not they have their reward? Indeed they shall.

They suffered here, but with Him they shall reign. They were cruelly slain by Satan's slaves in this world, but the One whose love made them willing thus to suffer has folded them to His heart, and, on the crowning day that is coming soon, all the world will behold them receiving from the pierced hand of their Saviour a starry diadem. And if you confess Him you shall receive the crown: He will say, "Well done." He will attach you then to Himself and make you reign with Him before all the universe.

Don't shrink from the pathway of devotion to Christ; He is with you to enable you to stand. He hath said: "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee;" so that you may boldly say: "The Lord is my helper; I will not fear what man shall do unto me."

In your own strength you can only fail, but if you are truly dependent upon Him, through Him you will be more than a conqueror.

How to Overcome

How to Overcome

being talks on Judges.

J. T. Mawson.

1. Foreword

The Imprisoned Eagle

I saw a pathetic sight in Scotland. It was a great eagle in a massive cage. The sun shining brilliantly in the heavens seemed to be calling to it to rise from the earth and rejoice in its natural element, and the royal bird in response to the call fixed its eye on the sun and spread its mighty wings and stooped for flight, and then, becoming conscious of the iron bars that held it prisoner, it dropped its wings and lowered its head in apparent disappointment and shame. I watched that captive bird on that lovely summer afternoon with growing interest. Again and again the light flashed in its eyes as it faced the sun and lifted its wings in the futile endeavour to soar away to the upper air, and just as often its wings sank down and it bowed its neck; the most striking figure of depression and defeat that I had ever looked upon. Had I been an artist and had I wished to paint a picture of defeat, that great bird would have been my model. And yet it had the desire for liberty, that was clear in the flashing eye, and it had power for liberty, that was clear in the outstretched pinions; it was the cage that held it prisoner in spite of its desire and in spite of the power.

The captive bird became a parable to me. It spoke to me of Christians, and, alas! how many such there are, who have the desire for the things above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God (Col. 3: 1), and these things are their own things, for they have been freely given to them of God, and the Divine nature is in them, or they would not be Christians at all. They have the power also to rise up in thought and affection to where their true life is, for the Holy Spirit dwells in them, and yet as to the practical enjoyment of these things they know nothing. Some of them did once, perhaps, but not now, for they are held as prisoners to the earth. They are encaged who should be free.

These captive Christians are not happy. They get glimpses of the glory that shines in the face of Jesus, and their hearts are stirred, and they vow that they will be free, but sighs instead of songs break from their sad hearts and they confess to themselves, even if they hide it from others, the completeness of their bondage. They sometimes toss upon their beds with regrets and groans and prayers, but they find that their resolutions are unavailing. The snares with which the devil enticed them have become a cage in which he holds them, and they despair of ever feeling the thrill of joy of Christian liberty again.

Let it be freely owned, as it has been fully proved, that there never was any satisfaction or profit to any Christian in worldly or fleshly things, they only bring strife into the soul and bitter regrets into the heart, and make the unhappy Christian the captive of the things that he has tried. Yet is there no way of deliverance? and shall the captive never become an overcomer? Yes, there is hope, for the Lord is gracious, and there is a way of deliverance for those who feel their bondage. "Those vows in the night, so fierce" and apparently so unavailing, show that the life of the soul has not been utterly crushed. They prove that there is a faithful Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, who is the propitiation for our sins; they prove also that there is a faithful Holy Spirit within the soul, for He it is that creates the exercise within it, so that the sighing of the prisoner goes up to God. And because of these things, and because it is God's will that His children should be free from every yoke of bondage, we turn to this Old Testament Book to learn, How to Overcome.

We need the whole Bible: to neglect any part of it means certain loss. The Old Testament is as necessary as the New, for in the New it is declared that the things which are recorded in the Old Testament were written for our admonition. (1 Cor. 10: 11.)

The largest nugget that the Californian gold-fields ever yielded was found upon a claim which was supposed to be worked out. The Bible is supposed by some to be worked out, good enough for former days, but out of date and of no practical value now, and so they have abandoned it for other fields that yield no gold at all. We know that it is an inexhaustible mine of wealth, for it is the word of the living God.

It is with this knowledge that we turn to the Book of Judges. We are not concerned as to what human hand held the pen in the writing of it; it is sufficient that it has its place in the Scriptures, and "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God . . . that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works" (2 Tim. 3: 16, 17).

There is in the Book of Judges the dark background of the failures and defeats of Israel. Solemn warnings indeed are they all to us, for we are in danger of being overcome and enthralled by foes not one whit less real than were those that enslaved God's people of old. But this dark background does but throw into bright relief the great victories gained by men whose faith was in God. These victories are illustrative of the way in which we, by the grace of God, may also overcome.

So the title of our talks shall be "How to Overcome," and the foes of which we will speak are:

The Mesopotamians — The World.

The Moabites — The Flesh.

The Canaanites — The Devil.

The Midianites — Earthly Things.

The Philistines — Carnal Religion.

It is in the foregoing order that they are presented to us and in that order we will consider them, with the earnest prayer that we may all be more than conquerors through Him that loved us.

We shall have little difficulty in proving that the nations that oppressed Israel set forth our foes as already stated, for the marks are so evident upon the face of them; nor shall we find many who will quarrel with us when we assert that the majority of Christians are under the power of one or more of these foes, and that the crying need of the day is deliverance.

The character of the Victories.

The victories gained by the Judges were not aggressive in their character; they were not the victories of conquest. Their foes sought to quench their light as a free nation, and to rob them of the inheritance which God had given them, and every battle that these leaders in Israel fought was to maintain their national existence, and to retain and enjoy that which belonged to them.

It was God's intention that these people should be ever victorious; when they crossed the Jordan He was with them in all the power of His might, and had they continued in subjection to Him no other yoke could have been placed upon their necks. But they turned away from Him and had to reap the bitter fruits of their backslidings. They followed the sins and gods of the nations, and they became the slaves of that which they followed. Now it is the same God, who, in those times which are past, overthrew the Egyptians and gave the promised land to Israel, that, has now wrought deliverance for us and given us an inheritance incorruptible and which fadeth not away. It is this which the gospel proclaims, and all who have received it can rejoice in a great Saviour, who "through death has destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and delivered them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Heb. 2: 14, 15). And this deliverance from the power of the devil has been effected that we might enter upon and enjoy the great riches which have been given to us in and with Christ.

But we are exhorted to stand fast in this liberty wherewith we have been made free for the danger of being entangled with some yoke of bondage is ever present. It is when we fail in this, and the heart goes after the things of the world and the flesh, that we become enslaved, and, like these sons of Jacob, we become the servants of that which we follow. Then is all service and witness hindered; we become wretched ourselves and useless to others.

But as we stand fast in our God-given liberty, with single eye and undivided heart, we are able to fulfil our high destiny as witnesses for Christ, and to win fresh territory for Him; for every soul saved by our testimony is a fresh bit of territory won from the power of the enemy, for the Lord's kingdom and glory.

The secret of Christian liberty.

The gospel has set us free from the yoke of sin and Satan that we might "yield ourselves to God." This is the secret of a happy life of Christian liberty, for as we yield our necks to His yoke we shall be free from all others. And this yoke is not irksome but easy, for in yielding ourselves to God, we are yielding to the One whose measureless love has been manifested towards us in the death of Jesus. The blood through which we have redemption is the pledge and token to us of a love too vast to comprehend, and the knowledge of that love constrains us not to live unto ourselves but unto Him whose love it is.

A notable feature.

There is a notable feature in Israel's history at this time which demands attention. It is stated (1 Kings 6) that the number of years between the deliverance from Egypt and the building of Solomon's temple was 480 years. But the actual number according to Paul's address to the Jews (Acts 13) was 573, showing a difference of 93 years in the two accounts.

How can the Book be of divine origin when such a glaring discrepancy occurs in it? sneers the infidel — a discrepancy which ordinary human care might have avoided.

But that over which the infidel in his blindness stumbles is full of instruction to those who are willing to be taught of God, and in this, which seems to be an error, we have a solemn lesson.

The building of Solomon's temple runs on the line of God's intentions for His people. He had redeemed them that they might live wholly unto Himself and prepare for Him a habitation (Ex. 15: 2). But during the ninety-three years in which they served His enemies and theirs, they were not living unto Him, this was not His purpose for them, — and, as a consequence, He could not reckon these sad years in His calendar.

In Acts 13 the Apostle Paul pressed upon the people the fact that Christ was their only hope. He showed them that all apart from Him had failed. Even David, their greatest deliverer and boast, had fallen under the power of death and saw corruption. This was the line of their responsibility, and the years of failure are reckoned that the risen Christ, in His perfection and victory over all the foes, might stand out in blessed contrast to all that had passed before Him.

The ninety-three years omitted from God's reckoning, when it was a question of His purpose for His people, to be made up as follows:

8 years under Mesopotamia (ch. 3: 8).

18 years under Moab (ch. 3: 14).

20 years under Canaan (ch. 4: 3).

7 years under Midian (ch. 6: 1).

40 years under Philistia (ch. 13: 1).

93

We have, in addition to the above, the oppression of the Amorites for eighteen years (chap. 10: 8), but here it is distinctly stated to have been on the other side of Jordan only (not truly in the land), and so does not affect the question at all.

If this is the true explanation for the apparent discrepancy (and we believe it to be so), what a weighty lesson it teaches. All the days and years which are not lived unto God are lost days, and we do not truly live unto Him if we are held in bondage by our foes. We can only be said to truly live unto Him as our souls are free and Christ and His things are supreme in our lives. All else is death and loss.

This will all be manifested at the judgment seat of Christ, when every man's work will be tried. We shall see then, that every day in which we have lived for the world, the flesh, the devil, or for anything instead of Christ, has been a lost day. "If any man's work shall be burned he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire" (1 Cor. 3: 15).

Let us give earnest heed to this all-important matter, remembering that the days are few. The coming of the Lord is at hand, when we shall be swept by His redemptive power into the eternal felicity of our Fatherland, and, as we look back upon the path we have trodden, we shall be compelled then to write L-O-S-T upon every day and hour in which Christ has not been first in our lives, for then we shall see things as God sees them.

It is evident, then, that to live unto Him is the only life worth living, for this alone will remain for eternity. The world thinks differently, and the flesh within us may make other suggestions, and propose self-indulgence, ease, worldliness, fame, gold or pleasure as being more worthy of our attention; but deep down in our hearts we know better, and taught by the Spirit we clearly see that the great works of men will come to naught, while labour in the Lord is not in vain; the earth also and the works therein shall perish, while our inheritance and the things of God are precious, imperishable and eternal.

Hold the fort.

It is possible for every child of God to carry the war into the enemy's camp as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, and to boldly follow the unfurled standard of the testimony of our Lord; but this, which is true Christian warfare, is scarcely within the scope of our talks. It is only as the victories of which we speak are gained that we can take up the sword aggressively.

In overcoming the world, etc., we are "holding the fort" against foes that seek a footing within our hearts in order to make us useless for the Lord. We are, in short, "keeping ourselves for Christ."

We may feel our weakness, and our inability to do anything for the Saviour whom we love, but we can all keep ourselves for Him alone, and anything is possible to those who do this. But to do this we must keep the line of communication with Himself intact.

As a general leads his men against the enemy he must keep in constant communication with the base of his supplies. He will be a beaten man if he does not, for food, ammunition and reinforcements and everything he needs are at the base. The foe will use every means in his power to outflank him and to cut the line of his communications. He must guard that line at all costs; if he is careless as to this the valour and enthusiasm of his men will be in vain.

We, too, must keep in touch with our base if we are to be victorious. The devil is a wily foe and will cut us off from our supplies if he can, hence the need of the exhortation "Cleave to the Lord with purpose of heart," for all our supplies are in Him. He is indispensable to us, but He is all-sufficient for us, and we cannot fail if we cleave to Him. Our business is to —

"Yield ourselves unto God."

"Cleave unto the Lord."

"Walk in the Spirit."

So shall we be more than conquerors through Him that loved us.

2 Mesopotamia: Type of The World

"And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites: and they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and forgat the Lord their God, and served Baalim and the groves. Therefore the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of Chushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia: and the children of Israel served Chushan-rishathaim eight years. And when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer to the children of Israel, who delivered them, even Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb's youngest brother. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he judged Israel, and went out to war: and the Lord delivered Chushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia into his hand; and his hand prevailed against Chushan-rishathaim. And the land had rest forty years. And Othniel the son of Kenaz died." (Judges 3: 5-11.)

"And afterwards the children of Judah went down to fight against the Canaanites, that dwelt in the mountain, and in the south, and in the valley. And Judah went against the Canaanites that dwelt in Hebron: (now the name of Hebron before was Kirjath-arba:) and they slew Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai. And from thence he went against the inhabitants of Debir: and the name of Debir before was Kirjath-sepher. And Caleb said, He that smiteth Kirjath-sepher, and taketh it, to him will I give Achsah my daughter to wife. And Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother took it: and he gave him Achsah his daughter to wife. And it came to pass, when she came to him, that she moved him to ask of her father a field: and she lighted from off her ass; and Caleb said unto her, What wilt thou? And she said unto him, Give me a blessing: for thou hast given me a south land; give me also springs of water. And Caleb gave her the upper springs and the nether springs." (Judges 1: 9-15.)

How to Overcome the World

What is the World?

Mesopotamia is a type of the world; not in its material character, which our eyes can see, but of its principles and ways, motives and maxims, which govern and control men who are not subject to God. The material world is the sphere in which these things find play, and the pomp and glory of it are the product of the will of men, but the will of men and their efforts for their own pleasure and exaltation are the spirit and life of it, while the material world is but the shell.

The world in this character is opposed to God; it is like a stronghold that harbours rebels against their rightful sovereign, and all who are on good terms with it are against God, for we read: "The friendship of the world is enmity with God; whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God" (James 4: 4). It appeals to the lusts within men, and is summed up for us in the verse: "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world" (1 John 2: 16). It is evident that it has nothing in common with God. Whether it is cultured or debased, religious or profane, it is His great rival, holding, by its magnetic power, the hearts of men which ought to be yielded up to God.

The three great features of the World.

The three great features of the world appeared first in the temptation in the Garden of Eden. Under the malign power of Satan, Eve saw that the forbidden tree was —

(1) Good for food — Lust of the flesh:

(2) Pleasant to the eyes — Lust of the eyes:

(3) And a tree to be desired to make one wise — Pride of life (Gen. 3: 6):

and, like leaves swept by the whirlwind from the tree that gave them life, the woman and then the man were swept far from God by this attack of the enemy. God was dethroned in their hearts; self became the centre of their lives. From that time onward man has been controlled by lust for what he has not, and pride in what he has; and we see in Cain and his descendants that it became easy for men to make temporary happiness for themselves apart from God and in independence of Him (Gen. 4: 16-22).

Abram was called out of Mesopotamia.

It was out of Mesopotamia that Abram was called by God (Gen. 12: 1). And the call of Abram is figurative of the call of men by the gospel to-day. The great object of the gospel is not to uplift or improve the world (though the world would be a sorry place without it), but to deliver men from its seductions, and call them out of it unto God. It is the will of God that His people should be delivered from its bondage and power, but for this there had to be a great sacrifice. That sacrifice has been made, for our Lord Jesus Christ "gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father, to whom be glory for ever" (Gal. 1: 4, 5). The gospel of God's grace, which tells of the great sacrifice which love has made, is a delivering gospel; it sets men free from the delusions and allurements of a world that is doomed to judgment and gives them heavenly hopes. It links them up with heaven, so that heaven becomes their Fatherland and home. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you" (1 Peter 1: 3, 4).

Heaven is the home of all those who have believed the gospel, and just in the measure in which we realize this shall we be strangers and pilgrims in the world.

Now God called Abram out of Mesopotamia that henceforward he and his descendants might be His own people; and, having obeyed the call of God, it is evident that the king of that land had no further claim over them. It is equally evident that those who have believed the gospel and belong to Christ are not of the world, for He has said: "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world" (John 17: 14). But Israel departed from God, and in so doing exchanged the joy and liberty of serving Him for bitter slavery; and the first king under whose yoke they came was Chushan-rishathaim, king of the land out of which Abram had been called. In like manner, oftentimes, Christians turn from the true fountain of life and gladness to seek satisfaction in this world, and that which they seek and follow enslaves them, and they lose their liberty and joy. We are all in danger of this, and need to give heed to the exhortation: "Love not the world neither the things that are in the world."

The King of Mesopotamia.

The name of the king means "double-wickedness," and in this it is a true type of the world, for we know that the one who controls the world is the devil (1 John 5: 19). Behind the scenes he holds sway: he offered all the glory of its kingdoms to the Lord: he still offers these things to the children of men, and by the glitter of them bewitches and destroys their souls. His wickedness in this respect has a double character, for he is both the god and the prince of the world which he controls (John 12: 31; 2 Cor. 4: 4).

The Israelites began to feel the iron yoke to which they had become subject, and they cried unto the Lord in their distress. He heard their cries and raised up for them a deliverer who was more than a match for all the power of Mesopotamia.

The Deliverer.

The man whom God could use to set His people free was named Othniel, which means, "powerful man of God." He is introduced to our notice in ch. 1. There his valour was fully tested and proved, and was also rewarded by the hand of the daughter of Caleb, and with her he received the south land — the sunny and fruitful place — and with this south land the upper and nether springs.

It was the man who possessed as his inheritance the south land, with the upper and nether springs that overcame the Mesopotamians.

It is God's way in these bright days of grace to work by the law of attraction. He would draw us from what is evil by the mighty magnetism of His goodness and love, and would drive the world from our hearts by the expulsive power of some better thing. This better thing is the south land with its upper and nether springs.

The South land.

The radiant beauty of this wonderful inheritance unfolds before our vision in the Gospel of John; and in John's writings, more often than in any other part of Scripture, we are warned against the world; for that which God has for us and the world are in perpetual antagonism. They cannot be blended or reconciled.

Now the Gospel of John possesses a very peculiar character. In it the Lord is not presented to us as the poor man without a place to lay His head, but as "The only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father" John 1: 18. That was His home, His rest, and His place of joy. He was able to speak of His possession in the hearing of His disciples, and the characteristic word of the Gospel is the possessive pronoun "My." chapters 14 – 17 the Lord uses it about thirty times. He was there in the midst of His prized possessions — the things that He could call His own: "My Father's house," "My Father," "My joy," "My way," "My name," "My peace," "My glory," and so forth. It is our blessed privilege to behold Him, as the Only-begotten rejoicing in the perennial sunshine of His inheritance. But He came into this world in order to seek out and find companions who should share these things with Him for ever.

Now Christianity is not made up of dogma and creed only, it is real and living, and consists in the enjoyment of these things of which the Lord here speaks.

He would have all whom He can call His own enjoy these things, for He said: "My peace I give unto you," John 14: 27. "These things have I spoken unto you that My joy might remain in you," John 15: 11. "The glory which Thou hast given Me I have given them," John 17. "My Father and your Father, My God and your God," John 20: 17. That these things might be ours He has associated us with Himself as His brethren, and it is His delight to give to us, not as the world giveth, but to share with us this wonderful inheritance. He has brought us to Himself that we might know and enjoy the best of His portion, even His Father's love; for He prayed to His Father that "the world might know that Thou hast loved them, as Thou hast loved me," John 17: 23. And again, "I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and in them," John 17: 26.

Here we are brought to the infinitude and eternity of divine love, too vast for our poor minds to comprehend; but, though we have scarcely begun to understand the precious meaning of the words, we are conscious that they are indeed the words of eternal life, and the sound of them thrills our hearts and makes them throb responsive to this unmeasured love.

How we may enjoy this Inheritance.

Now we can understand the Lord rejoicing in this south land where all is of God, for He was the Son of God, but how can we understand or enjoy this place which He gives in association with Himself?

If the King of these realms went down to a convict prison and pardoned a criminal there, that would be an act of clemency; but it would not be a kindness if he took him to his palace as a companion. The man would be quite out of place there, and probably far happier in the prison than in the palace. But if the King could give to him the spirit of the Prince of Wales, then all would be changed, for the man would then be able to appreciate the things of the King and would be at home in his company. Now what the King could never do God has done. He has given to us the Spirit of His Son — the Holy Ghost and the Spirit not only enables us to cry, "Abba, Father," but reveals to us the things of Christ, and enables us to enjoy them, and in the Spirit thus given to us we have the upper and nether springs.

We shall enjoy this place of blessing in all its fulness when we reach the Father's house on high, but such is His love to us that He will not keep us waiting for this joy until we reach that blest abode; He has given to us His Spirit that we might begin to enjoy it now.

The world's resources.

Mesopotamia means "the land of two rivers," and this is another feature which marks it out as being figurative of the world. It would be wrong to suppose that the world has nothing to offer, for it has two streams which, in its eyes, are both noble and sufficient. But they are not what they seem to be; they cannot yield that which the heart craves; and yet men, refusing the truth, blindly seek after them, even as Naaman in his pride cried: "Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?" The two great streams of which the world boasts are exposed in their unsatisfying character in John's Gospel. They are the counterfeit of what God has for men, and are: (1) Pleasure (ch. 4) and (2) Religion (ch. 7). The two sides of man's nature are appealed to, but of the first the Lord of Truth said: "He that drinketh of this water shall thirst again," John 4: 13. And on the great day of the greatest religious festival Jesus looked with compassion upon the unsatisfied multitude, and cried: "If any man thirst," John 7: 37.

As all the rivers run into the sea, and yet the sea is not full, so all the waters of this world's resources may flow into the heart of man and he remains unsatisfied. His heart is too big for the world; for he was created for God, and God alone can satisfy his thirst. The world's pleasure is totally inadequate to give him lasting joy, and its religion cannot save or uplift his soul.

The Lord's Proposals. — The upper and nether springs.

How blessed it is to find the Lord prepared to satisfy alike the heart-thirst of the pleasure-seeker, and to fill up the breasts of those who prove how unable to fill them were all the festivities of a hollow religion. He proposes to make men independent of the world in these wonderful words: "He that drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life," John 4: 14. In like manner He also proposes to make them contributors to the deep need of thirsty hearts within the world, for "In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given: because that Jesus was not yet glorified," John 7: 37-39. Could anything be more magnificent than this? To have a deep well-spring of satisfaction within, springing up into everlasting life, — rising up to its Source and Giver in intelligent appreciation and worship — this is the upper spring; and then, to have these same waters of refreshing flowing out in rivers to others for their blessing also — this is the nether spring.

These things are no mere fancy; it is true that they surpass the highest dreams of the poet, but they are, nevertheless, the solid truths of God, and are very tangible and real to those who love Him.

It is not difficult to see that as the heart enjoys this wonderful inheritance the world will have no charms. Its smiles will not allure, nor its frowns dismay: the bands of it will be loosened, and the soul free from it.

Only those who possess and enjoy this inheritance are true Othniels, — men of God — free themselves, and delivering others also.

But it is not by the energy of nature or by great efforts on our part to deny ourselves that we overcome the world; all such efforts would merely end in miserable legality and failure, it is as we enter by faith these things, and the heart truly enjoys them, that we shall delight in the commandments of the Lord, and prove that His commandments are not grievous. "For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world, and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God," 1 John 5: 4, 5.

Our great Example.

There has been but one perfect Man upon the earth, who in dependence upon God trod an ever-victorious path, and He has left us an example that we should walk in His steps. If we love Him, we shall delight to follow Him, and shall prove that His yoke is easy and His burden light. The Gospel of Luke presents the Lord to us in the particularly attractive character of the Man in dependence upon God, and it is in that Gospel that the devil confronted Him with the threefold temptation which had wrought such disaster in Eden.

The temptation in the wilderness consisted in:

(1) The lust of the flesh — make these stones into bread.

(2) The lust of the eye — all the kingdoms of the world.

(3) The pride of life — cast thyself down hence.

The first attack was met by a perfect answer: "It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of GOD." Certainly the Lord had the power to make stones into bread, but He was here to do God's will alone, and He never used His power on His own behalf; moreover, He would not look to the earth for His satisfaction but to God. He did not seek sustenance from below but from above.

"GOD" filled His heart, and was His answer to the devil's temptation. God would supply His every need, and He would not use His own power to take Himself out of the place of entire dependence on God, He was not here to please Himself but to do the will of God; the lust of the flesh had no place in His heart. It was here that Adam and Eve failed: they put self before God, but where they were overthrown Jesus stood firm, and the devil was foiled and driven back.

The attack was renewed from another quarter, and all the splendours of the world's kingdoms were set before His eye: but the power and pomp and greatness which dazzle and fascinate men, and for which they will sell their souls and deny their God had no charm for Jesus. Palmerston, the great prime minister, than whom none knew men better, said: "Every man has his price": but here was One whom no inducement could turn aside from His purpose. His eyes were upon God, and He met the trial with the conclusive answer: "For it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy GOD, and Him only shalt thou serve." A true worshipper of God is one whose heart is filled with His glory. It was ever so with Jesus here upon earth, and in that filled heart there was no room for the world; its empty splendour did not attract Him. "GOD" was also His answer to the second temptation.

Yet again the devil returned to the attack and suggested that He should cast Himself down from the temple pinnacle in the presence of the multitude below, and by so doing prove Himself to be the Son of God — the object of God's special care according to His word. But the trap was laid in vain: Jesus would await God's time for the manifestation of Himself and His glory. He would not tempt God by taking matters into His own hands and vindicating Himself, so he replied: "It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy GOD."

"GOD" is again the answer of the truly dependent and so ever victorious Man. He was impregnable, for He set the Lord always before Him. He looked to "GOD" for His sustenance. "GOD" filled His heart to the exclusion of all beside. "GOD" was His confidence, so that He left His times entirely in His hands and could not be moved.

Satan returned to the attack when the shadows of the cross were falling darkly on the pathway of the Lord. To turn Him aside from the path of obedience was still the intention of the enemy. He had failed to accomplish this by the attractions and favours of the world so he sought to do it by the terrors and frowns of it (Matt. 16: 21). The Lord began to show His disciples what he must suffer at the hands of men: all the horror of it pressed upon His spirit; and, seizing this opportunity, through Peter, Satan said, "This be far from Thee, Lord: [Pity thyself — marg.] this shall not be unto Thee." But the Lord at once detected the foe in His new character of an apparent friend and, He met his subtlety with stern rebuke: "Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art an offence unto Me: for thou savourest not the things that be of GOD."

"GOD" was still before His blessed soul; His only object for living here. He would not save Himself — that was no business of His — and thus all the devil's great siege guns were brought to bear upon Him in vain: He came through the conflict victoriously. The prince of this world came, but found no vulnerable point: he was utterly defeated. It could not have been otherwise when he tried conclusions with the One whose first recorded words were: "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business;" who lived on account of His Father alone, and never turned to the right hand or the left until He could say, "It is finished."

He overcame the world: its attractions and snares were laid in vain for Him. His heart was satisfied, and every breathing of His soul was controlled by God Himself. He is our Pattern and Guide, and in Him is all the grace and power we need, so that without faltering we may walk in His steps.

We owe everything to the devotion and love of the Lord Jesus Christ, and our hearts have been taught to appreciate Him in whom we have found transcendent beauty. But how did the world treat Him when He manifested Himself in it? They beheld His wondrous works, and were compelled to exclaim: "He hath done all things well." They heard the words of His mouth, and acknowledged: "Never man spake like this Man." And yet, at the end of it all, they spat in His face, and crowned Him with thorns, and crucified Him between two murderers. There was no room in the world for the lone but lovely Man of Nazareth. He was hated and cast out by it. Keep this in mind, all ye who belong to Him. Remember, also, that the world has never gone in deep contrition to God's footstool, and there expressed its sorrow for this deed; it is still guilty of the blood of God's dear Son. In the presence of this ask yourself the question, What ought to be my attitude towards this world? Can we wonder that Paul should say: "But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world," Gal. 6: 14; or, that it is recorded for our instruction and warning: "Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God," James 4: 4.

3 Moab: Type of The Flesh

"And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord: and the Lord strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel, because they had done evil in the sight of the Lord. And he gathered unto him the children of Ammon and Amalek, and went and smote Israel, and possessed the city of palm trees. So the children of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab eighteen years. But when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised them up a deliverer, Ehud, the son of Gera, a Benjamite, a man left-handed: and by him the children of Israel sent a present unto Eglon, the king of Moab. But Ehud made him a dagger which had two edges, of a cubit length; and he did gird it under his raiment upon his right thigh. And he brought the present unto Eglon king of Moab: and Eglon was a very fat man. And when he had made an end to offer the present, he sent away the people that bare the present. But he himself turned again from the quarries that were by Gilgal, and said, I have a secret errand unto thee, O king: who said, Keep silence. And all that stood by him went out from him. And Ehud came unto him; and he was sitting in a summer parlour which he had for himself alone. And Ehud said, I have a message from God unto thee. And he arose out of his seat. And Ehud put forth his left hand, and took the dagger from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly: and the haft also went in after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade, so that he could not draw the dagger out of his belly; and the dirt came out. Then Ehud went forth through the porch, and shut the doors of the parlour upon him, and locked them. When he was gone out, his servants came; and when they saw that, behold, the doors of the parlour were locked, they said, Surely he covereth his feet in his summer chamber. And they tarried till they were ashamed: and, behold, he opened not the doors of the parlour; therefore they took a key, and opened them: and, behold, their lord was fallen down dead on the earth. And Ehud escaped while they tarried, and passed beyond the quarries, and escaped into Seirath. And it came to pass, when he was come, that he blew a trumpet in the mountain of Ephraim, and the children of Israel went down with him from the mount, and he before them. And he said unto them, Follow after me: for the Lord hath delivered your enemies the Moabites into your hand. And they went down after him, and took the fords of Jordan toward Moab, and suffered not a man to pass over. And they slew of Moab at that time about ten thousand men, all lusty, and all men of valour; and there escaped not a man. So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel. And the land had rest four-score years." (Judges 3: 12-30.)

How to Overcome the Flesh

What is the Flesh?

Our talk on "the flesh" is not about what is physical, the body, but about that evil principle within us which makes SELF the centre of our thoughts and ways instead of GOD. The flesh is opposed to God's will and cannot please Him (Rom. 8: 8). It is not subject to the law of God, and, if allowed to act, will always serve the law of sin (Rom. 7: 25). It first appeared in this character when Eve put forth her hand to take the fruit of the forbidden tree, believing that by so doing she would become greater than God had made her. Self was her object in that act instead of God, and since that day all men by nature have been born into this world in the flesh, that is, they are controlled always by love of self instead of by the love of God. This is the nature of every unrenewed man.

But a great change has taken place in those who have believed the gospel of God's grace; they have been born again by God's Spirit, and have received the Holy Ghost. He dwells in them, so that of them it can be said: "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you" (Rom. 8: 9). They have received a new life and nature which, instead of making self the centre and circumference of all their thoughts, goes out in its desires and hopes to God Himself.

This is the new nature and life which every one of us who is saved has received. But the flesh remains in us, and it is only as we walk in the Spirit that we shall be free from the bondage of its lusts (Gal. 5: 16).

The Moabites are a striking figure of the Flesh.

(1) Their start was bad (Gen. 19: 37).

(2) They were excluded from the congregation of God's people (Deut. 23: 3; Neh. 13: 1).

(3) They were to be utterly destroyed, the last mention of them in Scripture being: "As I live, saith the Lord of hosts . . . surely Moab shall be as Sodom . . . a perpetual desolation" (Zeph. 2: 9).

With regard to the flesh, we read in the New Testament: "No flesh shall glory in His presence," 1 Cor. 1: 29; and in the Old Testament, "The end of all flesh is come before me," Gen. 6: 13.

"For himself alone."

But in the story before us we find other indications confirming the thought that in Eglon and the Moabites we have a type of the flesh. Eglon had his summer palace, a place of ease and pleasure, and he had it for himself alone (ch. 3: 20).

Here, in one brief sentence, the whole character of the flesh is disclosed. It is utterly selfish; it has nothing to render to God; every thought, hope and ambition finds self as the pivot; all that it has it has for "self alone." Oh, have you not often found this detestable thing forcing its way to the front when you least expected it? You did a kind act. Love and sympathy formed the motive, but scarcely was the deed performed when there crept in that base thought — "What will they think of now?" You may have been greatly helped in some service to the Lord, but, instead of being humbled by the grace that used you, and giving all the glory to Him who is the source of it, there was the inward vaunting and exulting, as though by your own strength you had accomplished the work. Or, perhaps, the service was a failure, and you became cast down and depressed, not because the Lord had been dishonoured, but because you had not shone as you had hoped to do. Someone else did something better than you, or outstripped you in devotion, knowledge, or ability, and thoughts of rivalry and jealousy took possession of you at once. It was the flesh, base and incorrigible, seeking all for "self alone." Oh, that we might get a true glimpse of its utter hatefulness, and turn away from it with loathing.

The Flesh has no claim upon the Christian.

The Moabites had no true claim upon Israel, and yet we find that Eglon had set up his throne in the city of the palm trees (which was the very gate of the land, — the city which God had taken with a mighty hand for His people), and from that place of power he ruled Israel and laid tribute upon them, so that what God alone had a right to claim from them was being rendered up to the king of Moab. How true a picture is this of the state of thousands of Christians. The flesh has no right to rule us, for, "We are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh," Rom. 8. We owe no debt to that evil principle within us which would make self everything to the exclusion of Christ; we have a perfect right to ignore its clamours and to walk in the Spirit; and yet, as Eglon of Moab received from Israel that which God alone could claim, so, alas! do Christians often yield time and thought and strength to the flesh, forgetting all the while that "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live," Rom. 8: 13.

Let it be again stated and emphasized that, if you are a Christian, the flesh is a usurper if it dominates you, for, "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you," Rom. 8: 9. When we believed the gospel of our salvation, the Spirit of God took up His abode in us; and the sealing of the Spirit means that the Lord has claimed that which He has purchased with His own blood. Now the work of the Spirit within us is to displace self and to overthrow for ever the dominion of the flesh by making Christ supreme in our affections.

You may be sure that the flesh will not readily yield up the sceptre, and will ever be on the alert to itself. "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other," Gal. 5: 17.

All our efforts to subdue the flesh are futile.

Let us not suppose that the flesh can be improved or made fit for God. It was said of Moab: "His taste remained in him, and his scent is not changed," Jer. 48: 11. It is also true that, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh," John 3: 6. It may be religionized, but it will remain in independence of, and rebellion against, God. It often intrudes itself in divine things, but even there it will still seek all for "self alone." It cannot be educated, coaxed, or whipped into subjection to the law of God, for its nature absolutely contrary to that law.

This is a lesson that must be learnt, though the learning of it is always a bitter process. The progress of the lesson is given in Romans 7.

(1) You long to do that which is good, and are sadly disappointed when you find that you can only do that which is bad.

(2) You search for the reason and are disgusted when you find that from you, that is your flesh, no good thing can come, for the simple reason that no good thing exists in it.

(3) You make great efforts to throw off the terrible incubus, and despair fills your heart as you prove them all to be in vain. Then, when you come to your wits' end and give up the struggle, the load is lifted by another hand. The morning breaks and the way of deliverance from the terrible morass in which you had struggled is made plain. But this deliverance can only be reached in God's way.

How the victory is gained.

God found a prince in Israel who not only escaped from the yoke of Moab himself, but was able to deliver others also; and in contemplating the ways of Ehud we shall learn the way of deliverance. He was commissioned to carry the tribute of the Israelites to the monarch of Moab, and from what follows we may conclude that this was not pleasant work; he must have felt how degrading a thing it was for God's people to be thus enslaved. There is no victory apart from exercise of soul. If we are content to walk after the things of the flesh, and with the ordinary kind of Christian living that we see all round us, we shall never know the joy and liberty of power over the flesh.

Ehud's name means, "him that praises," and he was a true son of his father Gera, whose name means, "combat or disputings." You may be sure if you are to become "him that praises" in the full gladness of victory, there must be first exercise and conflict of soul; for victory, joy and praise are always the offspring true soul exercise.

At the Stones of Gilgal.

Having delivered himself of his mission to Eglon, Ehud went to the quarries or stones of Gilgal. That was the right place for the man who felt the bondage under which Israel was groaning, and it was the place where such a feeling would be greatly intensified; for it was there that the reproach of Egypt had been rolled away. (Joshua 5: 9.) The people of God had been bondmen in a strange land; but, when they reached Gilgal, they were not only free, but were brought to the land of liberty; circumcision took place there, and circumcision was the sign of their freedom.

It was from Gilgal, as God's freedmen, that they had gone to victory after victory; and, if they had not forgotten that place and its lessons, they would never have known defeat and slavery, and the shoutings of victory would never have given place to the lamentations of Bochim.

Ehud, in going to Gilgal, had reached the point of departure; the point, in fact, where the true life began; the life which God intended that the people, whom He had so wonderfully redeemed, should live.

Gilgal was the most interesting spot in the land:

(1) There stood the twelve stones taken out of the bed of Jordan.

(2) There circumcision took place.

(3) The passover was celebrated.

(4) They ate of the old corn of the land.

(5) The Captain of the Lord's host took his place at their head as leader and guide.

We will deal only with the first two of these important events, as they have a more particular bearing on our present subject; and, if they are understood, we shall have little difficulty in comprehending what followed them.

The Twelve Stones.

These had been taken from the bed of the river, where the feet of the priests that bore the ark stood firm. (Joshua 3 — 4.) They were to be a reminder, to generations yet unborn, that the ark had stood still in the midst of the place of death, that the people might pass clean over into the place of life.

The type speaks eloquently to us of the condition in which we were and of what God hath wrought for us.

"We in death were lying."

"By sin came death; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned," Rom. 5; but Jesus, the true Ark of the Covenant, stood in our place in death, so that we might be clear of it for ever and stand with Him in resurrection life. Can we think of the way God has taken to deliver us without being profoundly moved? Love was the source of it all, and love has carried it out; love that many waters could not quench and which could not be extinguished by all the billows of death; and, if the waters of death could not put out the fervent flame of this love, neither can the ages of time dim its brightness. It is eternal and omnipotent. As we see this love shining out in such direct contrast to the hateful selfishness of the flesh, are we not delighted to know that God's gracious and all-wise plan was that we should be cut off from the flesh and be linked up with the love for ever?

But the twelve stones were placed clear out of Jordan's swelling waves; they were set up in the land of promise where Jehovah's rich blessing was the people's portion, and they are typical of the Christian's place to-day. We no longer stand in condemnation and death but in Christ, in the full light of God's favour, in the land of promise which flows with milk and honey. This place of blessing before God has not been obtained by any work or merit of ours. It is God who has established us in Christ, and hath anointed us, and also sealed us, and given us the earnest of His Spirit in our hearts. 2 Cor. 1: 22. We have been accepted in the Beloved, and blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Eph. 1: 3, 6.

Now we may not understand what all this means, but it is evidently something great and good, and it is what God has done for us, so that the very sound of it makes out hearts beat more quickly, and fills us with longing to enter into the joy of it all. And the more clearly we see that it is by grace that we are thus saved and not of ourselves, the greater will be our desire to understand and enjoy this place of acceptance and favour.

Circumcision.

Intimately linked with the twelve stones on the banks of Jordan was the circumcision of the people; and, if the former sets forth in figure God's grace to us, the latter makes known His unsparing judgment of the flesh — "it must be cut off" — and the people who were the subjects of His gracious acts in ancient days had to bear on their bodies the mark of the condemnation of the flesh.

Now God's judgment of the flesh has no such thought as a man being punished for a crime and being restored to society after that punishment had been borne. The meaning is totally different. It is the setting aside of the flesh entirely as a means of glory to God or blessing to man. Full of meaning are the words of Jesus "The flesh profiteth nothing," John 6: 63. It is absolutely and utterly void of good. You may be sure that this is the case or God would not have cleared the ground of it. But, let us keep in mind that He has done this that all blessing might be of Himself, and so established on an immovable and eternal foundation.

If we are still in doubt as to its unprofitable character, and its utter inability to appreciate what is of God, so as to render to Him what is His due, we have but to look at Calvary.

God's blessed Son had lived before the eyes of men; they had seen His ways and heard His words; He displayed in the midst of them the tenderness and grace of the Father; and at the end of it they spat in His face. He was buffeted, betrayed, and crucified as being utterly hateful and abhorrent to them. There and then the flesh disclosed its bitter enmity against God, and proved conclusively and for ever that there was no profit in it for God or for us. It proved itself, indeed, to be a wild vine, bringing forth no fruit. And having rejected God's Son, the great and final test, it has been rejected by God, and it can never be reinstated.

But, how good it is for us to learn that the death of Christ, which manifested the character of the flesh, also displayed the heart of God in all its love. It proved that He would not be thwarted in His intentions to bless men, and it also proved that this blessing must be alone on the ground of what He is and can do, and not at all on the ground of what we are.

"By grace are ye saved . . . and that not of yourselves," Eph. 2: 8. Here, in two sentences, is the summing up of the whole matter. "By grace are ye saved" is the setting up of the stones in the land; "that not of yourselves" is the circumcision of the flesh.

For four thousand years the flesh had its day, but all its wisdom, power, self-sufficiency, culture, and religion only proved useless and unprofitable. It cannot lift its head, and glory in the presence of the Lord. Condemnation and death are its true and proper doom.

Even Christ Himself was cut off from the life of the flesh, though death had no claim upon Him. He might have lived for ever in the condition which He assumed, for His flesh was holy; every fibre of His blessed constitution was devoted to God; He fulfilled every responsibility perfectly, and no taint of sin ever marred His perfect humanity. Had He lived on in that condition He would have lived alone: but He died, and in His death sin in the flesh was condemned.

In the death of Christ we see the complete setting aside of the flesh, for death is the end of it — it has met its judgment. Though we have not actually died, in God's reckoning we have passed off the ground of the flesh; and this is also true of faith. We do not now stand before God on the ground of what we are, for on that ground we could only be condemned, but we stand before Him in Christ and there there is nothing but favour. We are buried with Him . . . quickened together with Him . . . risen with Him, Col. 2. "Buried with Him in baptism." The mark of death is upon us, and we henceforth take the place of death to that life of flesh and sin.

Now death to the unconverted man would mean the cutting off from all that made up life to him. But I am persuaded that if we view it in the light in which God presents it to us, we shall find in it the door of liberty: for this true circumcision of Christ, "not made with hands," is the sign of the Christian's freedom.

The flesh will always serve the law of sin, and sin is a cruel task-master, like unto the Egyptians who made Israel to serve with rigour; and the only way of freedom from this great slave owner is by death. A man owns a slave and holds him in hard bondage, but there comes a day when that slave no longer answers the master's call. He is dead, and there ends the domination of the master. "But," you may say, "I am not dead; I have not received the wages that sin pays." That is true; but it is also true that Jesus, in perfect love, received them for you, that you might take your place in death with Him, and be freed from the old task-master so as to serve God; for it is your privilege to reckon the death of your substitute as yours.

The well-known Napoleonic story will illustrate this. A citizen had been called to fight, but another had gone under his name and number, and was killed in the battle. Shortly afterwards, other men were wanted for Napoleon's wars, and again this citizen was called upon, but he claimed freedom from service on the ground that, at such and such a battle, he had died in the person of his substitute. The case was referred to the Emperor, who upheld his claim. "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord," Rom. 6: 12. Thus will you be free to yield yourself to God, and to walk in the blessed liberty of the Spirit, and enjoy the fatness of the land into which He has brought you.

But we are anticipating that which our story unfolds.

Let us again link these two things together: —

(1) The stones on the banks of Jordan set forth our place of association with Christ in the favour of God — which place is all of His grace.

(2) Circumcision means that the flesh has no place there: it could not obtain that place: nor could it stand in it, for it is utterly without merit, and most evil and offensive in God's sight. "They that are in the flesh cannot please God."

The Death of Eglon.

From his musings at Gilgal Ehud returned to King Eglon, but his mission on this occasion was very different to the former one. He now carried no present from an enslaved people, but a message from a delivering God. "I have a message from God unto thee." And that message was one of judgment for the two-edged dagger, plunged into the very heart of the king, was the judgment of God upon the one who had held Israel in bondage.

We have already seen that God has condemned the flesh once and for all, and that He will never go back upon this; for He has proved it to be without profit, and we must come to the same conclusion in our experience. We have to learn that there is no profit in the flesh for us, and so shall we be prepared to accept God's condemnation of it, and thus, truly plunge the two-edged dagger into the heart of it.

The man who had been to Gilgal could not tolerate the presence and domination of Eglon in the land and lives of the people of God; nor shall we tolerate the flesh and its workings in our lives if we have truly learnt the lessons which Gilgal teaches; instead, we shall be most unsparing in our judgment of its slightest movements.

There is much confusion in the minds of many Christians as to what judging the flesh really means. Some are always bemoaning their badness and failure, and are very miserable in consequence, and they imagine that this is self-judgment. It is the very opposite.

Self-Occupation is not Self-Judgment.

It is often and truly said that the devil does not care whether you are occupied in praising or scolding yourself so long as you are taken up with self. For you must know that you can never be greater or rise higher than that with which you are occupied; and as long as self fills your eyes Christ is eclipsed.

If you have said there is no good in the flesh you have said all that needs to be said, and it is now your right and privilege to turn from it to Him who is altogether and for ever good, and be occupied with Him. Paul had plunged the knife into the flesh when he wrote: "We are the circumcision which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh," Phil. 3: 3.

When a vote of no confidence is moved and carried in the British House of Commons the Government falls and a new ministry takes its place. This is what you must do: move a vote of no confidence in the flesh. How can it be done? Cease to support it upon the government benches; turn away to the Lord, and let God's Holy Spirit have the reins and guide you henceforward. You do not trust a person in whom you have no confidence; you would not commit to such a one your secrets, much less allow him to direct and control your life; and yet, is not this the way you have treated the flesh? Thence the failure and bondage. Oh, take the two-edged sword of God's truth, as to its worthlessness, and plunge it to the hilt into the heart of it; have done with it — cast it aside — no longer be on speaking terms with it — and henceforward walk in the happy liberty of the Spirit and occupation with Christ.

Then it will be evident that you have reached God's conclusion as to the matter, and you will be true to your circumcision.

The happy results.

Then Ehud went to Mount Ephraim. Ephraim means "the fruitful place," and we are able to bring forth fruit for God just in that measure in which the flesh is judged. We have been joined to Christ by the Spirit in resurrection life that we might bring forth fruit unto God, and the Spirit of God is within us in order to reproduce in us that which has come out in Jesus, so that God may be glorified through us.

It was in Ephraim that Ehud was able to blow the trumpet and rally the people to share with him the victory that he had gained, and this is the result of deliverance. If the channels are free the new life, which we have in the Spirit, will flow out for the blessing of others. Unlike the flesh the new man has nothing for "itself alone"; it delights in sharing its joys, and proves the truth of the words, "There is that which scattereth and yet increaseth." Along this line you will become like the man whom Christian saw in the house of the Interpreter —

"Whom some did count as mad, —

The more he gave away the more he had."

You may tell me that you have tried to judge the flesh, and failed over and over — that it is too strong for you; but, surely, you have forgotten that God has sent His Spirit into your heart, that He is there to displace the flesh and make room for Christ, and the whole matter now hangs on your desire. Has Christ become indispensable to you? Have you found such a portion in Him and His love that your soul cries out "He alone can satisfy" Ah, then in dependence on the Spirit your path shall be bright indeed.

But never lose sight of the death of Christ; let the cross of Christ be your glory, for that cross is the way of victory, even as Ehud, at the fords of Jordan, typical of the truth of our death with Christ, slew ten thousand Moabites.

And the land had rest fourscore years.

There is a sweet sound about that! It is the harbour after the tossing sea; it is home after the weary conflict; it is the experience of the soul that can say: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord," Rom. 7: 25; and henceforth find its delight and food in Him alone.

Let us now finally weigh the issues.

Is there any advantage in living after the flesh? What saith the Scriptures?

"The minding of the flesh is death," Rom. 8: 6.

"He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption," Gal. 6: 8. This is the present result and is unalterably the experience of all who sow to the flesh. The moment of sowing may have ministered self-gratification, but the reaping has been bondage and sorrow, regret and spiritual death.

"For if ye live after the flesh ye shall die," Rom. 8: 13. The final end of that road.

But what is the advantage of living and walking in the Spirit?

"The mind of the Spirit is life and peace," Rom. 8: 6.

"If ye through the Spirit do put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live," Rom. 8: 13.

"He that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting," Gal. 6: 8.

It might further help us if we put side by side "the works of the flesh" and "the fruit of the Spirit."

Works of the Flesh:

Adultery, Fornication, Uncleanness, Lasciviousness, Idolatry, Witchcraft, Hatred, Variance, Emulations, Wrath, Strife, Sedition, Heresies, Envyings, Murders, Drunkenness, Revellings, and such like.

Fruit of the Spirit:

Love, Joy, Peace, Longsuffering, Gentleness, Goodness, Faith, Meekness, Temperance. Gal. 5: 19-23

"And the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth," Eph. 5: 9.

The final victory.

But the time is coming when the flesh shall no more hold sway, for "There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners [or pillars] of Moab," Num. 24: 17. In prophetic vision even the false Balaam beheld the ascendency of the coming Christ over Moab. He was to arise as the star of hope for His enslaved people. He was to take the sceptre, and, ruling them in righteousness, deliver them for ever from their oppressors. What is not yet true for Israel must now be true for you. Christ Jesus must be our pole-star, our light, our hope, our guide, and He must sway the sceptre in your life. Oh, let it be so! Enthrone Him in your hearts: crown Him with your undivided affection: let Him be supreme.

"Crown Him Lord of all!"

4 Canaanites: Types of the Devil

"And the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord, when Ehud was dead. And the Lord sold them into the hand of Jabin, king of Canaan, that reigned in Hazor; the captain of whose host was Sisera, which dwelt in Harosheth of the Gentiles. And the children of Israel cried unto the Lord: for he had nine hundred chariots of iron; and twenty years he mightily oppressed the children of Israel.

"And Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel at that time. And she dwelt under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in mount Ephraim: and the children of Israel came up to her for judgment. And she sent and called Barak the son of Abinoam out of Kedesh-naphtali, and said unto him, Hath not the Lord God of Israel commanded, saying, Go and draw toward mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali and of the children of Zebulun? And I will draw unto thee to the river Kishon Sisera, the captain of Jabin's army, with his chariots and his multitude; and will deliver him into thine hand. And Barak said unto her, If thou wilt go with me, then I will go: but if thou wilt not go with me, then I will not go. And she said, I will surely go with thee: notwithstanding the journey that thou takest shall not be for thine honour; for the Lord shall sell Sisera into the hand of a woman. And Deborah arose, and went with Barak to Kedesh.

"And Barak called Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh; and he went up with ten thousand men at his feet: and Deborah went up with him. Now Heber the Kenite, which was of the children of Hobab the father in law of Moses, had severed himself from the Kenites, and pitched his tent unto the plain of Zaanaim, which is by Kedesh. And they showed Sisera that Barak the son of Abinoam was gone up to mount Tabor. And Sisera gathered together all his chariots, even nine hundred chariots of iron, and all the people that were with him, from Harosheth of the Gentiles unto the river of Kishon. And Deborah said unto Barak, Up; for this is the day in which the Lord hath delivered Sisera into thine hand: is not the Lord gone out before thee? So Barak went down from mount Tabor, and ten thousand men after him. And the Lord discomfited Sisera, and all his chariots, and all his host, with the edge of the sword before Barak; so that Sisera lighted down off his chariot, and fled away on his feet. But Barak pursued after the chariots, and after the host, unto Harosheth of the Gentiles: and all the host of Sisera fell upon the edge of the sword and there was not a man left." (Judges 4: 1-16.)

How to Overcome the Devil

The Canaanites, with Sisera as the captain of their hosts, are figurative of the devil and his power, and we shall see in the victory of Deborah and Barak the way in which the devil has been, and still may be, a defeated foe.

There are several features in the story which prove that we have the devil's domination and defeat before us.

(1) Sisera was the great leader, and his name means, "he that binds with chains," and we are well aware that the great captive-maker is Satan himself. He was finally destroyed by that which was very weak in itself — his head was bruised, even to death, by a woman and a nail of the tent, and JESUS, the woman's Seed, has bruised the serpent's head. Men despised Him, because He was meek and lowly; His death was weakness and folly in their eyes, but —

"By that which seemed defeat,

He won the meed and crown,

Trod all our foes beneath His feet,

By being trodden down."

(2) It was a woman who raised the song of thanksgiving at Sisera's overthrow, and this links our story with the defeat of Pharaoh at the Red Sea, and of Goliath in the valley of Elah. Each of these incidents sets forth different phases of the Lord's victory over Satan, but they all have this one striking feature — the women appreciate the greatness of the triumph. At the defeat of Pharaoh "Miriam . . . took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously," Ex. 15: 21. At the overthrow of Goliath "the women answered one another as they played, and said . . . David has slain his ten thousands," 1 Sam. 18: 7. And now, at the defeat of Sisera, Deborah sings "I, even I, will sing unto the Lord; I will sing praise to the Lord God of Israel," Judges 5: 3. This sets forth the grace of God most beautifully, for the woman was the first to fall before the wiles of Satan, and the woman is typical of the Church — the Bride of Christ, which is made up of all who have believed the gospel of our salvation. None will appreciate the triumph of the Lord over death and the devil like this ransomed host and from them will rise the fullest and sweetest song of praise. The angels must rejoice at Satan's overthrow, but we, who have been deceived by his lies, and known the bitterness of his bondage, can enter most truly into the triumph of the Lord over him. We can say, "Bless ye the Lord!" For "where sin abounded grace does much more abound."

(3) In Deborah's song we have, for the first time in Scripture, the expression, "captivity led captive," which undoubtedly refers to the Lord's victory over Satan, and of which we will speak presently.

How Satan works.

It will be well for us clearly to understand what Satan's real work is, and how he has succeeded in enslaving the human race. From the very outset his effort has been to blind the eyes of men to the true character of God, so that instead of loving and praising God they might hate and curse Him, and instead of walking in the highway of His will they might wander in the dark and crooked paths of their own lawless desire. And so, in the story before us, we do not get the song of praise until Sisera is overthrown; and Deborah has to confess that, throughout the twenty years of Israel's captivity to the King of Canaan, the highways were unoccupied and travellers walked in the crooked paths, ch. 5: 6.

We know that man was made upright, and so long as he remained faithful to his Creator he was possessed of everything that could make his life one thrilling anthem. God beheld the work of His hand and saw that it was very good, for His noblest creature stood before Him as a well-tuned instrument of praise. But Satan succeeded in turning men from God and light and liberty and song. He looked upon that fair scene with eyes of malice, and, that he might spoil it all, lied concerning God. He maligned God's character to the woman, and thus proved his right to the title: "A liar, and the father of it," John 8: 44. His proposal was: "Break God's command, and ye shall be as gods," which meant, God is not as good as He pretends to be, listen to me, and you will do better for yourselves than God has done for you; put self first, and leave God and His will out of your reckoning. The temptation succeeded; the lie was believed; sin came in and light went out. The chord was lost, the music died out, and man, that fair instrument of praise, lay broken and spoiled in the power of the foe. It seemed as though God had met with defeat and that Satan held the field, for he made the heart of man, in which God ought to have been enshrined, his citadel, and succeeded in enlisting men in his rebellion against God; and to this day he keeps them in captivity by keeping them in darkness; for we read: "If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them," 2 Cor. 4: 3, 4. And our Lord declared: "Those by the wayside are they that hear; then cometh the devil and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved," Luke 8: 12. So that we see very clearly that Satan gained his power over men at the beginning by blinding them to the truth of God's character, and he keeps them in bondage in the same way.

How Satan's power has been overthrown.

But how has Satan's power been overthrown? There are three things which were prominent in connection with Sisera's defeat. First of all we have Deborah. Deborah means "activity," or, "like a bee." She was wedded to Lapidoth, which means "light" and in Deborah's song she finds much cause for thanksgiving in the fact that the people willingly offered themselves. "When the people willingly offered themselves," ch. 5: 2. "The governors of Israel that offered themselves willingly," ch. 5: 9. "A people that jeopardized their lives unto the death," ch. 5: 18.

Here then are the three things which are essential to victory over Satan: (1) Light. (2) Activity. (3) The willing offering. These three things were seen most blessedly in the Lord Jesus Christ, and He, by them, overcame the devil completely. It is in the Gospel of John that we have the statement: "Now shall the prince of this world be cast out," John 12: 31; and it is in the same Gospel that we have these three things of which I have spoken made prominent: —

(1) "I am the light of the world," John 8: 12; John 9: 5.

(2) "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," John 5: 17.

"I work," John 9: 4.

(3) "The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep," John 10: 11.

"I lay down my life," John 10: 17.

Darkness is ignorance of God, and, when Jesus came to earth, gross darkness covered the people. He came to declare God's true character, and to make known His heart of love. But this light was not passive; it shone forth in all the activities of God's beloved Son. Light and activity were wedded together in Him, nor can they be divorced. We see that light shining in the works and words of Jesus. He fed the multitude when it fainted with hunger. He gave relief where sorrow held sway. The sick received health, and the dead, life. He blessed the children and wept over sinners; but in all these things He was but displaying the character of God. The words and works were all His Father's, so that He could say: "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father," John 14: 9. Now the light that shone forth in the activities of His grace was for the deliverance of men from the thraldom of Satan, who had held them in darkness and ignorance of God; and the shining of this light was not in vain, for some could say: "We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth," John 1: 14. But more was needful than the display of God in His life: He had to become a willing offering, for only by His death could the prince of this world be cast out and the power of death taken out of his hand. It was only by the death of Christ that the light of God's love could reach you and me; but in that death the light of love, the activity of infinite compassion, and the offering up of the devoted sacrifice were combined.

Let us recall that notable scene. When Pilate brought Jesus forth wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, and, presenting Him to the multitude, exclaimed: "Behold the Man!" — the world was on its trial. Did it, in that supreme moment, return to its allegiance to its Creator, and signify such a return by bowing down in lowly submission to His Son who stood before it? Oh, no! Instead they cried: "Away with Him, crucify Him" "Then delivered he Him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus and led Him away," John 19: 16. In that culminating act of rebellion we see how Satan dominated men. They were so completely under his yoke that, there and then, they attempted the murder of their God.

I am firmly of the opinion that if the Lord had used His power, and destroyed that devil-deceived and rebellious multitude by the breath of His mouth, Satan's object would have been gained; for then would men have remained in ignorance for ever as to God's love, and sin would have proved greater than God's grace. All the powers of darkness were marshalled against the Lord, and men were so blinded and driven by those same powers that nothing would still their frenzy but His blood. Did the devil hope that that would be the unpardonable sin? and that in pouring out his own inveterate hatred against the Son of God he was involving the whole race of men in his own irretrievable and eternal ruin? How complete then has been his defeat, for instead of Jesus manifesting His glory as the Judge of all, we read, that, "He bearing His cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha," John 19: 17. He went forth that the blood which sinful men were determined to shed might be efficacious for their redemption.

"They led Him away:" in that their guilt reached its flood tide. "He went forth:" in this was manifested the great victory of divine love over human hate. He was not dragged forth, nor driven forth: He went forth. No man took His life from Him: He laid it down Himself. The shouts of the rabble smote His ear, and, with a holy sensitiveness, He keenly felt it all, and yet no thought of saving Himself was in His heart. In majestic lowliness He went forth, bearing His cross, to accomplish that for which He came.

He knew, to its last bitterness, all that the cross meant. He was not taken by surprise, nor did He go forth on the impulse of a moment. On the night that was passed in Gethsemane's garden He had looked into the darkness and had fully counted the cost. He had talked of it on the holy mount with Moses and Elias. This hour had been planned in the council chamber of Eternity ere ever He came, and He could not draw back. There was no resistance, no regret, and every step He took towards Golgotha, shook the kingdom of the devil. And "there they crucified Him;" and the crucified Christ is God's answer to the devil's lie in Eden. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life," John 3: 16. If God had left us to reap the bitter harvest of our rebellion and sin, we could not have complained; but, instead of this, He undertook to dispel the darkness and overthrow the power of the devil, by this mighty and convincing proof of His love to us. Satan had made men believe that God was a hard master, gathering where He had not strawed. God has proved that He is full of love by giving the very best gift that heaven contained, even His own beloved Son, to bear the penalty of our sin, and it is when the glorious light of this love shines into the hearts of men that Satan's thraldom comes to an end. Jesus was lifted up upon the cross, and that lifting up has declared the whole truth, and we who believe it have been drawn to Him. He has become our great attractive centre, and the devil no longer holds us as his prey. The lie is laid bare, the darkness of ignorance past, and God has triumphed; for the prince of this world is cast out of the hearts of those who believe. He no longer holds them as his citadel. They have surrendered themselves to the God whose perfect love has been demonstrated in the cross of Christ.

How great is the splendour of Calvary! By its glorious light we have been awakened from our night sleep as by the rising sun at morn. We have been compelled to exclaim: "Then God did love us, after all!" The entrance of His word has given light, and with light has come liberty. The curtains of darkness have been torn asunder, and our souls have stepped forth into the day.

Science has revealed to us the fact that light, like sound, is caused by vibrations, and with all vibration there is music, and if the auditory nerve were as sensitive as the optical we should hear the music of the light as well as see its beauty. Certainly the light of God's love brings sweetest melody with it even the melody of heaven — and the chord that was lost in Eden is found again; only the music is sweeter, the strain higher, and the glory of the praise more wonderful. As we gaze upon Him, who is now upon the throne, and in whose face all the brightness of God's grace shines, our hearts are kept in tune, and our whole souls vibrate in responsive praise to the love of God.

Nor have we any doubt as to the completeness of the triumph of Jesus, for He is alive from the dead, and His glorious words to us are: "Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death," Rev. 1: 17, 18.

Since the Lord has gained so signal a victory over Satan, it is the privilege of those who have been delivered from his power to overcome as well to be "more than conquerors, through Him that loved us." And if we turn again to the overthrow of Sisera we shall be helped in seeing how this can come about.

Barak was called from Kedesh.

He dwelt at Kedesh, which means, "sanctuary, — the place of refuge." It was, in fact, the first-named of the cities of refuge which were set apart for the manslayers in Israel, and in which such dwelt securely. Whether Barak had been compelled to seek refuge there from the avenger of blood or not we cannot say; but it is certainly true that it is from the position typified in Kedesh that we go forth to the conflict with the foe. Christ is the true and great antitype of Kedesh. Death was the penalty due to our sins, and we were held in bondage by the terror of it, but we have fled for refuge to the only hope of death-doomed sinners — the Lord Jesus Christ. In Him we have salvation and a perfect deliverance from the fear of death. The devil can no longer hold us in abject bondage by the thought of it, for Jesus died "to deliver those who, through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." And, being safe in Christ, — dwelling in the true Kedesh, — we can face the enemy boldly, and take up the song of triumph: "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" 1 Cor. 15: 55, 56.

But our great foe is full of wiles. The activities of Satan are tireless, and many an ambush will he lay in which to ensnare us; and, if we are to be overcomers, we shall need to be sober, vigilant, and watchful.

How we overcome.

There are those who imagine that the Christian pathway is one of ease; that, since the future is all secured for them, all must be peace for ever, and that they may dream themselves into heaven without trouble or exercise. How mistaken are such. We have peace with God, and may always have peace as to our circumstances, but there must be no peace with the foe. We are exhorted to —

"Be strong in the Lord . . . "

"Put on the whole armour of God . . . "

"Stand against the wiles of the devil."

"Wrestle against . . . principalities and powers."

"Give no place to the devil."

"Resist the devil and he will flee from you."

"Whom resist, steadfast in the faith."

This is not the language of the couch of down, but of the battle-field, and we need to be fully equipped if we are to be overcomers in the fight.

You will remember that three things have already been made prominent in Sisera's overthrow, namely: Light, Activity, and the Willing Sacrifice. These three things, so perfectly displayed in the Lord, will need to be reproduced in us if we are to become overcomers.

(1) We overcome the devil by the word of God.

Our text for the first shall be: "I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one," 1 John 2: 14. This is light, for the Scripture saith: "The entrance of Thy words giveth light," Ps. 119: 130. The young men in the Christian sense of the word know God in His true character. This light is in them, and they are fortified and made strong by it, and the devil can not shift them from their position. They are enabled, moreover, by the word of God, to overcome him — to make him flee from them. The devil can only overcome by darkness and lies, but these must fly away before the light and the truth.

The Scriptures must be our constant study, and so shall we be able to build ourselves up in our most holy faith: then the truth of God will be our shield and buckler. It was by the word of God that Jesus overcame the devil, and as God's word is hid in our hearts, so shall we have it ever ready to meet the foe.

Thousands who have really trusted in the Saviour are still greatly harassed by the devil, and are kept in constant doubt and fear, because the full light of the gospel is not theirs. If it were his attacks would be in vain. When the devil brought the long catalogue of Luther's sins before him, in the hope of overcoming and affrighting him, his reply was: "The blood of Christ, His Son, cleanseth me from all sin." And with that blessed truth abiding in him he was able to overcome the devil.

But there are others, who, in times of stress and trial are attacked by the enemy in another way. He would tempt them to doubt the love of God towards them. "How can God love me and permit me to be in such trying circumstances?" is the question in many hearts. A Christian of our acquaintance, who was thus tempted, exclaimed: "Though He slay me I will trust Him!" and the devil was put to flight. But, if all Christians who are tempted, truly believed that they are loved by an unchanging and almighty love, would they give way to the temptation and allow doubts and murmurings and complaints a place in their lives? No, for their hearts would be garrisoned by the knowledge that, if God loves them perfectly, that which He permits must be the best for them, and so Satan would have no power to make them doubt the God whom they know.

We must remember that Satan gains the victory when he makes us doubt God. It was thus that he triumphed in Eden; it is thus he triumphs still; and only as the truth of God abides in us are we strong to resist his attacks.

(2) We overcome the devil by the activities of divine grace.

It would be wrong for us to sit at ease, and, being blessed ourselves, to eat our morsel alone. To do so would be undoubted proof of our complete failure to be what God would have us, and thus also prove that Satan had gained an advantage over us; for Satan triumphs if we falsify the character of God, which we are here to display.

"As My Father hath sent me, even so send I you," John 20: 21, are wonderful words for us to listen to, and set the high standard for our life down here. It is God's intention that we should be kept in the activities of His grace, showing forth His character in that corner in which He has put us.

I know that some people are very fond of harking back to Luke 10: 38-42, and putting Mary, sitting at Jesus' feet, in contrast to Martha, who busied herself in service; but the story is often set in the wrong light, and the interpretation is in consequence very much fogged. Let us go back and consider the Lord's words that precede this incident. In verse 37, there are two words which we will put in capitals — they are, "GO" and "DO." You could not find two smaller words than these in the English language, but it would be impossible to find any more forceful and vigorous. They pulsate with life; they vibrate with energy; and they are the command of Jesus. But, He adds "likewise," and as the meaning of that qualification forces itself home, we see at once the necessity of sitting at His feet. How can we go and do like Him unless we learn of Him? It was here that Martha failed. She had got the words "go" and "do," but she forgot the qualifying word "likewise," and as a consequence her service was marred by worry and trouble, and she served in a cross and carping spirit. Mary's place at Jesus' feet must indeed be ours. It must always be the attitude of our souls. But be assured that those who sit there will most truly and constantly be found in the activities of the grace of God.

This grace must first show itself in the innermost circle, amongst our fellow Christians. If we fail here we shall be terribly crippled in the wider circle of the world: and that the devil is anxious to trip us in this inner circle is evident from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians. There was in that church a brother who had grievously sinned, but repentance had done its work, and he was full of sorrow and longed to be restored to the comfort and fellowship of God's people. But they evidently kept him at arm's length, and were not ready to forgive him. The keen-sighted apostle sees in this reluctance of theirs a wile of the devil, and he writes earnestly to them to let grace flow out, or Satan would get an advantage. Had they done other than that urged by Paul they would have failed to display God's character, and the repentant brother would have been swallowed up with sorrow, and Satan would have triumphed over both. 2 Cor. 2.

It had evidently forced itself upon Peter that this was the spirit in which the Lord intended that His disciples should act when He said: "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times but, Until seventy times seven." Matt. 18: 22. There must be no limit to the activities of grace in this circle. We must not be weary in well-doing, but ever keep in mind that word "likewise."

Let us awake to the fact that harshness and legality in our dealings one with the other spells victory for Satan. Let us also keep in mind that gentleness, forbearance and love are for the glory of God.

But these activities also manifest themselves in seeking the good of souls. When Christ ascended on high He fulfilled the prophetic song of Deborah and led captivity captive. From that place of power He has bestowed gifts upon men, for the edifying and building up of His own people, so that in spite of all the enemy's attempts to throw them down, and his cunning craftiness, they might not be deceived by him or turned away from the truth, Eph. 4: 9-14. It is within the reach of all who are near the Lord to carry sweet thoughts of Christ about to others, with the result that joy takes the place of depression in the hearts of those who hear, and the temptations of Satan thus lose their power.

God's grace to the world.

It is our privilege also to tread in the steps of Jesus, our Lord and Pattern, and carry to those who have fallen beneath the power of the devil that which can completely deliver them. "Shall the prey be taken from the mighty and the lawful captives delivered?" was asked long ago. We have the answer to that question to-day, for the gospel concerning God's Son has delivering power, and every soul saved is a fresh bit of territory wrenched from Satan's domination — a fresh bit of territory added to the Lord's kingdom. How glorious to see the dark flag hauled down and the devil driven out to see the Lord come in and take possession and use that new bit of territory as a vantage point from which fresh victories may be gained.

This is the Lord's own work, but He is pleased to put it into the hands of those whom He has delivered, for we read:

"How shall they hear without a preacher?" Rom. 10: 14.

"They so spake that a great multitude believed," Acts 14: 1.

"He which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins," James 5: 20.

But the conflict is real and fierce, and foot by foot the devil will contend for the ground that he holds. We must realize that we are confronted by his power, then shall we turn away from any fancied wisdom and strength of our own to the Lord alone. We shall desire earnestly to carry out the glad tidings, but we shall seek constantly the place where true power and wisdom are to be found — even the presence of the Lord — and so shall we prove that dependence on Him alone is the way of victory.

"Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore, take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked [one]. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; and for me, that utterance may be given me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel," Eph. 6: 20.

The gospel of the grace of God makes way for that which is behind it, and with this end in view, Christians are exhorted to wrestle and pray; for the ultimate result of the preaching of the gospel is the triumph of what God is in His nature and activities, and the utter confounding of the enemy.

"Curse ye Meroz." Are any who profess Christianity indifferent as to this conflict? Let them hear the solemn words: "Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty," Judges 5: 23. Oh! why did Reuben abide by the sheep-fold while the great conflict waged? Why, oh, why do Christians to-day, loving ease and comfort, abide in the safety of the sheepfolds, when God's glorious gospel is going forth, and is opposed by all the power and ingenuity of Satan? Surely where such indifference holds sway the devices of Satan have been successful, and he has got an advantage. The Lord grant us grace so that we may forget ourselves, and go forth to the conflict, led by the light of the knowledge of Himself and the activities of His grace, until the morning dawns, when all His enemies shall perish, and when those that love Him shall be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might. Judges 5: 31.

(3) We overcome Satan by being ready to sacrifice ourselves.

Now, if the devil fails to make us doubt the love and goodness of God, and to hinder us from seeking the good of others, he will endeavour to overcome us by making us think much of ourselves — putting self first instead of God. This was the first evidence of departure from God in Eden. Eve thought of herself, and when she put forth her hand to take the fruit of the tree, she proved that she had begun to love SELF rather than God, and this has always been natural to men since that sad day. It was this that Satan cast in God's face when he said in the presence of the Almighty: "Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth Thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse Thee to Thy face," Job 2: 4, 5. Satan understood well the character of the fall. He knew that men were utterly selfish; that they would sacrifice everything, even their God, to save themselves.

In the Lord Jesus Christ, our Pattern and our Guide, we have a perfect example. He willingly sacrificed everything, even His life. When tempted by Satan to pity Himself and refuse the cross, He maintained His blessed pathway of perfect devotion to God. He loved the Lord, His God, with all his heart, His soul, His strength; and His perfect answer to the great temptation was: "The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?"

The saints of God have the victory through Him, and Satan will be bruised beneath their feet. We have the character of this victory made plain in Rev. 12: 10, 11: "And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death." Here, indeed, is victory over Satan, for here are those who, in spite of all his subtlety and temptations, loved God better than themselves, and willingly laid down their lives for His testimony. God was more to them than life itself. This is God's triumph over Satan in the hearts of His people. They love God: but this is the result of His love to them, as manifested in the blood of the Lamb. That blood is the undeniable token to us of a love that would overcome every opposing force; a love that could not be quenched by the many waters of death. And this love so triumphs over them and takes captive their hearts, that it, and the truth of the God whose love it is, becomes everything to them — all else is of no account. Thus it was with the martyrs, who sang their songs of triumph amid the flames at the stake. Thus it will ever be where the love of God holds sway.

But, how do we stand in this matter? these days we are not called upon to go to actual martyrdom for Christ's sake, yet it is our privilege every day to prove that we love Him better than ourselves. Is not this the secret of true discipleship? Do we not find it set forth in the Lord's words? "If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after Me, cannot be My disciple," Luke 14: 26, 27.

"Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it," Mark 8: 34, 35. There is here not self-denial, but the complete denial of self — the constant sacrificing of self, if you will, for bearing the cross means this; and in so doing — in losing our lives thus — we tread in the footsteps of the One who was ever victorious, for He —

"Trod all His foes beneath His feet

By being trodden down."

As we tread this path we are more than conquerors through Him. "What is it to be more than a conqueror?" was the question asked. "To kill six men and be ready to kill a seventh," was the reply given. But, was this the right answer? Ah, no! but exactly the reverse. It is to be killed six times ourselves and be ready then to be killed again. "For Thy sake we are killed [not killing] all the day long," Rom. 8: 36. When we are thus prepared to sacrifice ourselves for His sake, we have the victory, and God is glorified in us.

But see what precedes and follows the verse quoted, and you will then understand the secret of this victory, and see how it is possible for us, who are by nature always self-centred, to rejoice in suffering. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or sword?" ver. 35. None of these physical sufferings can separate us from His love, though oft-times our souls may lose the sense of it. Then we get downcast and prone to murmur in the midst of trial: and thus Satan gains an advantage. But, if our hearts are right, and we are dependent upon the Lord, our great Intercessor, the tribulation does but drive us closer to Him, and we are thus made to prove afresh the blessedness of that love which is greater than the greatest trial. Then can we glory in tribulation: then do the dews of sorrow shine like unto precious gems, and we are content and happy with God's way for us, and are true overcomers. Then follows the blessed conclusion: "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," verses 38, 39. If the first list are physical trials in which we need the love of Christ as our support, here are spiritual foes, and against these God Himself is opposed. They cannot separate us from His love, for His love is greater and mightier than them all. All the power of these spiritual things was marshalled to separate us from the love of God and to hold us in bondage, but the cross of Christ destroyed their dominion, and through His precious death, the love of God has secured us in spite of them all, and since this is a glorious fact we need not fear. Oh, may the light of this matchless love so fill and move our hearts that we may be always ready to be killed all the day long for Jesus' sake, and so be more than conquerors through Him that loved us.

5 Midian: Type of Earthly Things

"And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord: and the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years. And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel: and because of the Midianites the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves and strong holds. And so it was, when Israel had sown, that the Midianites came up, and the Amalekites, and the children of the east, even they came against them; and they encamped against them, and destroyed the increase of the earth, till thou come unto Gaza, and left no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor ass. For they came up with their cattle and their tents, and they came as grasshoppers for multitude; for both they and their camels were without number: and they entered into the land to destroy it. And Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites; and the children of Israel cried unto the Lord.

"And it came to pass, when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord because of the Midianites, that the Lord sent a prophet unto the children of Israel, which said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you forth out of the house of bondage; and I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of all that oppressed you, and drave them out from before you, and gave you their land; and I said unto you, I am the Lord your God; fear not the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but ye have not obeyed my voice.

"And there came an angel of the Lord, and sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abiezrite: and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the wine-press, to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him, and said unto him, The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour. And Gideon said unto him, Oh my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? but now the Lord hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites. And the Lord looked upon him, and said, Go, in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have not I sent thee? And he said unto him, Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house. And the Lord said unto him, Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man." (Judges 6: 1-16.)

How to Overcome

Earthly Things

The Midianites are a striking figure of earthly things. They robbed the Israelites of the enjoyment of their God-given inheritance and made their lives a burden and a misery, and this is precisely what earthly things do for the Christian, when he is dominated by them.

Now the things of earth are not necessarily bad and grossly sinful. They are things which may be right and proper when kept in their right place, and they may include God's temporal mercies to us: but if they become our object in life they crowd out the things of Christ and heaven, and as a consequence the sunshine departs from the life and the song from the lips, and soul prosperity is at an end.

Briefly summed up earthly things represent the "cares," "riches," "pleasures," and "necessities" of this life. They embrace the sweet and bitter, the joy and sorrow, the prosperity and adversity of our existence here, and are found in the family, social, and business circles, and if the mind becomes absorbed with them, the seed of the Word is choked in the heart and does not bring forth fruit. This is evident from the Lord's own words, "And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection," Luke 8: 14. "Take no thought [anxious care] for your life, what ye shall eat; . . . or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind [live not in careful suspense]. But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you," Luke 12: 22.

Those who know not God, and whose vision is bounded by the present — the nations of the world — seek after these earthly things, Luke 12: 30. But as the eagle spreads his broad pinions, and soars above the earth, and bathes himself in the fair sunlight, so has the Christian received title and power to rise above the things of earth to enjoy the bright treasures of that place where Christ is pre-eminent. If, instead of fulfilling this high calling of God, he is found burrowing in the earth, there is neither fruit for God nor light for others, for these two things are intimately linked together by the Lord, Luke 8: 15, 16.

Earthly things are set in contrast to things in heaven, and there is a constant rivalry between them. The things in heaven belong to the Christian, but the things of earth claim his attention and would exclude from heart and mind that which is his true portion; hence the need for the exhortation, "If ye then be risen with Christ . . . set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth," Col. 3: 1, 2. The condition of those who mind earthly things is most serious, even though they are Christians, for the Apostle had to write, "For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ; . . . who mind earthly things. For our conversation [or citizenship] is in heaven," Phil. 3: 18, 19, 20.

How the Midianites treated Israel.

"And they encamped against them . . . and left no sustenance for Israel, . . . and Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites."

The Midianites prevailed against Israel, and because of the Midianites the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains and caves and strongholds, Judges 6: 2. In short, they hid themselves in the earth. God had set them in that land to be a witness for Himself, and if they had walked in His ways their light would have been kept brightly shining, and other nations would have learnt how good it was to have Israel's God. But they were no witness for God when hidden in the dens and caves of the earth; nor is there any light for God to-day in those of His people whose souls are under the power of the things of earth; their light is hidden instead of being set on the candlestick, so that all may see the light.

God had brought His people into that land that they might enjoy it, and they found it to be a land flowing with milk and honey — a land of joy and gladness, — where the corn grew in abundance and the cattle flourished upon its verdant hills. But when the Midianites invaded the land, and made their home there, all this was lost to them, for they came up like grasshoppers, devouring every green thing, and the people of Israel were greatly impoverished, and utterly robbed of those blessings which God had given to them.

Christian, do you find yourself in a like situation? You have allowed the things of earth to occupy your thoughts and heart, and they have invaded the land in a multitude, and have crowded out the things that are brightest and best. You can look back to the time when the things of Christ and heaven were the joy and delight of your soul, but you have lost your taste for them, and the Holy Spirit has been grieved, and your soul has become greatly impoverished. You have no time now for quiet communion with the Lord, for the Midianites have come up "with their cattle and their tents as grasshoppers for multitude; and they have entered into the land to destroy it."

Oh, it is pitiful that this is the sad case of thousands of erstwhile flourishing Christians, who have been overcome, not by gross sinfulness, nor even worldliness, but by the "things of earth!" "The family, the business, the things of this life must be attended to," they say, and, in consequence, the things of Christ, which are their true and proper portion as God's people, are neglected, and mark well the three-fold result:

(1) No fruit for God.

(2) No light for others.

(3) No sustenance for themselves.

The First Step to Deliverance.

But in their distress Israel cried unto the Lord because of the Midianites, and that cry of need was the start of better things. They were brought to acknowledge that if God did not help them there was no hope for them; and this is an immense lesson for all to learn. Nor can it be too constantly emphasized that deliverance, in its every phase, must come from God — our striving is futile. You may have made many attempts to rid yourself of the galling yoke of earthly things, but all in vain. If you have come to the end of your own resources, then you have reached the right place for blessing; for the end of your resources is the beginning of God's, and to His there is no end. If your soul has become impoverished let Him hear your cry. He is unchanged; it is your own ways that have brought disaster upon you, even as the Israelites were suffering for their own disobedience, Judges 6: 10.

In answer to their cry of need God raised up a deliverer for them, and of him we have a most interesting and instructive description. There are several things which stand out strikingly in his character and conduct to which attention must be called

(1.) He was able to preserve to himself some of the produce of the land of which the rest of Israel had been robbed.

(2.) He was greatly troubled because of the condition of God's people.

(3.) He had low thoughts of himself.

(4.) The main incidents in his pathway to victory took place at night or in secret.

(1) Gideon is introduced to our notice whilst threshing wheat in the secret place, to hide it from the Midianites. This wheat was the true portion of the people, for it was the produce of the land which God had given them: for us it is a type of Christ. Israel had been robbed of their sustenance, but Gideon had been able to secure some, at least, from the thieves. He evidently valued that which he guarded so carefully and would not be robbed of it if he could avoid it. It was to that man the Lord could reveal Himself, and he could be called a mighty man of valour, for he had started along the pathway to final victory.

Do you appreciate Christ, and is it your habit to retire into secret away from the stress and worry of every-day life, in order to feed upon Him and His things, which are your true portion?

Is it possible that you have to confess that you have no time for His things, and that from dawn to sundown you are fully occupied with the duties of the day? Then, indeed, you are under the galling yoke of these most tyrannical foes of your soul — earthly things.

Make time to feed upon Christ in secret. You will soon realize the good of it. The days will be brighter, the loads less heavy, your spirit less fretful, and, perhaps, that anxious look will depart from your face. In short, a new era will dawn for you if you will but turn aside to thresh the true Corn in the secret of God's presence. You will need to guard these quiet moments jealously, for these earthly things will intrude themselves into the most sacred hours, if permitted.

It was whilst Gideon threshed the corn that the Angel of the Lord appeared unto him with the soul-thrilling announcement: "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour." The one who could hold fast to what God had given could be thus addressed; the Lord was with him, and strength and courage must be his in consequence.

(2) But Gideon was not elated at the angel's salutation. He thought of the state of the land, and he expressed his heart's deep exercise as to it. The days were not as they once had been, and he felt it deeply. It seemed as though the Lord had forsaken His people, and he is greatly troubled because of it. He had wheat himself, but he was not satisfied to have this alone and remain indifferent to the impoverished condition of God's heritage.

And the Lord looked upon him with evident satisfaction, and said "Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have I not sent thee?"

The one who truly gets to God about things must feel how lean of soul are many of God's people, and how little the precious things of Christ are known and valued. Feeling this, he will not be satisfied to eat his portion alone. Ah, no to do so would be undeniable evidence of a heart at a distance from God. We cannot separate ourselves in thought from the rest of God's flock; their poverty and their hurt is ours.

Gideon refused to separate himself from the rest of God's people, for when the angel said, "The Lord is with thee," Gideon replied, "If the Lord be with us;" and the more we appreciate Christ the more we shall love His people and long for the long deliverance of every one of them from every yoke of bondage.

(3) The third feature in Gideon's character was low thoughts of himself. He does not vaunt himself because of the way that he is addressed, but speaks instead of the poverty of his family, and of his own littleness; and this marked him still more decidedly as a chosen vessel unto the Lord; so that that which had already been announced, can now be emphasized: "Thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man.”

Three things always go together, and are each a distinctive mark of the grace of God in His people. (1) Appreciation of Christ; (2) Love and care for His people; (3) Low thoughts of self.

God must have His rights.

Gideon was still in much ignorance as to who conversed with him, but it is pleasing to see that when the right moment came, he could bring forth the unleavened cakes, the fine flour, and a kid of the goats. The Lord accepted his offering, and said unto him: "Peace be unto thee: fear not: thou shalt not die." With increasing light there was increasing faith and vigour on Gideon's part, for he built an altar unto the Lord and called it "Jehovah-shalom," which means, "The Lord send peace." He took his stand upon God's own gracious words to himself, and claimed peace for all.

The building of that altar meant that God should have His rights — those rights of which He had been robbed for so long a time; and it is when God has His rights that He can send peace.

This, then, was the man whom God could use for the delivering of His people, and the marks of grace and faith in him are figurative of that state which must characterize us if we are to be delivered and deliverers. The man whose soul is fed upon the things of heaven will be a worshipper of God, for his heart will be filled with the things of God; and he it is who can raise the altar with a divinely given intention to render to God what is His; nor will he yield mind and heart and time to occupation with the things of earth.

Thus far the activities and progress of Gideon had been in secret and with God; we now come to his first blow at the dominion of the enemy.

An altar to the false god, Baal, had been raised in the land, and it was in consequence of this that they were suffering under the tyranny of the Midianites. Baal is the god of the sun. The sun sets forth the influences that rule the day, and the altar of Baal in the land is typical of the things of earth having ascendency in the hearts and minds of God's people. This altar had to go to make room for God's altar, for the two could not stand together.

In the same epistle in which we are exhorted to set our affections on things above, not on things on the earth, we read — "That in all things He might have the pre-eminence." If we are to be free from bondage and walk in liberty, Christ must be pre-eminent. O Christian! does your heart respond to this? He is truly worthy of this place, and if "in all things," then, surely, in your heart and life. If the influences of the day and the things of this life have the ascendency with you, then the things of Christ are displaced; the false god, Baal, has raised his head in the midst of your life, and, as a consequence, you are joyless and fruitless. Oh, cast down that altar; do it at once; make Christ everything. "Little children, keep yourselves from idols."

But, mark well, it was the man who had been in secret with God who could overthrow the altar of the false god; and you can have no power against these foes except as you have to do with God in secret.

An absolute necessity.

We will now pass on to the very interesting incident recorded at the end of chap. 6: 33-40. The Midianites, with their allies, the Amalekites (a figure of the flesh), came forth to fight against Gideon. This was natural, and is so to-day. You may be sure that, if you have drawings of heart heavenward, you will have to contend with these combined powers, for the flesh loves not the things of Christ, but finds its satisfaction in the things of earth.

But Gideon was not afraid; he blew the trumpet of warning, and gathered the people of God together, but ere he undertook to go forth to battle, he had again to speak with God in secret. In the secret of God's presence he desired the performance of a miracle, and that of a very peculiar kind. A very paltry one, says the scoffing critic. A very essential one to us, if we are to be victorious, is our reply. Gideon's request was that the fleece should be saturated with that of which the earth knew nothing — "let the dew be upon the fleece only and all the earth dry." The character of the animal is known by its fleece. Then the fleece shall represent our character in this world; but let us remember that character is formed from inside — from what the heart and mind dwell upon. Are we prepared to say to God: "Let the dew be upon the fleece; let us be saturated, baptized, entirely characterized by that which the earth does not possess?" That is Christ, surely; and it is only as our hearts and minds feed upon Him that we shall bear the heavenly character and stand out distinctly from what is of the earth. You may tell me that such is your desire, but that all your efforts in that direction have been entirely in vain. And let me assure you that your efforts always will be fruitless. You cannot perform a miracle, and to bring that about of which we speak is impossible except by the power of God.

Gideon did not propose to do this thing himself, but he yielded the fleece to God and asked Him to bring it about. And this is the secret: "Yield yourselves unto God," and you will prove that what is impossible with men is possible with God. It is His delight, in perfect grace and by the power of the Spirit, so to fill our hearts and minds with Christ that we may bear His character in a world which knows nothing about Him. But Gideon did more than yield the fleece to God; he also displayed energy and desire connection with this matter, for he rose early on the morrow to see the answer of God to his prayer.

God grant that we may show the same energy in our spiritual desires. We are oftentimes — alas! too often satisfied with longing and praying, both right, but we must go further; there must be the surrender of ourselves to God — there is no substitute for this; and then the earnest seeking and waiting for the result.

Gideon had one more request to make before he took the field; it was that the fleece might be dry and all the earth wet. Here we have the negative side of the matter, which naturally follows the positive. It shall mean for us: Let us be free in heart and character from that with which the earth is saturated; let its maxims, principles, ways, hopes and aspirations have no place in our lives, for these things can only mar our enjoyment of Himself. His cross has separated us from them, and we must be free from them practically if we are to represent Him aright.

It is interesting to note that it was in the threshing floor that these desires were expressed — in the place where Gideon had first met the Lord and where he had shown his appreciation of God's blessing; and we may also be sure that these desires are the true and natural outcome of feeding upon Christ in the secret of God's presence, away from the influences of the day and the intrusion of earthly things.

From this point onward Gideon went forward to victory. He had had much to do with God in secret, and in the strength and courage and wisdom gained there he was able to plan his campaign against the foe.

But there are still further lessons for us to learn ere we come to the final deliverance of the people, and these lessons do but emphasize what has already been before us.

The testing of the People.

The people were too many; and there was the danger of their taking the credit of the victory to themselves, and falling thereby into a worse state than that in which they had been. More than two-thirds of them were cowards; their own skins were of more value to them than the fight of the Lord, and they were glad to return to their own homes. Do we shrink from exercise of soul? Do we seek ease and comfort rather than conflict, which we must have if we are to be over-comers? We may go on with meetings and services, read books and discuss doctrines, but, are our souls braced up in divine courage? If not, we are unsuited for the fight, and until our souls are truly revived we are disqualified for it.

Ten thousand yet remained, who were not cowards as were their former comrades; but the greater part of them were not such as God could use; so to them was applied a further and severer test.

"Bring them down to the water, and I will try them there," is God's command. Water is one of the greatest of God's mercies, and in this instance an abundant supply was brought within reach of the host, and by the way they treated it their fitness to be God's warriors, or otherwise, was manifested. Nine thousand seven hundred stooped down to get as much as they could, and, for the time, seemed to forget the fight. On the other hand, three hundred took just that which would meet their present necessity, and no more: the fight of the Lord controlled them, and all else was kept in abeyance.

The true use of God's mercies.

Here we see the true use of the mercies of God. We need food and clothing and shelter, and these are all put within our reach. How shall we treat them? If our object is to obtain as much of these things as possible we have become their servants, and are amongst those who cannot face the foe, for we have begun to mind earthly things. If on the contrary these things are used only as God's mercies to us, and we are content with such things as we have, remembering that we are here not to accumulate treasure on earth but for the testimony of the Lord, then shall we prove ourselves to be fit vessels for His service.

This commendable trait is manifested still further in the valiant three hundred, for they carried their victuals in their hands, enough for their need and no more. They were the right men for the war, who would not allow themselves to be entangled by the affairs of this life.

The munitions of war.

They were a strangely equipped army as they went out to the fight; their weapons were contrary to all accepted ideas, and their tactics such as could not be learnt in the military schools; but they were men with the single eye and obedient and confident withal, and that was all they needed to be.

They were single-eyed men, and their gaze was fixed upon their leader, for his command was: "Look upon me." If they had looked upon the foe they would probably have been discouraged by the number of them; but to look upon the foe was no business of theirs, for their God-given captain claimed their attention and commanded their obedience, and while they looked on him "they stood every man in his place," and, standing each in his place, they became a compacted, undivided company.

Their weapons of warfare were strange; trumpets, pitchers, only held to be broken, and lamps. They carried no sword of tempered steel with them, but their battle cry was a glorious one, and proved that they were men assured of victory. And, indeed, they were not disappointed, for as they cried, "The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon . . . the whole host of Midian ran, and cried, and fled," ch. 7: 20, 21.

In Paul's second letter to Timothy we have the New Testament counterpart of this. The letter has been called a dark one, and truly there is a dark side to it, for in it there is plainly set forth the terrible departure from the truth of the professing Church: the result of first minding earthly things.

The state of things described in the third chapter of this letter could scarcely be worse, and yet we have there a true picture of the professing Church to-day, and it is evident that if the Church or any section of it is our hope and refuge — our place of salvation — then we are lost indeed. But Paul looked not in that direction; he looked above the scene of conflict and failure, and fixed his eye upon a risen Christ at God's right hand, and the result of this steadfast gaze was continual triumph. So that, viewed from this point, this letter is one of the brightest in the Book, for the failure of men only serves to throw into bright relief the faithfulness and stability of the Lord.

Paul's battle-cry.

So Paul had a battle-cry just as had Gideon. He could link himself with the Lord's testimony and cry, "The testimony of the Lord and of me His prisoner"; and he who had such a battle-cry could say, "I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day." He could also say at the end of the fight, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."

He had stood in his place, like Gideon's men, because he knew the might and the grace of his great Leader, who had crushed the foe and triumphed over death; and you may be sure that, as we remember Jesus Christ raised from the dead according to Paul's gospel, and have our eyes fixed upon Him in whom all God's intentions of blessing are secured, we too shall be able to stand, "every man in his place." Nor shall we stand with fear and dread and depression, for our hearts will be maintained by the triumph of the Lord, and as we stand thus in our place we shall sound the Christian's battle-cry with confidence.

The testimony of the Lord.

The testimony of the Lord is the blessed truth as to His victory, and that all the grace of God is in Christ, where no foe can spoil it. It is the proclaiming of the great fact that God has not been foiled, but that all His purposes of grace are held securely in the hand that smote the power of death. In short, it is the glorious gospel of God concerning His Son, as the risen Man, through whom all God's will is accomplished. The knowledge of this gospel makes us triumphant, nor shall we preach it with shame of face, for it is not about us but about Christ; not about the Church but about the mighty Saviour — the Son of God.

May we be truly controlled by the spirit of love and power, and of a sound mind, that we may determinedly go on with this glorious preaching. We may feel ashamed of the Church as a witness for Christ here, and ashamed of our own wretched selves, but here is something of which we need never be ashamed, for it is the very power and wisdom of God.

The Pitchers and the Lamps.

The men who cried, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon," were the men who held their light in earthen vessels, and those vessels had to be broken for the light to shine out. The shining of this light in the darkness had to accompany the battle-cry, and the blowing of the trumpets. Allusion is made to this in 2 Cor. 4: 7. Believers possess a wonderful treasure; it is the knowledge of God in their hearts. This glorious light is shining in all its perfection from the face of Jesus Christ, and it has shined in our hearts; but if it has shone in, it is in order that it might shine out again. The light must not be hidden; it must shine forth from the earthen vessels that hold it. This can only be in the power of God: human effort is entirely vain.

The light shone in Paul; his manner of life was in keeping with the testimony which he bore, so that if he preached that all blessing was in Christ in glory he did not look for it on earth. He looked not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. Eternal, not temporal things, commanded his soul, and thus was he a victor indeed — delivered himself and able to deliver others also.

The shining of the light and the going forth of the testimony must go together. To this the Lord has called us, and it is our privilege to connect ourselves with the name and testimony of the Lord. But let us bear in mind that if we are occupied with earthly things the light will be obscured, and we shall cease to care for the testimony of the Lord.

Here are the things that led to the overthrow of these foes by Gideon's army.

(1) "They were courageous men," ch. 7: 3.

(2) "They took only of such things as they needed," v. 6.

(3) "They were obedient to the commander," v. 17.

(4) "They let the light which the pitchers contained shine out," v. 20.

(5) "They shouted the battle-cry," v. 20.

(6) "They stood every man in his place," v. 21.

God grant that the blessed anti-type of these things may mark every one of us.

A Warning.

There is much more in Gideon's history that is of deepest interest and instruction which does not come within the scope of our talk: of one thing, however, we need to be warned.

The Israelites would have made Gideon their king: they speak of him as their deliverer, and seem utterly to fail to own all as from God — ch. 8: 22. History repeats itself, for the hearts of men are the same, and in the Church many have fallen into this snare. Men have been raised up of God to help and deliver His people, and many have admired and followed them, and even gone so far as to call themselves by the name of the vessel whom God has used, thus making him a king over them. Against this we are warned in 1 Cor. 1 and 3, and there is more need for the warning to-day than ever; for, instead of looking and cleaving to the Lord alone, the bulk of Christians are looking here and there for someone whom they may call the man of God for the time, from whom they may get guidance and light. Gideon stood true in this test and said, "The Lord shall rule over you."

The men of Shechem did not heed the wise words of Gideon, for at his death they made his son Abimelech, their king, with the result that he destroyed them, and they destroyed him.

The ninth chapter of Judges records for us the bitter harvest of his pride and their folly, and teaches us to beware of trusting in man — the bramble of Jotham's parable, Judges 9 — and especially so when it is a question of God's things.

The Lord alone is our sufficiency. His love and grace and power can never fail. He is the true Vine, the Olive and the Fig Tree of which Jotham spoke in contrast to the useless bramble. Yea, all His people's need is found in Him.

"May we with Him be satisfied,

And triumph in His Name."

6 The Philistines: Type of Carnal Religion

"And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.

"And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren, and bare not. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto the woman, and said unto her, Behold now, thou art barren, and bearest not: but thou shalt conceive, and bear a son. Now therefore beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing: For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines." (Judges 13: 1-5.)

How to Overcome

Carnal Religion

Who were these Philistines that held Israel in such bondage and brought them into such misery and poverty? And what do they represent? They sprang from Egypt, Gen. 10: 13, 14, but though they had left Egypt behind and got into the land which God had promised to His people, they had not taken His way into it; their way had been an easy and short cut by which they escaped the Red Sea and River Jordan. These things that prefigured deliverance and blessing by the death and resurrection of Christ had no place in their history. They were in the land of God's people, but they had not travelled into it by the God-ordained way, Exodus 13: 17. Really they had no right in the land at all, for God had apportioned it to Israel, Deut. 32: 8, 9. They are figurative of secularized Christianity, religion made acceptable to unregenerate men. Ritualism and Modernism are some of the Philistines of our day; they are really pagan superstitions and philosophies that have invaded the sphere of faith and made it like a great house of mixed vessels, 2 Tim. 2; and they are sorely oppressing the true Israel of God. They draw near to God with the lips, but are scornful of that heart exercise and spiritual life that have marked the revivals of former days. They claim to be children of God, but they have no title to that relationship, for they have not received God's only begotten Son by faith, and have not been born again, John 1: 12, 13. They have the form of godliness, but deny the power.

A remarkable feature.

One remarkable feature in the history of these Philistines was their anxiety to obtain and spoil the most sacred and precious possessions of God's people. I pass over the fact that both Abraham and Isaac were in danger of being robbed of their wives by them, Gen. 20: 26, for these incidents arose from their own cowardice and want of faith in God; but chapter 21 tells us that they violently took away one of Abraham's wells, and chapter 26 tells us that they filled up with earth the wells of water that Abraham digged. They did it because they envied Isaac; it was spiteful and wanton work. Then when Isaac digged other wells they claimed them and strove for them. These wells were essential to the life of the patriarchs and their households, and John 4 and 7 give us the right to interpret them as figuring the Holy Spirit which is given to us, and which is indispensable to the life of God's people now. But what place is there in the carnal religion of our day for the Holy Spirit? Where the superstitions of the ritualists, and the blasphemous criticism and scientific doubt of the modernists prevail, He is a grieved and a quenched Spirit, the wells are filled with earth; nor has the Spirit any place in dead formality, which while boasting in the correctness of its creed has neither faith nor fervour. They seized also the ark of the covenant, Sam. 5, and were in the land of promise as though it was their own, and Joel 3: 5 says of them, "Ye have taken my silver and gold, and have carried into your temples my goodly and pleasant things."

The counterpart of this is seen in our day in the fact that men who have not entered the kingdom of God by being born again, but are in it by profession only, are now accepted leaders and teachers in it, and have tacked on to their own philosophical fables the name of Christ, and taken the goodly and pleasant things of our holy faith and attached them to man as he is in his fallen nature, as though there was no necessity for regeneration and redemption, and a new creation in Christ Jesus.

The five lords of the Philistines.

The Philistines were ruled by five lords, Joshua 13: 3; Judges 3: 3; and this modern religion is ruled by five lords also, for it is governed by the five senses. Its devotees are controlled by what is natural, and all outside the range of the senses is more or less denied. It is nothing to them that the Scripture saith, "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned," 1 Cor. 2: 14. The natural man is all they are concerned about, for they know no other, and they fulfil this very word by rejecting all that is miraculous in the Word. The incarnation, sacrificial death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus are denied and ridiculed, and His miracles are explained away. Everything that would offend a world that has crucified the Lord of glory, or that the natural man cannot understand or see or feel, is rejected.

It is a remarkable thing that though these people only possessed a very small strip of the land of Canaan, it has taken its name from them, for Palestine means the land of the Philistines, but this name is only given to it in Scripture when the judgment of it is foretold, Ex. 15: 14; Isa. 14: 29, 31; Joel 3: 4. They came into prominence first in Gen. 21, where they violently robbed Abraham of a well of water, and they were Israel's most persistent foes throughout their history in the land; there is more about them in the Old Testament than any other nation but Israel, and the last mention of them in Scripture is, "I will cut off the pride of the Philistines," Zech. 9: 6. Of the condition of things that is the antitype of them in our day, the Lord has said, "I will spue thee out of My mouth." In the Laodicean Church we see the Philistines in full force.

Rationalism and Ritualism both make their appeal to the natural man who is glad to have his mind inflated and his feelings moved, and they both obscure Christ; indeed He has no place in either. Many a true-hearted disciple entangled in these things and seeing no door of deliverance from them, must be crying out like Mary by the empty sepulchre, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him." What can be done?

But is it possible for true Christians to be affected and influenced by that which is so evidently not of God? It is. Christians are often carried away by the plausibility of efforts and teachings which profess to have the uplifting of men in view, when fulcrum and lever of such upliftings are not of God but of men. It is also easy to mistake natural sentiment for true spiritual feeling, and there is the tendency with all to lean on our own understanding instead of the wisdom of God's Spirit. We need to be well grounded in the solemn truth that — "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them," 1 Cor. 2: 14. The gospel is not of, or from men, yet there is nothing else in heaven or earth that can bless them. It is only in the gospel of God's grace that the forgiveness of sins is offered to men. It is divine and from God. It is by the Spirit of God alone that its glories are known, and only those who have received the Spirit can appreciate them.

The Philistines were the most inveterate of all the foes of Israel and held them in bondage during a longer period than any other, and as Israel got weaker in faith their power became greater; nor were they finally overthrown until the supremacy of David — type of Christ in the victory of resurrection — was an established fact in the land.

Israel's Deliverance.

In dealing with the deliverance from these people we find at the outset one very remarkable feature. The Israelites in this instance did not raise the cry for deliverance as on former occasions. They seem to have accepted the yoke and become contented with their lot. This became very evident when Samson began to deliver them, for they chided him, saying: "Knowest thou not that the Philistines are rulers over us? what is this that thou hast done unto us?" and they were so completely out of sympathy with all his efforts, that they bound him with cords and brought him to his foes.

Here we have a sad picture of what exists in the present day: the Church has bowed to the domination of these modem Philistines, and, alas! many who are really and truly God's people seem contented to have it so. We may be sure that this state of things does not satisfy our righteous Lord, nor will it satisfy those who are truly exercised in heart as to what is for His glory.

It is no small comfort to find, however, that if Israel were indifferent to their own condition the Lord was not, and He set about to deliver them in His own way. The angel of the Lord appeared unto the wife of Manoah, a Danite. She was not the one that men would have chosen. Even her name is not given, and she was a barren woman — a reproach amongst the people of Israel and despised in the eyes of the daughters. But this nameless and despised woman of the meanest of Israel's tribes was the vessel chosen of God, through whom He could work out His own will. Thus we see the great truth emphasized, that His ways are not the ways of men. "I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing," is the vaunting language of secularized Christianity, which walks in the fitful gleam of its own dim light. But "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world . . . and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are; that no flesh should glory in His presence," 1 Cor. 1: 27-29.

"Behold thou art barren and bearest not; but thou shalt conceive and bear a son," was the message from God to the woman, and this message she received in simple and unquestioning faith. Her weakness and reproach are made to stand out boldly, so that it might be manifest that this deliverance was to come from God, and not by the power of man. It was out of weakness, barrenness, and death that God was to bring strength and victory.

But if weakness and reproach marked the woman in the eyes of men, she had perfect and unquestioning faith in God's gracious intentions towards her, and this must have been most precious and acceptable in His sight. Then she was the wife of Manoah, whose name means "rest." Confidence in God and rest of heart are as one; they are securely wedded together, and cannot be divorced.

That confidence in God produces rest of heart was strikingly illustrated in the Apostle Paul. The form of godliness without the power existed in his day, and great havoc was being made by false teachers amongst those for whom he had laboured so zealously. And yet he was not dismayed or ashamed, for he knew whom he had believed; his trust was in the true David, even Jesus, who had been raised from the dead. So that, while he presents the departure of many from the truth, he is full of rest as to it all.

"Remember," he wrote to his son Timothy, "Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, raised from the dead according to my gospel."

If we put side by side his confidence of heart and the things that might have distracted him, as given in the second letter to Timothy, we shall see what resources and strength he had in Jesus Christ.

Chapter 1

"This thou knowest, that all they which are in Asia be turned away from me."

"Nevertheless I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed."

Chapter 2

"Their word will eat as doth a canker: who concerning the truth have erred; and overthrow the faith of some."

"Nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His."

Chapter 3.

"Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived."

"But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."

Chapter 4

"At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me."

"Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me."

The great essential.

The outstanding feature in the one who was to overthrow the power of the Philistine was Nazariteship. Twice over in the announcement to Manoah's wife the angel of the Lord stated: the child shall be a Nazarite unto God. Now a Nazarite had to be separate from certain things; but more important than all this was what he was separated to. He was to be "unto the Lord," a devoted vessel for the service of God.

He was marked by abstinence from the fruit of the vine, he had to be separate from that which would defile, and his hair had to remain unshorn. These three things we shall also find are made very prominent in Paul's second letter to Timothy.

(1) The fruit of the vine is typical, doubtless, of the joys of the natural life, and the Nazarite of to-day will pay heed to the exhortation: "Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please Him who hath chosen him to be a soldier," 2 Tim. 2: 3, 4.

(2) Separation from defilement is most needful, and the man of God is instructed thereto: "Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. . . . If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the Master's use, and prepared unto every good work. Flee also youthful lusts." Verses 19-22.

(3) The unshorn head was evidently a sign of dependence — of weakness clinging to strength. Long hair is the woman's glory; it is the mark of her dependence as the weaker vessel upon man. This is the place in which God has put her, and true glory is the perfect filling of the place in which one is set. But of the man it is said: "Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God." 1 Cor. 11: 7-15. The man's place was to lead; he was made lord of this creation; others were to depend upon him, but he was to rely only upon God. Alas! in the fall he sought to be independent of God; thence all the sorrow and woe and death.

The hair of women is one of the characteristics of those terrible scorpions which will torment men during the period of judgment spoken of in Rev. 9: 7, 8. They are said to have on their heads crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men, and they had hair as the hair of women. Their first appearance is grand and imposing; they seem to be powerful and independent; but behind all this it is evident that they owe their strength to someone else: they were dependent upon Apollyon the Destroyer. Verse 11. The face of the true Nazarite had to be the face of a man: he had to be courageous and unflinching in the presence of the enemy, but he had also to wear the long hair, as the hair of women, for his whole power lay in dependence upon God. This had to be the most prominent of all the features that marked him, even though it became a shame to him in the eyes of others: and if this was lost he became as weak as other men. The Apostle Paul was a true Nazarite when he wrote: "Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. . . . For when I am weak, then am I strong." He had learnt that complete dependence meant true power, for the Lord had said to him: "My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness." 2 Cor. 12: 9, 10. This is surely the spiritual teaching for us of the unshorn locks of the Nazarite.

This weakness clinging to the strength of the Lord is clearly seen in 2 Timothy: "Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." 2: 1. "Out of them all the Lord delivered me." 3: 11." The Lord stood with me." 4: 17.

The Lord Jesus our perfect example.

The Lord Jesus was the true Nazarite, wholly devoted to God. He was never hindered in His willing service by the comforts and joys which belong to this life. He had no shelter but a shed and no cradle but a manger when He came into the world. The foxes had their holes and the birds of the air their nests, but He had neither home nor resting place on earth. He always refused to be influenced by those who would have chosen for Him an easier, and in their eyes more natural path.

He walked spotless and undefiled through the world: sore temptations constantly beset Him, but He was never ensnared; the sinful things that attracted other men had no charm for Him. He was ever and wholly separate from sinners, and wholly consecrated to the will of God.

Then, lastly, He was ever the absolutely dependent One. His language was: "He wakeneth morning by morning: He wakeneth My ear to hear as the learner." In all He did and said He was instructed by His Father, whose will He came to do day by day. This will was accomplished; no more, no less. His meat was to do His Father's will. He had no motive for living except His Father's glory, and all through His earthly life He was completely and altogether dependent upon God, so that He could say: "I was cast upon Thee from the womb." There is in Him sufficient grace to enable us to walk in His steps, and as we do so the victorious life of Nazariteship will be ours.

Nazariteship was Samson's strength.

As long as he maintained this inviolate he was a suited vessel for the power of God, and in the first freshness and strength of this he is a faint foreshadowing of Christ and His work.

Bear in mind that Samson came into the world for the express purpose of overthrowing the Philistines and thus setting God's people free; and, seeing that this was his mission, it is not surprising that a young lion — typical of Satan's power — roared against him.

But Samson was more than a match for the lion, and rent it as one would rend a kid. In like manner all the powers of darkness gathered against the Lord Jesus Christ, for He came to expose all that was false and to establish all that was true. But, in death He gained the victory; by dying He overthrew the foe; and, just as the carcass of Samson's lion yielded meat and sweetness, so the death of Jesus yields life and nourishment for the soul, and true joy for the heart. We see the reality and faithfulness of divine love displayed in that great conflict and victory, and we owe our every blessing to it.

The honey was in his hand (verse 9).

The hand that smote the lion held the honey, and Samson shared it, the remarkable fruit of his victory, with his parents, as they walked in company with him.

The great anti-type of this should yield abundant joy to us. All blessing is held in the mighty hand that smote the power of death, and it is the delight of our Lord Jesus Christ to dispense to us of that which He holds so securely.

Some in the vanity of their imaginations would have us believe that salvation, and indeed every blessing, has been deposited in the Church for us, and that we can neither know nor realize these things apart from it. Alas, for us, if this were so; for the Church as a responsible vessel of testimony here has utterly failed, for it has joined hands with the world that refused the Lord. But Christ can never fail: He has risen up victoriously above all the ruin and wreck which sin and death have made, and all the promises of God are "yea and amen" in Him, and as we cleave to Him we shall have our hearts nourished and made glad by the sweet fruits of His death.

The Philistines who came to the wedding feast, and were only nominally attached to Samson, did not taste the honey from the lion's carcass, and the whole matter was nothing more than a riddle to them. These Philistines represent those to whom reference has already been made, who are professors without possession, who have accepted the form of Christianity without the power. To all such the truth of God is but so many doctrines to be discussed and riddles to be solved: for "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." 2 Cor. 2: 14. There is nothing in the death of Christ that appeals to such; they cannot understand blessing coming out of death; they cannot see how meat can come forth from the eater, or sweetness from the strong one. "Christ crucified, is unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness." 1 Cor. 1: 23.

But that which is a perfect enigma to unrenewed men, be they religious or wise, is to us who are saved the power and the wisdom of God. The mighty eater — death — has been made to yield us meat, and out of the strong one has come forth sweetness; for the full glory of God's all-conquering and unchanging love has shone forth in the death of Jesus. God's wisdom and power were there seen in all their greatness, and the souls of those who see these things are saved and satisfied. Too much emphasis cannot be laid upon this, for it is only as we are living in the reality of these things that we shall overcome the Philistines; there is always the danger, even with those who are truly converted, of occupation with doctrine only. We must have correct doctrine and hold fast the form of sound words, but we must know what is at the back of the words and what the realities are which the doctrines express. Many are wasting time in seeking to elucidate knotty questions and discussing dogmas, and all the while losing the sweet honey that may be enjoyed in company with the Lord. This riddle-solving is dry and unprofitable work; that we may feast upon the honey is the Lord's desire for us.

The Philistine's Intention.

The next important event in Samson's history was the attempt of the Philistines to make him a prisoner. They found that he would make no compromise with them. He was an open and determined foe, so they "went up, and pitched in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi. And the men of Judah said, Why are ye come up against us? And they answered, To bind Samson are we come up." ch. 15: 9-10. To bind the Nazarite and thus render him helpless was their object. Satan works to-day upon similar lines; and the existing lifeless counterfeit of true Christianity shows only too plainly how successful he has been.

It is distressing to see that the men of Judah put themselves in league with the Philistines in this purpose: they had no desire to be free from their yoke: they looked upon Samson as a disturber of their peace and chided him, saying: "Knowest thou not that the Philistines are rulers over us. What is this that thou hast done unto us?" But is not this also the tendency of the day? If any man raises a voice of warning against the evil doctrines or worldly practices that abound, he is looked upon as a disturber, his mouth must be closed, he must be bound and curbed. He will be told that it is wrong to go to extremes; that moderation is the great desideratum. But, judged by that standard, a lukewarm temperature is justified, and fire stands condemned, for it is extremely hot. But what saith the Lord? "I know thy works, that thou are neither cold nor hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." Rev. 3: 15, 16.

Christians, we need to awake to righteousness. We need to be stirred up and filled with a fervour of devotion to Christ, that will consume every new cord with which an indifferent profession would bind us, so that unfettered we may earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints, and so remain true to our Lord.

The place of power.

But Samson dwelt in the top of the rock Etam. It is true that he allowed his brethren to bind him for a time, but when the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, their fetters perished as flax in the fire, and with the jawbone of an ass he slew a thousand men. The top of the rock is evidently the place from whence to get the victory. It stands for stability and strength; that which is immovable, and upon which the storms must beat in vain. Our Lord has become a rock to us. He has laid a foundation broad and deep, and no assault or storm can shake that foundation. He who builds thereon is safe for ever. The rock is Himself. All the thoughts and intentions of God are secured in Him, as the One raised up from the dead who hath abolished death, and brought life and incorruptibility to light through the gospel.

If we would be victorious we must cleave closely to Him in this blessed character: and so shall we be preserved from depression and defeat. Moreover, it is only as we prove the reality of His power and grace that we are kept free of that which is but an empty counterfeit: and knowing whom we have believed are confident that the foundation of God standeth sure in spite of all attempts to overthrow it. Then shall we be able in meekness to instruct those who have fallen into this snare of the devil-religion without reality, and the result may be that they will acknowledge the truth. 2 Tim. 2: 25, 26.

It has often been remarked that the moment of victory is the moment of greatest weakness, and Samson felt this. He was sore athirst, and called on the Lord, and said: "Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of Thy servant: and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?" Judges 15: 18. This was his fear: to fall into the hands of the uncircumcised, to be in their power. Now the Philistines are constantly spoken of in this way. Circumcision, which speaks of the cutting off and setting aside of the flesh, had no place with them; and, this being the case, it was right that the Nazarite should fear coming under their power. Would that there were more of this fear to-day; it would make us more like Samson in his dependence upon God.

How the victorious life is maintained.

But God had a provision for His fainting but dependent servant: it was the well of water.

"But God clave an hollow place that was in the jaw [in Lehi], and there came water thereout; and when he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived: wherefore he called the name thereof En-hakkore," which means "the well of him that cried." This is not the first time in Scripture that the water and the rock are found together. Both are necessary for us, for it is by the water, which sets forth for us life in the power of the Spirit, that the life of the Nazarite is maintained in freshness and vigour.

"In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified." John 7: 37-39.

Here is the provision for maintenance of the life of the Nazarite; for it is by the Spirit of God that the soul is kept in touch with the things of Christ, the new life is maintained in its freshness and vigour, and the Nazarite is renewed day by day. Then by the same Spirit is given power to help others.

Samson judged Israel for twenty years. Though the Philistines were there, he maintained what was for God throughout that period.

Do we desire to contend boldly for the truth, to stand for Christ, keeping His Word and not denying His Name? Then three things are absolutely needful: —

(1) Nazariteship — Devotion to the Lord.

(2) The Rock — The knowledge of perfect stability of all God's purposes in Christ risen from the dead.

(3) The well of water — Dependence on the Spirit of God for refreshment of soul and power for service.

The Loss of Nazariteship.

Now we turn from Samson's victories to his terrible defeat. The sad and shameful story is not hidden from us, for God would teach us not only how to tread the path of victory, but also make plain for our warning the terrible results of departure from Him, so that we may not trust in ourselves.

"Then went Samson to Gaza." Judges 16: 1.

Here is the commencement of that downward course. It is true that he survived at Gaza, though the Gazites were determined to slay him. He had not then surrendered his Nazariteship, and he still proved stronger than the Philistines' strength, which is the meaning of Gaza. He took the gate and pillars, with the bar, and bore them away to the top of the hill that is before Hebron.

But self-confidence seemed to mark him, and he must have forgotten that his strength was in dependence upon God. He heeded not the warning that his escape from Gaza ought to have been to Him, for it came to pass afterwards that he loved a woman in the valley or by the brook [marg.] — of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. Verse 4.

Sorek means "the vine," and it is most pitiful to see the victorious Nazarite, who had dwelt upon the rock and drank of the well there, now going down to drink of the brook which flowed through the valley of the vines. As the Nazarite he had refused the fruit of the vine, and at the commencement of his career he had slain a lion in the vineyards. There he overcame the strong one. Now in the valley of the vines he falls a victim to Delilah, whose name means weakness.

Here are the downward steps: —

He loved a woman in the valley of Sorek. Verse 4.

He told her all his heart. Verse 7.

She made him sleep upon her knees. Verse 19.

The seven locks of his head were shorn. Verse 19.

The Lord departed from him. Verse 20.

The Philistines took him. Verse 21.

They put out his eyes, bound him with fetters of brass, and he did grind in the prison house. Verse 21.

This was the depth of degradation to which his departure from God brought him. The one whose name means "As the sun" is seen grinding for the enemies of the Lord in the blindness and darkness of his lost Nazariteship.

There is one mention of a prison in Scripture before this. Joseph was cast into it because he stood firm in his devotion to God and his determination not to sin against Him. That devotion meant much suffering, but it was the path of victory. Here is a woeful contrast. Joseph's prison meant victory — Samson's prison spelt utter defeat. What a host of Philistines and all their strength had failed to accomplish, his own unbridled desire had brought about. The one who had delivered his brethren from the Philistines was bound by them. God's Nazarite became the devil's slave. He who carried away the gates of Gaza is led back through those gates as a prisoner, and the one who had made his foes to quake and flee now makes laughter for them at the festival to their god. If we found encouragement in Samson's exploits, learning from them what an individual when in dependence upon God can accomplish, we are now warned against all self-confidence by seeing how low the strong man may fall.

If we would escape such defeat we must know wherein our strength lies; we must know the secret of En-hakkore, — "the well of him that called," — which secret is dependence upon God and the judgment of self.

Remember, it was not the strength of the Philistines which overcame Samson. He was drawn away from the path of devotion to God by their seductions. It was not fear of their anger that vanquished him. He was beguiled and ensnared by the smiles of Delilah; he was betrayed by their apparent friendship. The devil's desire is to beguile all who are true to the Lord, to ensnare them by that which is not of God. This is what Paul feared for God's people when he wrote: "I am jealous over you with godly jealousy, for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." 2 Cor. 11: 3, 4. And this danger is greater than ever in these last days.

Yes, it is possible for the Nazarite to fall; it is possible for those who have lived the unfettered life of devotion to the Lord to become bound by the brazen chains of a lifeless and formal religion; it is even possible to find such grinding at the mills of a scornful and God-rejecting world. There are those who were once eminent for their true heart-separation from the friendship of the world who are now found associated with it — linked up with those who despise the Cross of Christ and deny its virtue — in the furtherance of schemes and policies in which God has no part. They build again that which they destroyed, and serve that against which they contended, and without question they make sport for that which they serve. "Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." James 4: 4. These are scathing words for such, nor dare we tone them down. There they stand in all their trenchant power: our business is to pay heed to them.

The consequence of this spiritual adultery, this going down to compromise with the world, is loss of spiritual sight and power.

"Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire." But their purity is gone; they are defiled and polluted. "Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick." Lam. 4: 7, 8.

A great recovery.

But just as the child learns the character of fire by being burnt, and refuses to touch it henceforward, so the people of God often learn lessons of great value through their failure; and thus God triumphs and good comes out of evil.

It was so in Samson's case. In his captivity he felt the treachery of Delilah's friendship, and turned to the Lord. "His hair began to grow." He judged that which had blinded and enfeebled him, and took up a most uncompromising attitude towards it, with the result that he gained a greater victory than had been possible at any time during his brightest days. It meant death to himself; nevertheless the victory was great and real.

It is a great comfort to remember that the Lord changes not, and that He is ever ready to forgive and restore.

"Yet sweet 'tis to discover,

If clouds have dimmed my sight,

When passed, Eternal Lover,

Towards me as e'er Thou'rt bright."

The grace of the Lord is greater than all the sin of His people. His quenchless love burns towards them in all its brightness, and cannot grow dim. He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

If we have been ensnared by the world into conformity with it — if we have been induced to step down from the highway of single-eyed devotion to the Lord and undivided dependence upon Him, to toy with the world, and have felt the bitterness of so doing, here is encouragement for us. He who was not deaf to the prayer of Samson will listen to our cry, and He will give deliverance and victory.

But the self within us that was ensnared by the world must be judged by us as well as the world that ensnared us. This surely is the lesson that the death of Samson would teach us.

To judge the world and self means to turn away from both completely to the Lord alone. This was the path that Paul trod. He had to withstand Peter, who left the place of the Nazarite to grind at the mill of a legal and fleshly religion. Gal. 2: 11-14. But for himself he says: "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." Gal. 6: 14.

There was the end of the religious world and the Paul who might be ensnared by it. The Cross of Christ had disclosed the true character of both, while the greatness of the love that the Cross revealed had made Paul a Nazarite for ever and, if a Nazarite, a triumphant and joyous man for the Nazarite is invincible as long as he maintains his Nazariteship. That path is open to all. It may mean persecution and rejection by the world; for those who take this path will surely be scoffed at as being bigoted and narrow, and they may even have to bear the marks of the Lord Jesus in their body, Gal. 6: 17; but the final triumph, the crown of righteousness, and the smile of the Lord are at the end of the conflict. He hath said, "To him that overcometh, will I grant to sit with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father in His throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." Rev. 3: 21, 22.

7 Delivered and Devoted

"And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be any people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me. When she saw that she was stedfastly minded to go with her, then she left speaking unto her. So they two went until they came to Bethlehem. And it came to pass, when they were come to Bethlehem, that all the city was moved about them, and they said, Is this Naomi? And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me." (Ruth 1: 16-20.)

"And the women said unto Naomi, Blessed be the Lord, which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman, that his name may be famous in Israel. And he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life, and a nourisher of thine old age: for thy daughter in law, which loveth thee, which is better to thee than seven sons, hath born him. And Naomi took the child, and laid it in her bosom, and became nurse unto it. And the women her neighbours gave it a name, saying, There is a son born to Naomi; and they called his name Obed: he is the father of Jesse, the father of David." (Ruth 4: 14-17.)

Delivered and Devoted

No King in Israel.

The closing chapters of Judges bring out in startling fashion the quick descent of Israel from their faithfulness to God. When once upon the down grade their progress was rapid, and the terrible terminus was marked by covetousness, apostasy, corruption, and mutual destruction. It is stated in connection with each of these things that "there was no king in Israel," and "every man did that which was right in his own eyes." The sad results depicted were the only possible outcome of the lawlessness and self-pleasing which characterized the people at that time.

God has ordained kings and governors for the good of men, because it is necessary that they should be ruled and controlled, and those who would live lives of peace and tranquility in this world must be subject to the powers that be. But these rulers are representative of that which is higher and greater, even of God Himself. He is the great Ruler — the King Immortal; and subjection to Him means peace and blessing for men. His yoke has been cast off, alas, for sin is rebellion against God, and lawlessness has taken the place of His just rule in the lives of men. This is true of all naturally, for the Scripture saith: "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way." Isa. 53: 6. And again: "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Rom. 3: 23.

In the face of these facts how glorious is the news that God has found a righteous way of blessing sinners — that He is graciously calling men back to Himself and that all who obey His call are pardoned and saved; and, instead of walking in the paths of destruction and death, led by Him in the paths of righteousness and life.

They "sought an inheritance to dwell in."

Covetousness and discontent, as well as lawlessness, flourished in the midst of Israel; for we find a Levite who was prepared to sell his God and his people for silver; and a tribe which, not content with the inheritance of the Lord, sought out a place for themselves. In both instances apostasy from God was the consequence. It was His intention to be King in Israel: His rule would have been most beneficent, and every man in the land would have been satisfied with the fatness thereof. But the children of Jacob loved their own way instead of His, and these Danites thought they could seek out for themselves that which would be better than what God had for them. It is a remarkable fact that no mention is made of them amongst the 144,000 of Israel who will yet stand before God to sing of His salvation. Rev. 7.

It is sad enough to see these things in men who do not know God: it is doubly sad to see them in those who have professed to belong to Him; but history repeats itself, and that which was true of Israel of old is, alas, only too true of many who have professed to know God to-day; and it is most certain that nothing can keep men from being carried with the down-grade stream of independence and self-pleasing, and of apostasy from the truth of God's gospel which is running so strongly to-day, but the vital knowledge of Christ as Saviour and Lord.

There are those who boast of a godly ancestry; or association with religious bodies of repute and antiquity; or with Christians whose doctrines are Scriptural; but none of these things will put or keep us right; there must be living, saving faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and constant and personal devotion to Him. It is very significant that the apostate Danites came out of the city of Samson. They knew and had seen his mighty exploits as God's devoted Nazarite, but this did not keep them from wholesale departure from God; and the leader of the apostasy was none other than the grandson of Moses.*

{*It generally admitted that Judges 18: 30 should read: "Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses."}

A Great Contrast.

In the ancient Jewish Scriptures the Book of Ruth formed part of the Book of Judges. The events therein recorded took place during the period in which the Judges lived, and Ruth's life and devotion form a pleasing contrast to the sad apostasy that marked the end of those times.

She is a true type of undivided devotion to one well-beloved object; for, delivered from every entanglement in the land of Moab by the love of Naomi, she was altogether controlled by that love which had set her free. Now the result of deliverance is devotion to the Deliverer, and the Lord desires to set us free from the world, the flesh, and the devil, and everything that binds us, so that we may follow Him alone. He would bind us to Himself by the strong fetters of love, and reign supreme in our affections, as Naomi did in the heart of Ruth. This is the end of all overcoming; to this our talks should lead; and this will be of greater value in His sight than mighty exploits, and a greater victory over Satan than any work could be.

Naomi and Mara.

Naomi exhibited certain traits which have come out in all their perfection in Jesus, and the path which she trod is in certain respects illustrative of His sorrow and travail and its resultant joy.

She went into a far away land and there tasted the bitterness of death, insomuch that she had to cry: "Call me not Naomi [which means pleasant! but Mara [which means bitterness!]" But, in the midst of the sorrow through which she passed, she must have displayed something of the sweetness of which her name spoke, for only in this way can we account for Ruth's devotion to her.

Sweetness and bitterness met in Naomi, but if we could see these things in all their perfection and intensity we must turn to Jesus. His name is sweet, the sweetest our ears have ever heard, and He is altogether pleasant to those whose eyes have been opened by the grace of God. He was so when here on earth; He is just the same upon the throne to-day; but we could never have known the sweetness that abides in Him if He had not trodden the path of bitterness and sorrow. He was the Man of tears, the Man of the broken heart, Ps. 69; but the grief of that wonderful life of sweetest devotion to God, and love to men, was but the preliminary to the awful sorrow that He endured on the cross, when He took the bitter cup of sin's judgment from the hand of God. It was then that the water-floods rolled over Him, and every sorrow found its centre in His blessed heart. Calvary spelt "Mara" for Jesus; but the intensity of that bitterness only disclosed the sweetness of that marvellous love which no power could check or sorrow overwhelm. Yes, His is an unmeasured love; stronger than death, more lasting than the ages, unutterably sweet.

It was to Naomi in her sorrow that Ruth clung, and for the love of her who had passed through "Mara" she said: "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me." Ruth 1: 16, 17.

When she made this memorable decision she knew nothing of Boaz, type of Christ in His present position of power, nor of the place of favour and exaltation that awaited her. The love of Naomi controlled her and she was satisfied, be it noted, not to dwell and to live, but to "lodge" and to "die" with Naomi. She embraced the path of strangership for the compensation that she found in the pleasantness of Naomi's company.

How true are the words —

"'Tis the treasure we've found in His love

Which has made us now pilgrims below."

Nothing else will: the thought of coming glories will not, in itself, separate us from the world. The attractions of the "world to come," and its attractions are indeed great, will not of themselves draw our hearts out of "this present evil world." His love alone — the love displayed at Calvary — can do this: and so the path of discipleship is invariably connected with the cross. It was this that controlled the apostle, for he said: "The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."

God grant that just as the portion that Ruth found in Naomi delivered her from Moab for ever, and bound her up with the interests of the one whose love controlled her, so may the preciousness of Jesus, who endured the cross and despised the shame, constrain us to wholehearted devotion to Himself.

The result of following the Lord.

Ruth lost nothing by cleaving to Naomi, for, as a result of it, "Her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging to Boaz," Ruth 2: 3; and he was a man of tender heart, for he spake kindly to Ruth and comforted her, verse 13. But not only so: he was a mighty man of wealth, and the field over which he had power was altogether sufficient to satisfy her need.

If we consider Naomi's sorrow as illustrating the deep and sore travail through which the Lord Himself passed, the wealth of Boaz will speak to us of His present greatness and power. He has been highly exalted; all things have been put into His hand; and now He finds great delight in dispensing the blessings of God to those who are poor and needy.

Boaz would not have said, "Go not to glean in another field," unless he had known that his field was sufficient for Ruth; nor would the Lord have said, "My grace is sufficient for thee," if its fulness could not meet our every need.

Are there steep places in the path of discipleship, and do trials beset the feet of the pilgrim? The grace of the Lord is greater than all, and those who tread the path prove the blessedness of it, for He has said that they "shall receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting." Luke 18: 30.

So Ruth gleaned in the fields of Boaz as long as gleaning was needful, and she found that he cared for her in every way, so that she was not only satisfied herself but had also something to spare.

The whole story is of deepest interest and full of instruction; but we must now pass on to the end of the book.

The results of Naomi's sorrow.

It is remarkable that at the end of the story Naomi is again the prominent person; not now in bitterness and sorrow, but reaping the pleasant fruits of her travail.

(1) The Church.

She had lost Elimelech and her sons in the land of Moab, but she had gained Ruth, who was better to her than seven sons, ch. 4: 15, and in this we have a figure of what the Lord has lost and gained by His death. He came to His own people Israel, but they rejected Him, and for the time being He lost the kingdom and the nation; He was cut off out of the land of the living. But if He lost Israel for a while, He gained the Church; and no tongue can tell how precious the Church is to Him. It is the "pearl of great price" for which He sold all that He had, and for which He went down into the deep sea of death, when the midnight darkness of God's judgment rested upon the face of it.

"Down beneath those sunless waters

He from heaven has passed;

There He found His heart's desire,

Found His pearl at last.

All He had His heart has given

For this gem unpriced —

This the tale of love unfathomed,

This the love of Christ."

I do not here speak of the outward profession of the Name of Christ, which has become so corrupted, but of what is real in it, that which He calls "My Church."

The Church as the Lamb's wife will be His eternal companion, for the time is not far distant when there shall sound "as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of many thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready." Rev. 19: 6, 7. Then in that glorious consummation the Lord shall see of His soul's deep travail and be satisfied; but even now, whilst He is rejected from the earth, the Church is His consolation and joy.

Is it not strange that some who belong to His Church — every blood-bought believer is a member of it — should seek the smiles of the world that rejected Him, instead of seeking only to fill the high privilege of giving joy to His heart? No higher privilege will be ours for ever; no greater loss could befall us, as Christians, than the loss of it. It is this which the devil seeks to mar and spoil, and for this he plies his wiles and spreads his snares, and the true overcomer is the one who, cleaving to the Lord alone, is glad to lose all for Himself.

(2) Worship for the Father.

The women of Bethlehem gathered round Naomi to felicitate her upon the joy that was hers, and they say: "There is a son born unto Naomi." Ch. 4: 17. They do not say born unto Boaz or to Ruth; but to Naomi, for the child would never have been but for that sore "Mara" in the distant land.

And the women gave this child, which they counted as Naomi's son, a name, and "they called his name Obed," the meaning of which is "worshipping God." "And Naomi took the child, and laid it in her bosom, and became nurse unto it." 4: 16. The child was greatly beloved by her, for it was the fruit of Ruth, who loved her. 4: 15.

Here is set forth another result of the death of the Lord Jesus. He came forth from the Father because the Father sought worshippers. John 4: 23. And for this He suffered and died: and in this respect His death has not been in vain, for by that death He has brought a countless host to God, all ransomed by His precious blood. These can worship God in spirit and in truth, for they know His love as it has been declared in the death of Christ.

Who can tell the joy that fills the heart of the Lord as He presents the worship of those who love Him to God the Father? Such worship, rendered from hearts filled by the love of God, is very precious to Jesus, for it is the fruit of the hearts and lips of those who love Him and whom He loves.

(3) Kingly glory for Christ.

Ruth and Obed were followed by Jesse and David; and David as the king typified the coming glory of Christ.

The Lord is still rejected by this world, but the time of His return is at hand; the crown of universal dominion shall encircle His once thorn-pierced brow, and as great David's greater Son He shall sway the sceptre from the river unto the ends of the earth. Then shall Israel own Him as the Son of God and their King, and the groanings of a sin-blighted earth shall be hushed, and everything that hath breath will break forth into singing, and every note of every song shall be in praise of the King.

How deep will be the joy of His heart when He looks abroad upon a creation which has been made to smile by the light of His countenance, and when men, delivered from the thraldom of Satan's power, shall rejoice in the knowledge of God! But the foundation of all the gladness which will mantle the earth in the day of His kingly glory is His sorrow and death.

All who love Him earnestly desire this day of glory, and rejoice in the blessed fact that He shall be exalted and adored in the very world in which He was despised and put to shame. But not because of the crowns of an endless glory that shall shine upon His sacred brow do we love and follow Him, but because of His love, love that disclosed its sweetness amid the shame and grief of Calvary's "Mara." It is this love, and this alone, that constrains us to serve Him untiringly, follow Him devotedly, and love Him now with fervent and undivided heart. This is the pathway of the overcomer.

Is it our desire to tread this path? Then let us hold it fast, for He hath said: "Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God: which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." Rev. 3: 11-13.

Scottish Tales

Scottish Tales

J. T. Mawson.

Foreword.

I invite you, my reader, to accompany me through the pages of this book. Imagine, if you care so to do, that we are visiting the places of historic interest of which I write, but do not fail to apply to yourself every pointed question, and take home every application.

I will not hide from you on its first page that the object in the issue of this book is your soul's eternal blessing. That this may be brought about is my prayer.

Contents.

1. THE BAFFLED FOES; or, The Escape of Robert Bruce

2. AN UNHEEDED WARNING; or, The End of the Carnival

3. A USELESS SACRIFICE; or, The Murder of the King

4. NO FORGIVENESS; or, The Death of the Marquis of Argyll

5. PEACE; or, Argyll's last Sleep

6. OWN THE RIGHTFUL KING; or, The Rebellious Soldier

7. HOW TO HOLD THE FORT; or, How Edinburgh Castle was Taken

8. DEBTS CANCELLED; or, The Goldsmith's Costly Fire

9. TWO FEASTS; or, The Death of the Chief Guest

10. UNABLE TO SAVE; or, The Death of Rizzio

11. FAVOUR SOUGHT AND REFUSED; or, An Ungracious Monarch

12. UNABLE TO KEEP; or, A Mother Robbed of her Children

13. PRISONERS RELEASED; or, Two Escapes

14. FORGIVENESS REFUSED; or, The Remorse of a King

15. A NOBLE CONFESSION; or, The Wigtown Martyr

16. THE DANGER OF DELAY; or, Mac Ian's Fatal Mistake

The Baffled Foes; or, the Escape of Robert Bruce.

The field of Bannockburn is one of the most interesting spots on Scottish soil, for here Bruce established his claim to the throne of the land by right of arms. Everyone knows how the heavy English battalions were foiled and beaten by the fierce and determined Scots. There is one point, however, in connection with this defeat and victory to which I would call your attention. The English did not know the ground on which they stood. Robert Bruce had had pits dug all over the field, and these were covered with branches and turf, giving the field the appearance of solid ground, and here his foes were ensnared.

Be sure, every one of you, that you have the solid rock beneath your feet. If you wish to be safe, you must stand upon the merits of Christ, and not on your own. Your works may appear better than the works of others; but if you are trusting to them you are resting upon unworthy ground, and it will prove to be a snare of the devil. If you trust to your works you will be lost for ever. Christ Jesus Himself is the only safe and certain resting-place upon which sinners can stand before God.

The day is coming — swiftly coming — when you will need a firm foothold, when to be upon the immovable rock will alone be safe. If you stand upon the ground of your own merits in that day — the day that will test every man and all his works — great and final will be the catastrophe that will overtake you. You will be overwhelmed by foes infinitely more fierce and relentless than those that overthrew the English at Bannockburn. Those who have taken their stand, and staked their eternal all, upon Christ and His work, will be for ever safe.

I want to recall an incident which occurred in the career of Bruce before he became the conqueror of Bannockburn, when constant defeat dogged his steps.

He was a fugitive. The English were on his track, but he evaded all their attempts to capture him. At length they hit upon a plan of great ingenuity. Securing his favourite bloodhound, they unleashed it and put it upon his track. That dog had never been known to lose a trail, and yard by yard it now tracked down its fugitive owner. Bruce, with his solitary attendant, heard the baying of the hound in the distance, and it seemed as though all was lost. How could he escape?

He was fleet of foot, and could doubtless have out-distanced the swiftest of his foes, but the hound was more fleet than he. His pursuers knew not the country, and he could have easily hidden in the forest; but the hound could trace him along the most circuitous path that he chose to take, and find him out in the most secluded spot in which he chose to hide, and behind the hound came his foes eager for his life-blood.

But stay! He has it: a way of escape is close at hand, for yonder through the forest runs a deep and broad stream. Into that stream he will plunge, and there the hound shall lose the track. Quickly Bruce put his thought into action. Into the water he plunged, and waded up the stream some distance; then regaining the depths of the forest, he was safe from his pursuers. The hound followed its master to the bank of the stream, but no further; the scent was broken.

"Drive the dog across the stream," cried the baffled foes of Bruce but all was in vain, for the trail was lost, and Bruce was safe — safe to become the victor of Bannockburn and gain the crown of Scotland!

* * * * * *

This story of those far-off times will serve our purpose well to-day. There is upon the track of each unconverted man, woman, and child that which will find them out and deliver them to judgment unless a way of escape is found.

"Be sure your sin will find you out" is not the most pleasing statement from the Word of God for those who are still unforgiven but there it stands, and, being there, is true.

Oh, think of it, dear unconverted souls! Your sins are upon your track! YOUR SINS! YOUR SINS! Like a relentless bloodhound they follow your steps, tracking you down — down — down. To use our illustration, can you not hear the baying of them in the distance? "They are following after to judgment," saith the Scripture. A terrible consideration for you who have so many. "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6: 23) "After this the judgment" (Heb. 9: 27).

One hound was sufficient to jeopardise Bruce's safety. One sin is sufficient to destroy your soul for ever. You have many, many sins — sins of thought and word and deed. What can you do? You cannot outstrip the consequences of them; you may for a time, and in life, evade them, but when death finds you out, then they too will find you, and where death leaves you judgment will take you up. You cannot destroy your tracks. What will you do? Oh, listen! There is a way of escape.

"There is a stream . . . " not of water, but of blood. The blood of Jesus has been freely shed, and it is here and through this blood that you may be delivered for ever from the sins which have made you deserve the judgment, and the judgment which the sins have made you deserve. No judgment can reach the blood-washed sinner, the baying hounds of sin no longer track him to his doom. The trail is broken and lost the flood of judgment which rolled over the Lord Jesus Christ at Calvary has met the claims of justice, and those who trust in Jesus are made clean and free from sin by His precious blood.

O sinner, trust in Jesus this day. May the voice of sin and judgment in your case be silenced now, because Jesus died, and you have put your trust in Him.

An Unheeded Warning; or, The End of the Carnival.

A gay cavalcade they made — the handsome James, first of his name, of Scotland, his beautiful wife Joan, and their retinue, as they sped towards the Firth of Forth to hold the Christmas carnival in the large monastery at Perth.

Those were troublous times, when men loved fighting and bloodshed; but James and his companions were fearless and light-hearted as they that day approached the ferry.

Suddenly, from out the gathering darkness there appeared a strange and gaunt figure with uplifted hands. "Halt!" cried the foremost rider, "who goes there?"

As they drew near they found an aged highland woman standing full in their pathway.

Above the clamouring of the horsemen before, and the moaning of the waves behind, her shrill voice rang out, "Go back! go back!" In answer to their questions, she refused all explanation, save to the King himself. Thinking she had news of some conspiracy, he rode towards her, and, in answer to his enquiries, the old woman waved her hand towards the restless waves, and cried:

"King, if you once cross those waters you will never return alive." The King laughed aloud at the warning turning it into a jest, and shaking the old woman's hand from his bridle, cried, "Forward!"

* * * * * *

It was not wisdom on the part of the King to laugh at the warning, for he knew that in his kingdom there were many who did not wish him well, and dangers were thick in his path. Undoubtedly it appeared to be a braver course to go forward to the revelries at Perth, rather than, filled with craven fears, to return to Edinburgh.

Whither are you bound, my reader, and what is your objective? Are you light-hearted and gay and do you mean to make merry, heedless of the dangers that gather round your way? We do not wish to see you morose and gloomy, but rather that true and eternal gladness may be yours. We must, however, sound a warning. To go forward on the road of careless pleasure, heedless of danger, is to land full soon in utter destruction.

* * * * * *

And so they passed the ferry, and reached their destination. The old woman's warning was forgotten, and King James was the merriest of a merry party. The days passed by until the last was reached, and that had drawn to its close, for the clock was about to strike the midnight hour.

The King had taken his harp, and, running his fingers across the strings, he started the last song, when there came a loud and peremptory knocking at the outer door.

The King paused in his song, greatly annoyed by the interruption and demanded to know who was there.

It proved to be the old woman of the ferry. She sought an audience with his majesty, for she had news of great importance, for his ear alone.

"To-morrow I will see her, but not to-night," was the King's answer to her entreaties.

So she was turned away, and driven forth into the night, wringing her hands as she went, and crying, "To-morrow I shall not see his face."

The Queen trembled with fear at this strange incident, and the King, now far from at ease, himself closed the festivities, and the party broke up for the night.

"To-morrow!" Ah, how treacherous, how illusive is that word. It seems to dance before the eyes, and hold out bright prospects. But how often it has proved a will-o'-the-wisp, luring men to destruction. "To-morrow I will see her," said the King, and that fateful word was the sealing of his doom.

Oh, reader! will you put off until to-morrow that which you can do today? Will you refuse to face the question of your soul's great danger now?

Your sins and death and Satan all conspire to bring your soul to hell. Will you treat this grave question with indifference, and say "Tomorrow"?

To-day is the day on which to heed the warning, for to-day is God's day of Salvation; but hope in a false to-morrow will be your eternal undoing, as it has been of thousands more.

The wild winds howled outside the monastery of the Black Friars of Perth, and strange forebodings filled the hearts of the King's party within. The Queen's chambermaids were preparing her sleeping couch, when one of them drew aside a curtain and looked forth into the black night. To the dismay of the company she announced the fact that the courtyard beneath was lurid with the flare of torches. Presently the clash of steel, and the shoutings of armed men, told only too truly that the assassins were upon the track of the King.

"Shut the bolts," cried the startled monarch. But, alas! he found when it was too late that there had been traitors within as well as without; for the bolts had all been wrenched from the doors, and he was without protection.

One hour afterwards sixteen mortal wounds in the breast of the King spoke plainly of the folly of treating warnings with scorn and putting off the seeking of safety until "to-morrow."

Will you not take warning then to-day, my hitherto heedless friend, and seek a place of safety?

I have more to tell you of King James and how he met his death but will you not perceive in your procrastination a folly like unto his, and turn to Him who can save you from your woes.

Only the Saviour — Jesus, God's beloved Son — can save you. He can, and will, if you turn to Him. Then sin and death and hell and Satan shall all be put to flight. Oh! turn to Him now, before your foes thrust you down to hell for ever.

A Useless Sacrifice; or, The Murder of the King.

"Shut the bolts," cried the King, as the tramp of heavy-booted men was heard along the distant corridors. The ladies of the chamber hurried to the door, but found bolts and bars alike gone. The King looked round for some weapon of defence, but none could be found. His treacherous foes had laid their plans well, and he was left without a way of escape.

Then the full truth dawned upon him. Sir Robert Groeme, who had sworn to dye his best blade in the King's blood, was at last about to carry out his threat. He had induced Sir Robert Stewart, the King's chamberlain, to join him in the conspiracy the success of which through the King's indifference to warning, seemed to be complete.

There stood the King with folded arms, at his feet the Queen knelt and in her terror entreated him to fly.

Then one of the ladies, Catherine Douglas by name, remembered that beneath the flooring of the room there ran some vaults which might afford a chance of escape, and, quicker than it takes to tell the story, she seized the tongs from the fireplace, and, putting them into the hand of the King, besought him to wrench up the planks and escape by way of the vaults.

The King tore away at the boards until one of them yielded, just as the shoutings of his foes reached the passage leading to the room where he was.

"Can you keep the door just for one moment," cried the Queen to Catherine Douglas.

Could she keep the door — a weak woman, against the strength of men in mail? It seemed impossible but the danger sharpened her wits, and in her brave desire for the safety of her monarch she thrust her arm into the staples of the door from which the bolts had been torn. Then, grasping the empty staple on the doorpost, she waited with set face for what would follow.

Heavy blows came thundering at the door, but for some intense moments that bolt of woman's flesh stood the strain. Long enough, in fact, for the ladies of the chamber to put back the plank in the floor and cover it with the rushes which served to carpet the floor.

Then snap! and that human barrier, the arm of Catherine Douglas, gave way, and a brave, true-hearted woman fell fainting to the floor.

"Where's the King?" cried Groeme and his followers, as they crowded into the apartment. "Tell us where he hides!"

They searched, but failed to find him, and, leaving the apartment, it seemed as though the arm of Catherine Douglas had not been sacrificed in vain.

No nobler sacrifice than that does Scottish history record and how fully did Catherine Douglas prove her devotion to the King.

Foes — bitter foes — are seeking your destruction. If left to yourself you are without a way of escape, and without defence. Is there anyone to deliver you?

Yes, thank God, there is! One whose love was great enough to lead Him to stand between us and the foe, and He has given His life to save us.

Will His great sacrifice be in vain? Ah! no; for all who trust in Him are put for ever out of the reach of the foes. By dying He destroyed him that had the power of death — that is, the devil that He might deliver those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

* * * * *

But what of the King? He might have escaped had it not been for one sad thing. There was a hole in the wall of the vault leading to the open-air, but he had had it filled up only three days before, because, when playing tennis, the balls rolled through it and were lost. Thus his only way of escape was cut off. How he must have blamed the folly that led him, for such a trifle, to close the only way of escape.

But King James did not know the straits into which he would be brought, or he would never have closed the hole in the wall for the sake of a few tennis balls.

With you it is different. You are warned of your danger, and as plainly as possible. God has set forth Christ Jesus as the only way of escape; the only door of salvation. Are you putting anything between your soul and Him? Many are blocking their way to life by the most empty trifles. Some allow the applause of men, the prizes of the world, their friends, their pleasures, their lusts, to stand between them and the way of blessing. May such folly be far removed from you, my reader!

Those who sought the life of the King rushed to other parts of the monastery in search of him and he, hearing their footsteps die away in the distance, thought himself safe, and commanded the women to help him from the vault. While they were doing so his foes returned, and the dark tragedy closed in his death. He might have been saved if only he had heeded the timely warning which, alas! he refused to listen to.

May you, my reader, never have to say with bitter remorse, when for ever beyond the reach of mercy, "Oh, if I had only heeded the warning given me!"

No Forgiveness; or the Death of the Marquis of Argyll

Let us turn our steps towards Edinburgh Castle. Rising sheer up three hundred feet from the valley around, it is the first thing the eye sees on entering the city. Many tales of deepest interest gather round this grey and rambling pile of buildings. It was here that the imprisonment, trial, and condemnation of the first Marquis of Argyll took place.

He was a friend of Oliver Cromwell, and when Cromwell visited Edinburgh he feasted him in the large banqueting hall the finest room in the Castle. It is said that he had agreed with Cromwell in the execution of Charles I. If that were so he certainly repented of it afterwards, for he put the crown of Scotland on the head of Charles II. at the Restoration, and he was the first of the Scottish nobles to swear allegiance to him.

He travelled to London in order to welcome the King, but there, on the charge of being concerned in the death of Charles I., he was seized and cast into prison.

After spending five months in the Tower of London, he was sent to Edinburgh to be tried by his peers for treason, and was lodged in the state prison in the Castle.

Argyll had many enemies amongst his judges, and they found no difficulty in bringing him in guilty, and at once the sentence of death was pronounced upon him.

He found that it was of no use to appeal to the King, for that unscrupulous monarch cared little for the fate of either friend or foe so long as he was able to have his fill of pleasure. There was to be no mercy — no forgiveness for him.

How different are God's ways from man's! He offers a free pardon to all; yea, he finds His great delight in forgiving poor guilty rebels.

Now there may be a question as to Argyll's guilt, but there can be none at all as to ours. By nature we are all rebels against God; our sins and self-willed ways prove this, and every sin that we have committed is an act of rebellion — it is high treason against God Himself. But how great is the grace of God! He does not condemn us as we justly deserve, but is sending forth to all the proclamation of forgiveness.

How can God's forgiveness be obtained? By simply bowing to the One through whom God sends it. "Christ died for the ungodly" and it is because of what He has done, and through Him, that God can save and bless poor sinners; but those who want the blessing must, trusting in this Saviour, bow heart and knee to Him.

Argyll put the crown upon the brow of Charles II. He acknowledged him as his rightful lord; he was certainly not a rebel then; and you must treat the Lord Jesus in the same way: own Him as your Lord crown Him in your heart.

If you do this I can assure you that He will never play you false, as the King did the first Marquis of Argyll; for He loveth at all times, and never leaves or forsakes those who belong to Him.

I am thankful to be able to tell you that Argyll was a Christian, so that death to him was not so terrible as it would otherwise have been. When the sentence was passed upon him, and he realised that it would be vain to hope for mercy, he said to those who had condemned him: "I placed the crown upon the King's head, and this is my reward. He does but hasten me to a better crown than his own. Nor can you, my lords, deprive me of that eternal portion which one day you may require for yourselves."

He had evidently learnt that the treasures of heaven were better than the treasures of earth, or he could not have spoken of the crowns of heaven as being better than the crowns of earth. In this he spoke truly, for all earthly glory will become dim and fade away, but the crown which the Lord's hand gives is incorruptible, and can never tarnish or be spoilt.

How good, too, for the Christian to know that death cannot deprive him of his eternal portion. Death is the end of every earthly possession, and those whose possessions are only in the earth have a very very dark prospect.

See to it, dear friend, that you secure for yourself treasure in heaven. We thank the Marquis for his speech, and earnestly hope that everyone who reads these lines may be able to speak with the same confidence about the future.

He was removed from the Castle and placed in the common prison at the Tolbooth, and here Lady Argyll was permitted to visit him. She was very indignant at the way he was being treated, and in her grief exclaimed, The Lord will requite it."

He replied, "Forbear, Margaret. I pity my enemies, and am as contented in this common prison as in the Castle or the Tower of London."

When he ascended the scaffold on which he was to be beheaded he proved the reality of his profession by displaying a truly Christian spirit. There he publicly expressed his abhorrence of the execution of Charles I. and said he forgave all his enemies. Then, with great composure, he placed his head on the block, and in an instant was launched into eternity.

This story, then, shall illustrate for us two things; first, the blessed prospect that lies before the Christian, and, then, how the Christian ought to act in the present. If we are to be with the Lord Jesus Christ for ever, we ought to be like Him now; and it is our blessed privilege to display His character in this world, and treat others as we have been treated by Him. All we have and hope for as Christians we owe to God's free grace, for we had merited nothing but judgment, and because of this we are exhorted to forgive others also,

Then see to it that God's pardoning grace is yours; then rejoice in the bright prospect before you, and, last of all, while you wait for the bright and glorious future, do not forget to show forth the praises of the One who has called you out of darkness and blessed you so greatly.

Peace; or, Argyll's Last Sleep.

In the state prison of Edinburgh castle the second Marquis of Argyll was imprisoned before his execution.

Like his father, he was a staunch Protestant, and when the "test oath" which was looked upon as a pledge of loyalty to Charles II., but it insisted that the King should be acknowledged as head of the Church — was tendered to him, he declared that he took it in so far as it was consistent with the Protestant religion. The Duke of York, afterwards King James, was at this time Administrator of Affairs in Scotland; he was a bigoted Papist, and, as the heir to the throne, took this qualification as directed against himself. Argyll was charged with high treason, and condemned to be beheaded.

He escaped from the castle, however, disguised as the page of his daughter-in-law, Lady Sophia Lindsay, who had obtained permission to visit him while awaiting execution.

Going over to Holland, he remained there until the accession of James, when he joined the Duke of Monmouth in an insurrection. Misfortune dogged his footsteps everywhere, and he was taken captive near Kilpatrick on the Clyde, and was again condemned to death.

His peace of mind surprised everybody, for, like his father, he proved himself to be a true Christian, finding much solace and comfort from the Lord his Saviour.

On the day of his execution (June 30th, 1685) he dined very cheerfully, and, being used to sleep awhile after dinner, he retired to the couch in his cell, and fell into a peaceful slumber. An officer of State called to see him, and was shown into his cell. At the sight of the condemned man sleeping so pleasantly only an hour before his execution he was greatly perturbed, and, hurrying away to the house of a relative, in great distress, he exclaimed, "I have seen a man within an hour of eternity sleeping as sweetly as an infant!"

He evidently trembled as he looked into eternity, for he was a stranger to the peace which the Christian enjoys. But there are those who sleep, in a spiritual sense, who may be nearer to eternity than the condemned Marquis was. They have never been awakened to the sense of what it is to be guilty before God. They have not realised that to die in their sins means to be lost for ever. They do not think that death may choose them as its prey at any moment, and so they are undisturbed. Oh, if only they saw their great danger, they would awake from their slumber, and marvel that they had been indifferent for so long.

Argyll's sleep was not one of indifference; he enjoyed the peace which is the Christian's secret.

Yes, Christians have the secret! The sting has been taken out of death for them by the Lord Jesus Christ. He destroyed him who had the power of death that He might deliver those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. And the Christian can say: "We know if our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved we have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" Knowing, too, that the shedding of the precious blood of Jesus has atoned for their many sins, they have every right to be happy and peaceful in the presence of death — that which is such a terror to those who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour.

* * * * * *

On awaking from that peaceful slumber the Marquis was led out to execution but his peace and joy did not forsake him at this last great test.

He mounted the scaffold with great firmness, and on seeing the instrument which was to take off his head called "the maiden" he embraced it, saying: "This is the sweetest maiden that I ever kissed, and it will finish my misery, and be my inlet to glory." Then, placing his head upon the block, the instrument did its work. Evidently for him it was far better to be with Christ, and he knew it.

Thank God, salvation and fitness for heaven are offered to everyone! They cannot be obtained by works of righteousness which we can do. If Argyll had built his hopes upon his own goodness or works he would have proved them to be the shifting sand in the hour of his trial. And the best of men will prove the same. But though salvation and fitness for heaven cannot be secured by the works of men, they can be found in Christ Jesus; in Him all is freely offered to whosoever will. Take it, for, whether you are noble-born or of lowly birth, your need is the same. If unsaved you must be shut out of heaven for ever. Rich and poor alike may have salvation and fitness without money and without price.

"Who (Christ) of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption." (1 Cor. 1: 30.)

May every dear reader of this page be found resting in Christ as the second Marquis of Argyll was.

Own the Rightful King; or, the Rebellious Soldier.

A very remarkable story is related as having taken place in Edinburgh Castle in connection with the restoration of Charles II.

Cromwell's soldiers still formed the garrison, and they were ordered by the Governor to parade and fire a salute in honour of the restoration. All obeyed with the exception of one of Cromwell's veterans; he bluntly refused to obey the order, saying he hoped he might be blown into the air if he fired a cannon that day.

To fire a salute meant to acknowledge the King, and to refuse to do so was to be guilty of rebellion. Rebellion against the rightful earthly sovereign is a serious offence; but who shall measure the enormity of rebellion against the Lord Jesus Christ? Yet there are heedless multitudes to-day who are in rebellion against His rule.

The soldier of our story was compelled, however, to take his stand at one of the guns overlooking the West Church and to apply the match; strangely enough, the cannon burst and blew him to atoms. Of course, such an occurrence may be accounted for in many ways, and it was but a coincidence that this man should have fired the one cannon that burst that day. But the story shall serve as an illustration to press home a solemn truth.

Those soldiers had to acknowledge Charles II. as King some did it willingly but this unfortunate soldier was compelled to do it, and he was destroyed in the very act.

* * * * *

Now God has set His beloved Son upon the throne He who was once despised and rejected. "God hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name. That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow . . . and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Phil. 2: 9-11.)

This is God's unchanging decree. All must acknowledge Jesus as Lord. We learn from God's Word that those who do this in the day of God's grace will be saved and blessed for ever; for there is no blessing too great for God to give to those who honour His dear Son by bowing the knee to Him. If you have not done this as yet, do it — do it to-day. He is worthy that all should bow to Him and own Him Lord and they are wise indeed who do it willingly.

But, alas! many refuse to bow to Christ; they love their sins, their self-willed ways, the world — its pleasures and its prizes. They will not turn from these to Jesus, and they manifest the rebellion of their hearts against God by refusing to own His Son as their Lord. They will not have Him to reign over them.

How great is their folly, since God has declared that all must submit to Christ! Those who refuse, while mercy lingers, and grace can save, will be compelled by the almighty power of God in the day of judgment; but, bowing in that terrible day will only be followed by banishment from the presence of God and the glory of His power.

O reader, bow to the Saviour to-day! Learn a lesson from the story of the rebellious soldier in Edinburgh Castle: do not refuse to own the rightful Lord and King until you are compelled by the power of God, lest you perish for ever in your folly.

How to Hold the Fort; or, How Edinburgh Castle was Taken.

To whom do you belong? Are you for Christ or the world? It is well that in this matter your testimony should be distinct and plain, for there are many who would like to be on the right side, but love the wrong. They are ready to acknowledge Christ in a certain measure, but do not care to make a clean cut with the world. Whichever side seems, for the moment, to offer the best advantage is the side on which they are found.

The well-known story of the armourer of Perth shall illustrate. King Robert III. was on a visit to that town, and a desperate feud between the Clan Key and the Clan Chuttan was to be settled in his presence. Thirty combatants were chosen from each clan, and these were to try their skill, blade to blade, until all on one side or other were slain. The space was cleared, and the fight about to commence, when one of the chosen champions was seized with fear, and, breaking away from his fellows, plunged into the River Tay, swam across, and escaped.

It seemed as though the fight would not take place, when the armourer of Perth presented himself before the King.

"I will take the coward's place," he said.

"And on which side will you fight?" asked the King.

"On either side, for half a mark, please your Majesty," was the armourer's reply.

And so the fight commenced. The armourer went into it, laying about him here and there, on either side, for half a mark.

Now this will not do in Christian warfare, for Christ has said, "He that is not with Me is against Me"; and you are surely on one side or the other.

To belong to Christ is to be safe for ever; to be on His side is to be on the side of blessing and victory; for He who was victorious at Calvary shall soon subdue every foe beneath His feet.

This is the time in which to bow to Him and own that you are His for ever. Then you will be freed from Satan's domination, and, instead of the citadel of your heart being held by the world and sin, the banner of the Lord will float above it.

Now, if you belong to Christ, you will need to be watchful, for Satan is a subtle foe, and, though he can never again hold you within his power, to destroy your soul, yet he will seek, and that constantly, to introduce something into your heart which will spoil your joy and mar your testimony for Christ.

In the stormy days of Scotland, five or six centuries ago, Edinburgh Castle often changed hands. At one time the flag of St. George would float proudly over its battlements and at another the banner more pleasing to Scottish eyes waved in the breeze.

Edward I. of England held it for a while by a strong garrison, but it was retaken in the reign of Edward III. by an extraordinary piece of strategy in the year 1341.

Sir William Douglas, the black knight of Hiddlesdale, was the chief actor in this affair, and he with others as shrewd as himself planned a bold and subtle raid upon the Castle.

They knew that the Governor of the Castle loved spiced wines and good fare. So one of them disguising himself as an English merchant gained admittance to the Castle, and producing a bottle of wine told the Governor that he had a cargo of it lying in the Firth, which he wanted to sell.

The price suited the Governor's pocket very well, and the wine suited his palate better, so he ordered the whole cargo to be delivered at the Castle; but early in the morning, said he, before those rascally Scots are moving.

At the appointed hour a cart laden with barrels and hogsheads was driven up to the Castle gates by the "merchant" and twelve sailors, who were, however, armed men in disguise. They gained admittance without delay, but no sooner were they inside the walls than they upset the cart, and in the confusion which followed made short work of the porter and sentinels.

A shrill blast from the horn of one of them brought Douglas and a band of followers through the open gate, for they had been hiding near awaiting the signal. A sharp conflict and the garrison was overpowered, and Sir William Douglas was master of the Castle.

This story illustrates how Satan works for the overthrow of those who belong to the Lord Jesus. You have owned Him as your Lord, and His flag waves over the citadel of your hearts. Take care that Satan does not succeed in introducing anything which will cause defeat.

He knows your tastes and tendencies and is well acquainted with all your weaknesses. He will tempt you by those things which you like best and which are most likely to deceive. Sir William Douglas deceived the Governor of the Castle by that brand of wine to which he was most partial; so Satan will, if he can, induce you to open your heart's door, and he will soon bring about your defeat. Very small things may do this. It is the thin end of the wedge that eventually splits the mighty beam; the little foxes that spoil the vines; by one bottle of wine the Governor was deceived, so that the English lost Edinburgh Castle.

Do not imagine that you can trifle with the things that the world and Satan can offer. If they gain an entrance it will be very difficult to turn them out again. THE CASTLE OF LINLITHGOW was on one occasion taken by the Scots, and in the following manner. A sturdy farmer and his sons appeared before the gates with a cartload of hay. It was what they were needing within the Castle, and they readily opened the gates. No sooner had they done so than from beneath the hay there leaped armed men. An attempt was made to drop the portcullis, but this they could not do, for the wily farmer had stopped the cart beneath it.

Your only chance of safety is dependence on the Lord. He alone can give you wisdom to discern between what is right and what is wrong. The Scriptures tell us that Satan transforms himself into an angel of light, and if you are to be saved from his snares you must have greater wisdom than your own.

Fear not, there is the throne of grace to which you may boldly go, and find mercy and grace to help in time of need.

Watch well the gates of your heart, eye gate and ear gate always need to be kept by watchful sentinels.

"Finally, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Let these things which are the things of God and Christ fill your thoughts. Admit these things, and these alone, to your mind and heart, "and THE GOD OF PEACE SHALL BE WITH YOU." (Philippians 4: 8, 9.)

Then peace, joy and victory will be constantly yours. You will be able to hold the fort, and to keep the flag flying for the One who loved you and gave Himself for you.

Debts Cancelled; or, The Goldsmith's Costly Fire.

Before James VI. of Scotland became King of England his resources were but small, and though he had not the burden of expensive wars to bear, as had some of his predecessors, his revenue was scarcely sufficient to enable him to keep up the state of a king at Holyrood Palace.

Moreover, the Queen, Anne of Denmark, had very extravagant tastes and was exceedingly fond of jewels and, consequently, she involved the King in heavy debts.

There was a man, George Heriot by name — the Heriot who founded the famous hospital in Edinburgh — to whom the King owed large sums of money. He was a goldsmith, and the Queen obtained all her jewels from him; and in addition to this he had often advanced money to the King.

Heriot plied his business in a small booth seven feet by seven in Parliament Square, just below St. Giles Church. Thither King James often resorted, no doubt thinking that if he honoured him with his friendship he would not be so pressing in his demands for payment. For James VI. was not without shrewdness of a certain kind.

Now, it is well to be reminded of the truth — the plain truth — no matter how unpalatable it may-be. Have you thought of it?

You are a debtor and God is your creditor. How do you think that your debt can be met and discharged?

George Heriot was on one occasion summoned to Holyrood, where he found King James sitting before a fire of scented wood, which filled the room with a delightful odour. He remarked to the King upon the pleasantness of it, and his Majesty replied, "Yes, it is very pleasant, but unfortunately it is also very costly."

"Ah," said Heriot, "if you will come down to my booth in Parliament Close to-morrow, sire, I will show you a far more costly fire."

"Say you so, my good fellow? Then I will be there without fail," was the King's reply.

On the morrow King James presented himself at Heriot's shop, and, seeing an ordinary coal fire in the grate, exclaimed, "Is this the fire of which you boast?"

"Wait until I get my fuel," said Heriot; and taking from a locker a bond for a sum of £2,000 which he had lent to the King, he laid it on the fire, exclaiming, "Now, is your Majesty's a more costly fire than mine?" As the flames curled up and destroyed the parchment, the King gave a sigh of relief, agreeing most readily that Heriot's fire was pleasanter and more costly than his own. The bond was burnt, the debt was cancelled, and that by the hand of the creditor, so that it stood no longer against the King.

Now let us speak of your debt. Have you faced it, and looked about for means wherewith to clear it? If you have, you must have found that you cannot do it. God's Word describes your case right truly when it says, "Nothing to pay."

There are some people in this world who were once poor bankrupt debtors, but they have witnessed, by faith, a wondrous transaction. They have beheld, to use our figure, the burning of the bond — their debts are all cancelled, they are clear of them for ever, having been freely forgiven by the creditor. But before this could be done there had to be the costly fire.

Oh, think of Calvary! There the Saviour passed through the fire of judgment, all that the sinful debtors deserved. It is by those sufferings and by that death that your creditor — God himself — is able righteously and for ever to remit His claims.

He can frankly forgive — He can freely justify, those that believe in Jesus.

Have you felt the weight of your liabilities — the extent of your indebtedness? If so, you must have groaned beneath it all and is it not good news to hear that God will find great delight to-day in pardoning you?

King James watched the bond consumed in the fire, and then warmly shook the hand of his creditor and thanked him for his kindness in cancelling the debt.

Will not you behold, with wondering eyes, the death of Him who died for sinners and say, "He died for me"? Then turn and thank Him for His love and owe a debt of gratitude to Him for ever,

Two Feasts; or, The Death of the Chief Guest.

A sumptuous feast was spread in the great banqueting hall of Edinburgh Castle. At the head of the table sat the boy King, James II. of Scotland; at his right hand the youthful Earl of Douglas, and at his left the Earl's only brother — a lad of fifteen years.

Many nobles gathered at the board, invited, in the King's name, by Crichton, the Chancellor, and Sir Alexander Livingston, the King's tutor to invest William, the sixth Earl of Douglas, with the office (held by his father before him) of Lieutenant-General of Scotland.

The King had not met his cousins before, but he was filled with admiration for them, and it was a change for him to have about his person those who were young and brave, and he enjoyed it right well.

Suddenly, above the laughter and the jests, there sounded forth the skirling of the war-pipes and the company, startled into silence, turned their gaze towards the entrance of the chamber. The doors swung back, and, with martial tread, a score of armed men filed in, and stood in silence. Again the doors opened, and two servitors approached the table, bearing on a silver platter a huge black bull's head.

This was the sign of swift and certain death for some one at the banquet, and at the sight of it each man rose up and drew his sword, save Livingston and Crichton, who sat with whitened cheeks and twitching lips.

The servitors advanced to where Douglas sat, and, placing the grim death token on the table before him, withdrew. Ah! then 'twas he who had to die. He had been trapped, invited to a banquet, the end of which was to be death to him.

The house of Douglas was at its zenith, both powerful and rich, one thousand sturdy men composed the retinue of the Earl. Jealousy and fear had caused their enemies to plot against them.

Unsuspecting and true of heart, believing in the laws of hospitality, they had come to Edinburgh almost unattended to receive honour, as they thought, but instead found themselves completely in the power of their treacherous foes.

While the mirth ran high and they feasted fearlessly, the axe was being sharpened in the Castle yard, and the executioner was preparing for his deadly work.

In vain the youthful King pleaded for his cousins, in vain he wept and scolded, and commanded. William and David Douglas were seized, and ere night closed in they were slain.

A feast which cost the chief guests their lives! Do you know the like of that to-day? There is a table spread — spread before the eyes of all — and the world, the flesh, and the devil serve the feast, Fame, wealth, pleasure, power, and lust are set upon the board but the guests go down to hell — the dead are there.

There is another feast, so different to this — a feast of living bread — where joy and peace and everlasting satisfaction are for all; where life eternal is the gift of God for those who otherwise must die. This feast cost the Host His life ere it could be spread, for in no other way could the need of men be met.

The Son of God has bowed His head in death and shed His precious blood to break the power of death and put away man's sin.

Have you, my reader, feasted at this table, where living bread is found?

The feast is great — great because of Him who has provided it, and great also because of those who shall sit down to it. For they shall come from the east and the west and the north and the south in multitudes which no man can number. But, above all things, the feast is great because of its stupendous cost. God's banqueting house has been thrown open, the tables are spread, and all things are now ready, and from His throne God invites all men to come and feast on living bread and drink of the water of life freely.

James, second Earl of Douglas, lay dying on the battle-field of Otterburn; around him raged the fight. With glazing eyes he saw that his men were pressing on to victory, and he cried to those around him, "Keep up my standard, and let the battle cry, 'A Douglas,' ring throughout the field. For there is a saying in my family that a dead Douglas shall win a field, and I trust it shall be accomplished this day." And it was, indeed, for the men who fought for Douglas won the fight.

But I have a better story to relate. The Lord Jesus by His dying crushed His foes at Calvary. He died that we might be victorious. Foes strong and cruel must have held us in their grasp had He not died. His death has set us free — He paid the ransom price. A feast is spread, and God commends His wondrous love to every man.

The Mighty Victor lives on high who died at Calvary. He lives to call you to the feast. His love has spread, to bless you with His blessing, which maketh rich and addeth no sorrow.

Fear not to trust His word to-day; He will not treat you falsely. Come now; now is the accepted time.

To slight the invitation, to refuse, is but to court disaster; to turn away from living bread that satisfies is to perish with hunger.

Men, women, and children, whether noble bred or of lowly birth, what will you do? Weigh well the issues. Will you refuse God's invitation? Shall the death of the Son of God be in vain for you? Shall others feast in heaven while you are lost in hell? Will you to-day reject the grace of God and His salvation, which can give you satisfaction, and choose the things which do but disappoint and bring destruction in their train?

If you are wise you will turn to God through Christ, and take the blessing freely offered. Then from your lips eternal praise will ring to the ONE WHO DIED TO SPREAD A FEAST OF LOVE FOR HUNGRY, STARVING, SINFUL MEN.

Unable to Save; or, The Death of Rizzi.

Not so conspicuous in Edinburgh as the Castle, but certainly not less interesting, is Holyrood Palace.

The tragic history of the beautiful, but unfortunate, Mary Queen of Scots is linked inseparably with this historic pile; and the suite of rooms which she occupied during the time of her power and trouble, are preserved to-day pretty much as they were in those sad days long ago.

We will mount the spiral staircase leading from the "Lord Darnley" rooms and enter a small apartment known as Queen Mary's small supping-room. It was here, in this tiny apartment, that the terrible incident which we relate took place.

THE YOUNG QUEEN HAD AN ITALIAN FAVOURITE NAMED RIZZIO. He had come to Holyrood first as a musician, but he quickly ingratiated himself into the Queen's favour, and was at last made her private secretary. He was a Roman Catholic, and was suspected of being an agent of the Pope. This turned the rugged Scotch Protestants against him; then his overbearing conduct towards the nobles of the land greatly angered them. Lord Darnley, the Queen's husband, hated him bitterly, and a conspiracy was formed to kill him, and to do this in the very presence of the Queen.

Thursday night, March 9th, 1565, was the time chosen for the carrying out of this deed. The Queen was sitting in her room surrounded by a few of her special friends, amongst whom was Rizzio, when suddenly the tapestry that concealed the private stairway was thrust aside, and Darnley strode into the room to the side of the Queen. He was followed almost immediately by the gaunt figure of the Earl of Ruthven, with drawn sword in hand. The little party was thrown into great confusion at this threatening intrusion, and the Queen angrily demanded to know the cause thereof.

Shaking his finger at Rizzio, Ruthven replied, "We intend your Majesty no harm, but send that villain forth; he has been here long enough."

Other armed men pressed into the chamber, and Rizzio, who doubtless was a consummate coward, rushed behind the Queen, and clutching her skirts in terror, implored her protection. No doubt she would have saved him if she could, but the odds were too many for her, and he was stabbed to the heart while he clung to the Queen; then, dragging him from the apartment, the murderers finished their terrible work outside the door at the head of the main stairs.

It was a terrible deed, committed by brutal men but let us forget that side of it and try to learn a lesson from the story. Rizzio was threatened rightly or wrongly, it matters not — by merciless foes. In the moment of his terrible danger he fled for refuge to one whom, he hoped, would afford him protection; but he fled and hoped in vain. The Queen was willing, no doubt, to shield him from his enemies, but she was powerless to do so.

Now here we will point our application and press home our lesson. A relentless foe is on the track of every unconverted sinner. Tramp, tramp, tramp, ever, nearer draw the footsteps of D-E-A-T-H. And hell follows after.

You maybe living in perfect serenity, enjoying the pleasure of the world and following the devices and ambitions of your own heart; but in the midst of it all the curtain may be lifted, and, even as Ruthven with drawn sword broke in upon Rizzio's pleasure, so may grim death break in upon you; and with one fell stroke launch you into ETERNITY. After death the judgment.

It is a serious matter; it would be serious even if it were not so certain; but seeing that there is absolutely no question about it, that this terrible danger lurks beside every unsaved soul, there is no room for trifling. Haste, oh! haste away to a place of safety; flee for refuge from the avenging sword. But whither will you fly? Is there a secure hiding-place? There is. In olden days the poet-prophet sang, "A man shall be as an hiding-place from the storm, and a covert from the tempest." The Blessed Man of the prophet's song is Jesus. He spake not of himself, but of God's beloved Son who was led as a lamb to the slaughter, that He might become the Saviour of death-hunted, sin-burdened, judgment-deserving sinners.

Never did soul of man seek Him in vain. In days gone by He cried, "How often would I have gathered you as a hen her brood beneath her wings, but ye would not!" He is still offering perfect safety from all judgment to "whosoever will." Millions have fled to His spear-rent side for refuge; welcome they all have been. Will not you seek safety there yourself, seek it speedily, seek it now? O sinner, with sin and death and judgment encompassing your soul, flee to Christ; be in time.

He is willing to save you, and unlike poor Queen Mary, He is able also. The sword cannot touch those who are hid in Him, for He bared His bosom to its stroke; His death has answered every claim of the avenger. Hallelujah! Jesus is a perfect and eternal Saviour.

Just outside the Door of Queen Mary's Room, on the spot where Rizzio fell, a dark stain is pointed out. It is said to be the stain of Rizzio's blood, and cannot be washed out. Well, it requires a very credulous mind to believe that it has been there for more than three hundred years. But if the murder of Rizzio did not leave an indelible stain upon the spot where he fell, it left a stain upon the souls of his murderers that no washing by men could cleanse.

And every sin leaves a stain, deep and dark, upon the soul of the person who commits it. The reader's soul, if uncleansed, is dark and blotted in the eye of God. How shall the foul sins be washed away?

No human ablution, no earthly device can bring it about. There is nothing but the BLOOD: the blood of Jesus Christ. "Without shedding of blood is no remission," is the word of God. "The blood of Jesus Christ God's Son cleanseth from all sin," is also His blessed declaration.

Oh that we may be all cleansed and saved by the blood of Jesus! Then we shall be able to sing —

"My sins are forgotten, forgiven, and cleansed, and gone,

My sins are remembered no more,

For Jesus has taken them all away,

My sins are remembered no more."

Favour Sought and Refused; or, An Ungracious Monarch.

In the warlike days of old, Stirling Castle played an important part in the history of Scotland. It was here, for instance, that the great power of the house of the Red Douglases was broken. James V., a mere youth, had been practically their prisoner in Edinburgh Castle since he commenced his reign. Wherever he went he had an escort of their retainers, and they ruled the country in his name. This became intolerable to the King, and he often sought to escape from their hands, but it was not until the month of July, 1528, that he was successful. Then, by night, he eluded the sentries, and rode as hard as one of the best horses in the country could carry him towards Stirling. The Governor of the Castle, an enemy of the Douglases, received him gladly, and there he assumed the power as well as the name of King. His first act was to issue a proclamation banishing the Douglases from the country for ever, and ordering that none of the family should come within twelve miles of his person under pain of being charged with treason.

Driven from their lands, they became exiles in a strange country, and there seemed to be no way of return for them.

There was one member of the family, Archibald Douglas of Kilspindle, who, before the downfall of the house, had been a great favourite with the King, because of his great strength and remarkable prowess in all warlike exercises. He longed for his native land, and, at length, determined to cast himself upon the clemency of the King. Accordingly he appeared in the neighbourhood of Stirling during one of the King's hunting expeditions. The King recognised him at once, and seemed taken aback at seeing his old favourite but, checking an exclamation of surprise, he turned from him with a dark frown upon his brow, and, putting spurs to his horse, rode for the Castle. Archibald Douglas was an old man, and clad in heavy mail, but he ran alongside the King and kept pace with his horse until the Castle gates were reached. Here he sank down in the road, completely exhausted, and the King ordered the gates to be closed upon him, nor dare any of his servants give the old man the refreshment that he so sorely needed. He waited in the hope that the King's heart would be softened towards him, but instead he received a peremptory order to return to his exile immediately.

How ungracious was the King's act! Henry VIII. of England, who holds no reputation for tenderness of heart, was much displeased on hearing of the incident, and quoted some old lines

"A King's face should show grace."

So it should, but there was no grace for Archibald Douglas in the face of James V. of Scotland, and he retired from his native land to the distant place of exile, to die shortly afterwards, a broken-hearted old man.

Our story shall serve as a contrast: There is a King in whose face there is naught but grace to-day. It is the face of the Lord Jesus — King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We were all afar from God and home, and deservedly so too, for our sins had put us there. Did we seek reconciliation with God as Douglas did with his King? Nay! We were rebels and loved the distance. But when we would not seek God and His pardoning grace He sent forth His beloved Son to seek us. Into the land of distance He came that we might be brought to God by Him. And now because He sought us we may seek Him, and if we seek Him we shall find that His face is full of grace; no frowns are upon His brow. His great delight is to receive sinful men. Instead of closing His doors upon us and refusing to supply us with that which we need so much, we find that His doors are open wide and the banquet is prepared, and we are freely invited to sit down to His feast and refresh our hungry souls on living bread. We had not to run to seek Him, He ran to seek us; we had not to wait at His door hungry and weak in the hope that He would send out some refreshment for us. Ah! no, before ever we felt the pinch of hunger or our helplessness He had provided a feast to satisfy our hearts, and a home where we may dwell with Him and taste His love for ever.

Archibald Douglas had laboured hard to seek the face of James, hoping for grace, but he was cast out and refused. But will Jesus treat you like that if you come to Him? Oh, no! He has said, "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out." How great the joy and blessing when a seeking sinner and a seeking Saviour meet. There is joy in the sinner's heart, for the grace in the Saviour meets his need and stills his fears, and pardons all his sins. There is joy also in the Saviour's heart. His meat and drink is to pour blessing into the souls of those who are needy and empty. The angels rejoice, for they share God's joy in the blessing of men.

Take advantage, dear soul, of the open door of mercy; take advantage of the open arms of Jesus. Do not miss the wondrous grace that shines in his face to-day.

"Oh, be saved, He died for thee;

Oh, be saved, His grace is free."

Unable to keep; or, A Mother Robbed of her Children.

When James V. brought home his bride to Edinburgh, an order was issued that all beggars were to be banished from the streets; distress and need had to be kept out of sight, as the King and Queen made their royal progress through the streets.

What a contrast is this to the way in which the true and heavenly King treated the poor when He came down to earth. As he passed by in the streets they brought out the sick and lame and blind, and those possessed with devils, and He healed them all. The beggars came to His feet and were fed and filled. He did not drive the troubled and needy away. He stood and cried, saying, "If any man thirst let Him come unto Me and drink." (John 7: 37.)

The heart of Jesus is just the same to-day; if you are needy, helpless and distressed, He will welcome you to Himself. He will save you and feed your poor hunger-stricken soul with bread that satisfies.

Jesus not only saves; He is able also to keep. Those who trust in Him are safe for ever, for He has said, "Neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand." (John 10: 28.) And, further, He assures us that we are not only in His hand, but kept safely in His Father's hand also.

When James IV. was overthrown and slain upon the field of Flodden, the Queen and her two children were living in Edinburgh Castle. The heir to the throne was a mere child, and a regent was appointed to rule the land in his name. The Scottish nobles thought that Queen Margaret might come too much beneath the influence of her brother, Henry VIII. of England, in the training of the future King, so they decided to demand of her to allow them the custody and training of the children.

In consequence of this, four of the nobles were deputed to wait upon her, and insist that she should accede to their proposals.

The Queen guessed the purpose of their visit, and she waited to receive them at the gate of the Castle, her two sons standing by her side. When they arrived she demanded to be told what had brought them to the Castle. With due care they at length made known their mission. Upon hearing what they had to say she sharply ordered the portcullis to be dropped. It was put down immediately, and having thus protected herself the Queen replied: —

"This castle and these children have been committed to my care by the late King; I am sole governess here, and I will never yield such an important trust to any mortal."

That was well said, and we can understand that the widowed Queen meant every word, for a mother's love made her cling to her beloved charge. But, although she had the heart to protect the young princes, she had not the power to do so for long.

Very shortly she was compelled to give up her children to the Lords of Scotland. After the lapse of only a few weeks the younger of the two princes was found dead, and it was feared that he was murdered by his guardians. Thus you see that whilst a mother's love was great, she was not strong enough to do all she wished to do.

Now the Lord Jesus loves His own with a love greater than a mother's love, and He has the power to keep us and to protect us against any and every foe.

How blessed it is to belong to Him; His love is unchanging, His arm is omnipotent, and His word is faithful. He has said: —

"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand. My Father which gave them Me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father's hand. I and My Father are one." (John 10: 27-30.)

Every child of God has been committed to His care, and He will safely lead them home. At the end He will be able to say to His Father, "Of those that Thou gavest Me I have lost none."

He takes care of those whom He saves, because He loves them, and He takes care of them because He loves His God and Father who gave them to Him.

Prisoners Released; or, Two Escapes.

"I, the Lord, have called thee . . . to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house." — Isaiah 42: 6, 7.

"The Lord hath anointed me . . . to proclaim liberty to captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound." — Isaiah 41: 1.

Such were the precious words of prophecy spoken by a man of God in ancient days — words full of hope and light, which find their fulfilment to-day in God's dear Son. Yes! Jesus is the One who sets the captive free. He is the Lord "who looseth the prisoners."

There are captives who are not conscious of their captivity, and prisoners who will not believe that they are bound. Yet the chains that hold them are stronger than any forged on blacksmith's anvil, and their prison is worse by far than the most noisome dungeon.

The captives are sinners undelivered, their chains are chains of sin and Satan holds them in his power. Many there are who dream of freedom, and boast loudly of their liberty, who are enslaved, and do not know the joy of true deliverance, Many feel the bitterness of their bondage, and cry to Him who sets the captives free; and, blessed be His name, they do not cry in vain, for "whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." (Rom. 10: 13.)

I will try and illustrate to you how this is brought about.

There is at the Castle of St. Andrews the famous Bottle dungeon, hewn out of the solid rock, in shape like a huge round bottle. We can well believe that its ingenious design would baffle the prisoners in their attempts to escape. The guide who takes visitors over the castle now will tell you, however, that one prisoner did escape in spite of this; and it occurred in the following manner.

During the time of his confinement, before the day of execution arrived, his sister gained permission to see him in the dungeon once more before he died. She had devised a daring plan, and no sooner was she lowered into the dreadful place than she insisted upon changing clothes with her doomed brother so that he might escape. When the time allowed for the interview came to an end he, in her apparel, was drawn up from the dungeon. The night was so dark, or else the guards so careless, that his features were not noticed, and he got away. But all through the dreary night his brave and devoted sister had to stay in the dungeon. When the morning dawned it was discovered that the prisoner had escaped, and that someone else had taken his place.

Is not this what Christ Jesus has done? There are many who can say, "He was delivered for our offences"; He went into our prison, and took our place in death. Yes, He clothed Himself with our sin; and our iniquities were laid upon Him that we might be free. Clothed in the garments which He gives. All His fitness ours before the face of God.

Many can say with joy that they have changed their rags for a spotless garment, and can sing —

"Clad in this robe how bright I shine.

Angels possess not such a dress;

Angels have not a robe like mine.

Jesus, the Lord, my righteousness."

But Jesus died for all! It is written in the Scripture: "Christ died for the ungodly"; and all who own that they are ungodly — captives to sin and Satan — can obtain the deliverance through Christ.

Will you reject Him? Think of the greatness of the love that brought Him down to die, to bear men's sins, and the judgment of a holy God against sin.

"His is love, 'tis love unbounded,

Without measure, without end;

Human thought is here confounded —

'Tis too vast to comprehend.

Praise the Saviour,

Magnify the sinners' Friend!

Those whom the Son of God sets free are free indeed, and need never be brought into Satan's captivity again.

* * * * * *

Mary Queen of Scots, the most interesting of all persons in Scottish history (with the possible exception of Robert Bruce) was a captive in Loch Leven Castle, kept there by order of the Earl of Murray, her half brother (who ruled the kingdom in her stead). She had many friends outside the castle, and what was more to her purpose, she had friends within its walls.

There was a youth, known to fame as "little Douglas," whose heart was softened by the Queen's distress; and, being a quick-witted lad, he plotted her deliverance.

One day, without being seen, he managed to secure the Castle keys, and when the darkness gathered he set Queen Mary free; then locked the gates behind him and threw the keys into the water. He assisted her into a boat which was ready and rowed to the main land, where anxious friends were waiting to receive them. To lock the doors and throw away the keys precluded all chance of pursuit and capture. It was a clever plan; the next best thing indeed to becoming master of the Castle in which the Queen was imprisoned.

Now, using this to illustrate our subject, it is good news to hear that the Lord and Saviour has secured the keys of Satan's stronghold, and by His power He holds them. "I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; AND HAVE THE KEYS OF HELL AND OF DEATH." (Rev. 1: 18.) He is Master of the prison house; He holds the keys and none can take them from His hand; and He will keep His own safely evermore. He has put the waters of His death between His beloved ones and their foes, and none can reach them now, or take them from His hands.

It is well to be the Lord's freed men; to know the love that led Him to take our place and bear the penalty of our sins. To see Him risen in mighty power, holding in His victorious hands the keys of hell and of death. May you know Him thus, my reader, and rejoice in the great deliverance which He has brought.

Forgiveness Refused; or, The Remorse of a King.

Backwards and forwards, within a darkened chamber in the Castle of Stirling, paced a young man; the royal robes were wrapt about him, but there was no exultation in his heart. He was the undisputed King of the realm, but this yielded him no satisfaction. Beneath his robes, about his waist, he wore a heavy iron chain — his penance belt — but upon his mind and conscience there lay a heavier burden, for James IV. of Scotland was a prey to bitter remorse. He had been guilty of a fearful crime against one who loved him well, and now, when the enormity of his sin came home to him, it was too late for repentance — too late to hear words of forgiveness from the lips of the one whom he had wronged.

His father, James III. (like most of the ill-fated Stuart kings), was far from being an ideal monarch. He was weak in character, and had gathered around him many favourites who were not calculated to help him to govern, and the exaltation of these men to high offices had angered the proud and war-like nobles of the land, and they determined on rebellion.

By flattering words they induced the heir to the throne to head their army and fight against his father, the King.

Now, though James III. was a weak man, he was a very affectionate father, and this added greatly to the sin of his son, for he had no cause for his action, save that he was a conceited youth, and loved himself, and desired to be the greatest man within the kingdom.

Rebellion is a serious crime, but James of Rothesay is not the only one at whose door this crime lies. "All we like sheep have gone astray," and that means that we have rebelled — not against an earthly sovereign, but against God Himself; and if anything could aggravate our case, it is that He against whom we have sinned, loved us perfectly, and never gave us any cause for our sin.

Our foreparents listened to the flattery of the tempter when he told them that if they did but turn their backs on God, they would exalt themselves; they sinned and fell into rebellion, because they loved themselves instead of God, and we, like they, have walked in the same path, loving ourselves and living for ourselves, instead of for Him who has a right to claim our loyalty and obedience. In short, we are sinners and ungodly, and deserve the righteous judgment of the God against whose law and love we have sinned.

Now James III. sent offers of forgiveness to his son upon one condition only, namely, that he should lay down his arms. And his father's gracious message almost caused him to yield, but ill-advisers were at hand, who by more flatteries drowned the voice of conscience, and hardened him in his rebellion. They were his father's bitter foes, who hoped to strike a deadlier blow at the King through the son whom he loved So well.

How like to that is what we see around us to-day. God has sent an offer of free pardon to sinners on one condition only, and that condition is, that they bow to Him. God is graciously proclaiming salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ, and all who come to God through Jesus are blessed for ever. How do you stand in this matter, dear reader? God commands you to repent, and commends His love to you. Have you done the one and received the other? Millions have, and throughout eternity they will never regret it.

You have heard the message of salvation, and it may be that God's grace, in spite of all your sinfulness, has almost persuaded you to be a Christian, but the devil has kept you back from that decision and induced you to continue in your sins and at a distance from God, and you have listened to his voice, as the youthful James listened to his evil counsellors.

Be sure of this, the devil does not seek your good. He hopes to rob God of the glory of pardoning a rebel sinner alike you, for He is God's foe, but do you not see that this must mean eternal sorrow for you. Oh, if you are still afar from God listen to the voice of mercy to-day; surrender yourself to God by bring to the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the case of the King's son, his father's foes prevailed, and a fierce battle was the result. Not more than a mile from the famous field of Bannockburn, the shameful sight was seen of a son leading an army against his father and his King. And in the fight the arms of the son prevailed, and the father fled from the battlefield a broken-hearted man. He was thrown from his horse in his mad gallop for safety, and in a fainting condition was carried into a miller's cottage near. When he recovered from his swoon he told the miller's wife that he was the King, and begged her to seek a priest to whom he could confess, for he was dying. In her astonishment she rushed to the door crying out for a priest to whom the King might confess, when a tall figure in a grey cloak appeared. "Where is His Majesty?" he asked "I am a priest."

He knelt by the couch where the King lay, and while pretending to speak kindly to him, he thrust a dagger into his heart; then in his haste to get away he dropped the dagger upon the cottage floor.

The news of this had just been brought to James IV., and it filled him with dismay, and when the dagger which had done the fearful deed was put into his hand, his horror was increased a hundredfold, for he discovered it to be his own, which he had missed from his belt early in the day of the battle. Ah! how he would have done anything to have recalled the words and undone the deeds of the weeks that were passed. He sought for a place of repentance but though he sought it carefully with tears, he could not find one. He rejected "the mighty boon of forgiveness," when he might have had it from his father's lips, and now it was too late.

He ordered the smith to forge a heavy chain, which he wore about his waist until he fell upon Flodden field, but this did not make him a happy man, nor could an act like that put away his guilt.

Too late for pardon, to be for ever a prey to the heart-tearing pangs of remorse! Can such a doom be the portion of any who read this book? Yes, it may be. To harden the heart against God and His wonderful mercy can but result in a harvest of sorrow, for if God's gift is refused, the wages of sin must be received. "He that being often reproved and hardeneth his neck shall be suddenly cut off, and that without remedy." After death the judgment.

The Lord Jesus, whose great love led Him to die, so that sinners might be pardoned, spoke of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Oh, hear the warnings of love to-day. Surrender yourself to God, bow the knee to Jesus, and thus secure the pardoning grace of a Saviour-God.

But how can the sins of the past be atoned for? James IV. hoped to shrive his soul by constant penance. But can our sins be put away by any effort of ours?

You have read the story of the Lady Macbeth who, having assisted her husband to murder the old King of Scotland, used to walk in her sleep, and dreaming that upon her hand she saw the stain of the murdered man's blood, cried out for some soap or perfume by which the stain could be erased. But neither our washing nor our suffering can put away our guilt. Cleansing power is to be found alone in the precious blood of Jesus, and His blood cleanseth from all sin.

One word more before we close our chapter. You may be tempted to continue in your self-willed way, thinking it perhaps to be the freer and the happier path. Oh, remember that the sin of such a course can only recoil upon your own head. God must ever be victorious; in Him is the strength of almighty justice as well as omnipotent love. Bow to Him to-day and join the company of those who were once rebels, but who now find their joy in living for and serving the One whose grace has pardoned them.

A Noble Confession; or, The Wigtown Martyr.

"To be tied to a stake fixed within the flood mark in the water of Bladenoch, near Wigtown, there to be drowned."

Such was the terrible sentence passed by the agent of the last of the Stuart Kings upon Margaret Wilson, aged eighteen, and Wigtown became famous because of the heroic way in which that sentence was endured by the maiden martyr.

But what was the crime of which Margaret Wilson had been guilty? Had she been some powerful or treacherous leader of men who had darkly plotted against the life of the King, or sought to injure her fellow-subjects, such a sentence might have been deserved. But she was a simple young Christian. Her only desire was to be true to her Saviour, and she had refused to take the oath acknowledging the right of the King to dictate to his subjects in matters of religion, for she felt that it would be dishonouring to her Lord and Master.

A dissolute and bigoted King had sought to force his will upon the people and to make them accept a religion which was offensive to them, and altogether contrary to what they believed to be according to the Word of God. Charles II. and his successor entrusted the execution of the law to brutal and wicked men. One of the worst of these was Sir Robert Grierson, of Lagg, and he it was who tried Margaret Wilson and condemned her to so cruel a death.

On the 11th of May, 1685 ("the killing times of Scotland," as the year was called), the brave girl and an older woman who was to suffer at the same time and for the same offence, were led out to suffer according to the barbarous sentence which had been passed upon them.

Crowds with hearts full of sympathy and pain followed them, and when they came in sight sobs and tears and muttered curses broke from men and women alike.

When the place of execution was reached an effort was made to turn the young girl from her stedfastness — to renounce her faith and take the oaths required of her.

But clearly in reply her voice rang out, "We are called upon this day to give a worthy testimony to our Lord. He hath done us so much good and no ill these years we have served Him. This day shall we behold Him in the glory of His risen power, and I do rejoice the end is so near."

The older woman who was to suffer with her was bound to a stake thirty yards further out to sea in order that the sight of her suffering might make Margaret quail. But it had no such effect upon her. When she saw her companion bound to her stake she exclaimed, "The Lord will this day cleave the waters of death asunder for me, and I shall behold the Lamb in His beauty."

With ropes they roughly bound her to the upright beam at which she was to die.

Swiftly through the narrow channel of the Bladenoch ran the waves, and soon the older martyr was submerged and dead; and then in a triumphant voice, while the waves rolled round her, Margaret Wilson sang, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. 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."

The waves had now begun to pass over her head, and half unconscious as she was they unbound her from the stake and brought her out of the water to see if she would at last recant.

Her weeping mother stood beside her, and pleaded with her to pray for the King. "Yes, that I will do," said Margaret.

"See!" cried the mother to Grierson "she prays for the King."

"Let us have less of her prayers," was his cruel reply, "and let her take the oath."

But this the noble girl refused to do, and she was flung back into the waters, sealing her faith and constancy by her death.

Life is full of sweet and pleasant prospects for those who are young; how great and blessed must have been the love and power of Margaret's Saviour to enable her thus to witness for Him, and truly she shall have her reward. The crown of glory, the harp of gold, and palm of victory await the bold confessor of Christ. To be confessed by Him before His Father and all the holy angels is their bright prospect. To have the joy of His approval now is their present position.

Our lot is cast in happy days! We are not called upon to face a martyr's death for the Saviour whom we love. But, Christian, we are called upon to confess Him, and this may mean the scoffs and jeers of those who know Him not. Ah, but if He is glorified what does it matter? Have we received eternal life of Him; did He lay down His life for us; and is it true that every joy in heaven above has been secured for us by His death and sufferings? Oh! then let us not be ashamed to own His lordship over us. If His love fills our hearts, His will must dominate our lives, and we shall then confess Him boldly, not fearing the results.

The Danger of Delay; or, Mac Ian's Fatal Mistake.

HOW often we find the sad consequences of delay recorded in history, and how many cases could be cited to illustrate the fact that procrastination is one of man's worst enemies.

We might fill a volume in recording instances where many lives have been thrown away because somebody was behind time. But I think we could not find any incident more striking than that which brought about the "massacre of Glencoe."

Glencoe is one of the wildest and most dreary valleys in all the west of Scotland; mists hang continually over its grey and barren rocks, and the uplifted voice of the tempest and the weird cry of the wild bird are the only sounds that break the stillness.

This wild district was inhabited by a proud and brave clan, named the Macdonalds, of Glencoe. In the reign of William and Mary the chief of this clan was an old man named Mac Ian: he was a rugged Highlander, with a spirit almost as untameable as the storms which so often raged about his home.

Mac Ian, like most of the Highland chiefs, sympathised with James II., who had been dethroned because of his adherence to Popery.

The Earl of Breadalbane had been appointed Governor of Scotland, and on him fell the work of bringing about a peaceful settlement with these Highland chiefs; but he was hated by them, and many difficulties arose between him and them until it seemed almost impossible that his purpose could be carried out.

While things were in this state, the English Government issued a proclamation calling upon all rebel chiefs to take an oath of allegiance to King William before the first January, 1692, and declaring that all who failed to do so would be looked upon as traitors and treated accordingly.

All the chiefs took care to take the oath before the time appointed, but Mac Ian, who, in the pride of his heart, imagined that it would be a fine thing to be the last to submit. Accordingly, he put off doing so until the 31st of December, when he presented himself at Fort William. To his dismay he was told he must go to Inverary, as only a magistrate could receive the oath, and there was none nearer. Then, for the first time, the awful folly of his vanity dawned upon him, for Inverary was six days journey from Fort William, and between the two places lay rugged mountains, snow clad and almost impassable. In his desparation the poor old man set out for Inverary, and reached that place on the 6th of January.

The day of grace was passed — he was behind time, and when the Governor of Scotland heard that he had not submitted at the appointed time, he determined on the destruction of the whole clan.

Treachery and infamy marked the carrying out of this order, it is true; but it never could have happened had not Mac Ian put off his submission until it was too late.

Early on the morning of February 13th the work of slaughter began. Many of the Macdonalds were slain in their beds, and their chief paid the penalty of his folly by being one of the first to fall.

Let not this sad story from Glencoe's dreary valley of weeping be lost upon us. Let us not forget that procrastination brought about all the desolation and death that was witnessed there on that fatal 13th of February and, while we think of all this, let us remember that the loss of a soul is an infinitely greater loss than merely that of life, for the one is for eternity and the other only for time; and yet we know that many have lost their souls and heaven for ever because they madly put off the question until it was too late.

Hear me out, for these things deeply concern you. God has sent forth a proclamation concerning His beloved Son. He has exalted Him to the highest place in heaven, and just as the Highland chiefs could only have peace by bowing to King William, so now, sinners can only have peace with God by bowing to the Lord Jesus Christ. For all who do bow there is forgivensss and eternal heaven, but for all who refuse there is nothing but the devouring fire of everlasting judgment. It is now the day of grace, and in long suffering mercy God is lingering over a rebellious world, and you may own Jesus as Lord and Saviour to-day; but remember, IT MAY BE TOO LATE TO-MORROW. A man once told me that he would never bow to Jesus, but he will, in spite of his foolish pride of heart which made him speak thus; for God has so decreed.

Breadalbane, who had to bring about the subjection of the chiefs, was hated by them all, and this, no doubt, kept Mac Ian from submitting sooner. But there is no reason why you should not submit to Jesus, for He is all love, and has proved His love by dying for us, while we were enemies of God.

I would beseech you not to let this love of Jesus — so wonderfully proved at Calvary — be in vain as far as you are concerned; but bow your knee to Him, trust Him as your Saviour, and confess that He alone has a right to you. Then, washed from your sins by His precious blood, you will be ready for the glory of God, and you will have no fear of being too late for the blessing and heaven.

How fearful will be the awakening of those whose love for the world has kept them away from Christ until the day of grace is passed! Alas! there will be many of this class. When the door of mercy is closed, they will stand outside with sorrow-charged hearts, begging for admittance; but there will be no mercy then! In righteousness that awful word "depart" will sound from within, blasting all their false hopes and sealing their eternal doom. Oh! look about you! See the danger of delay. Flee now to Christ.

"All things are ready, Come!

To-morrow may not be;

O sinner, come, the Saviour waits

This hour to welcome thee!"

Standing by the Cross

Standing by the Cross

J. T. Mawson.

Explanation

Christ and Him crucified is not more popular to-day than when Paul preached his gospel in proud and pleasure-loving Corinth; but it is just as needful now as it was then if men are to be saved and made to live unto God. Then it was to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, and to-day it is despised by those who prefer the gospel of evolution and human progress; but as then, so now, it is the power and the wisdom of God to all them that believe. I am one of them that believe. Christ, once crucified but now risen and glorified is my Saviour, and to Him I bear witness in these reported Addresses.

Contents

1. A Priceless Gem in a golden setting

2. Behold . . . the Friend of Sinners: and the sinner at His feet

3. And in the Garden — a Tomb

4. The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: His poverty and our wealth

5. The Credentials of our Lord: The Shepherd and His Sheep

6. Faith, Faithfulness and Fellowship

7. A Biography in Prophecy: From the manger to the universal Throne

8. The Seven Words on the Cross: His Last Will and Testament

9. The Lord's Farewell Words: Our dangers; His provision

10. Jesus Showing Himself: and on this wise showed He Himself

11. Standing by the Cross: The way of "the disciple whom Jesus loved"

12. Blinding, Beguiling, Buffeting: The Activities of the Devil

Chapter 1

A Priceless Gem in a Golden Setting

The fact that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners gives the impulse to all true service, and it must be the basis of all sound and effectual preaching. Paul did not want Timothy to forget it; he could not forget it himself; no preacher should forget it. The man who does not rejoice in it and preach it, has very little to say that is worth listening to, even though he rival Socrates in learning, and be as eloquent as Chrysostom, the golden mouthed.

"This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." — 1 Tim. 1: 15.

There could not be simpler statement of the gospel of our God than that, but it is as great as it is simple. There is in it a priceless gem and that gem lies in a golden setting. Let us first consider the gem. It is this saying: "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." It is a familiar saying, yet I proclaim it afresh, and as though you had never before heard the good news that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

I am speaking to many who are Christians; your hearts ought to thrill to this word. I am sure they do. It was written by a great servant of the Lord to his son in the gospel, and these two found a wonderful communion in it, for the exceeding abundant grace of our Lord Jesus Christ to sinners and the love of God to the world had been displayed in the fact that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. As Paul wrote these words he must have been profoundly moved, for the coming of Christ into the world had meant so much to him. It had saved him, blessed him, changed him, given him something to live for, and filled him with a life-long gratitude to his Lord.

It is not surprising that this saying should find a place in this letter of instruction to a young servant of Christ, for the fact that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners gives the impulse to all true service, and it must be the basis of all sound and effectual preaching. Paul did not want Timothy to forget it; he could not forget it himself — no preacher should forget it. The man who does not rejoice in it and preach it, has very little to say that is worth listening to, even though he rival Socrates in learning, and is as eloquent as Chrysostom, the golden-mouthed.

This saying is a most fitting one for this company, for there are sinners here, the very sinners whom Christ Jesus came into the world to save. Indeed the text would suit every sort of congregation that we could gather together; whether poor or rich, illiterate or learned, high or low, for all have sinned, and Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. How universal is its appeal! It is God's message to all. We may carry it from pole to pole, through every clime and to men of every colour and creed, and everywhere it ought to command the deepest interest, for there is no man that sinneth not, and every sinner needs a Saviour.

I propose to divide the saying into three parts: (1) The One who came — CHRIST JESUS. (2) The place into which He came — THE WORLD. (3) The object of His coming — TO SAVE SINNERS. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

THE ONE WHO CAME

We must begin with the One who came, for apart from Him there is no gospel for men, no Saviour for sinners. It was Christ Jesus who came. But who is He? The Bible leaves us in no doubt as to this. When John was moved by the Holy Ghost to write of Him, he scorned and discarded all introductions and preambles and made haste to get at once to his great subject, as he declared, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made . . . and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." He is God, the Creator, eternal in being, almighty in power, infinite in wisdom, and He it was who came into the world to save sinners. Of old, when the corrupt and guilty cities of the plain were to be judged and destroyed, two angels were sent to do it; and when rebellious men were to be rebuked for their iniquities, the Word was sent by holy prophets. But now the time had come, not for judgment, nor for rebuke, but for salvation; and neither angels nor prophets were equal to this great work. For this the Word must become flesh, the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father must become man. The day of salvation could not dawn until He appeared, but when Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners the light of that glorious day began to shine for all.

How wonderful it is! He was Jehovah who gave the law at Sinai, and since that law had been flouted and broken He might have come with flaming fire taking vengeance, but He did not.

"He did not come to judge the world,

He did not come to blame,

He did not only come to seek,

It was to save He came:

And when we call Him Saviour,

We call Him by His Name."

To save sinners He had to come down to them. Since they were men, He had to become man, though He was the sinless Man, as all Scripture shows. He was as holy as man on earth as He was in His eternal Godhead, just as sinless when He walked the filthy streets of those eastern cities as He was when He sat upon His throne and created the angels. He is God, infinitely holy He is man, spotless and pure. A holy mystery is this! A mystery beyond the range of the human mind, but not beyond the reach of faith. It may be darkness to the intellect of proud, self-sufficient men, but it is sunshine to the hearts of all those that believe. We may rejoice and exult in the angel's message to the shepherds at Bethlehem when he said, "To you is born a Saviour," and with them we may bow in wonder and worship beside the manger, in which was cradled Christ, the Lord.

THE PLACE INTO WHICH HE CAME

Christ Jesus came into the world. It was the only way, but the world did not welcome Him when He came. There was no room for Him in the habitations of men: a stable was His shelter and a manger His bed at His birth. Nor did His great compassion for men and His gentle words and tender mercies change the world's thoughts about Him, the more it saw of Him, the more it hated Him. It could not endure Him. It cried, "Away with Him," and spat in His face and crucified Him. Such was the world into which He came.

He knew well all that it would cost Him to come. He knew how men would treat Him when He did come. He was not taken by surprise when they despised and rejected Him, for He knew all men. The depth of their sinfulness, the hardness of their hearts, the blindness of their eyes were all known to Him. He knew that sin and Satan held them in an awful thrall, that they would prefer their corruption and sins to the choicest of heaven's blessing. He knew that coming into the world would mean for Him a life of sorrow and a death of shame, and knowing all, He came. He came from the unsullied glory of God into this world that reeked with moral putrefaction. He came to be the light in the world's darkness. He came to declare the heart of God to men who did not know Him. He came into the world to save sinners.

If there had been any goodness in the heart of the world it would surely have been discovered and developed by the life of Jesus here. Never were such words spoken as He spoke, never were such works done. He stretched out His hands to the weary and laden, and invited them to come to Him for rest. He offered satisfaction and eternal life and proclaimed in the ears of men that "God is love." In Him God was beseeching men to be reconciled to Him. It was all in vain, their ears were heavy and they would not hear. His heart was moved with compassion for their miseries, and He fed them when they were hungry, He healed them when they were sick, He blessed their children, He went about doing good; but the world was only moved to deeper hatred.

The world that treated Christ like that has not changed one bit, and the only hope is for us to be saved out of it. Every unsaved soul in the world belongs to the world that crucified the Lord of glory, sharing its sins now and soon to share its doom. You may say, "Do you not belong to the world?" No, thank God, I do not. I did once, but the great Saviour of sinners has redeemed me from it by His own blood and I belong to Him now, and He has said of all who believe on Him through the gospel, "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." The man who believes the gospel belongs to Christ and to heaven; the one who rejects it or neglects its entreaties, belongs to the world that spat in the face of Jesus and nailed Him to a cross. On one side or the other each one of us stands.

Such was the world into which He came, such were the men to whom He appealed. Nothing could be clearer than the solemn truth that in men no good thing dwells; that it is not a reformer or a teacher or a guide that they need, but a Saviour who is able and willing to save.

THE OBJECT OF HIS COMING

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. If they could have saved themselves He would not have come to do it. If men could have saved themselves, God would have let them do it, and when they had accomplished the great work He would have put the crown upon their brows and said, "Well done" But no sinner can save himself, much less can he ransom his brother from sin's slavery.

A Saviour was needed and there is only one Saviour. "Neither is salvation in any other, for there is none other name given among men whereby we must be saved." It is strange that sinful men do not feel their need of Jesus; it is strange that some refuse to own it. I talked to one of them, a doctor in Melbourne, Australia. He told me that he loved the Lord his God with all his heart, and his neighbour as himself. I expressed my astonishment, and told him that he was the only man I had ever met who could make such a claim. "You have no gospel, doctor, and since you are not a sinner, you do not need one," I said. "Oh yes," he said, "I have; my gospel is, Be true to the good within you, and all will come right in the end." I replied, "Sometimes I go into the slums and talk to those who are down and out, to the drunkards and degraded. I have a gospel that I carry to them; it is, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Would you advise me to throw over my gospel and carry yours to that sort of folk? He coloured a little as he answered, "No, I think your gospel will suit such people better than mine." "Doctor," I said, "listen to this. God says, 'There is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.' The drunkard in the slums and the doctor in his surgery, are alike sinful in the sight of God. They both need a Saviour, and Christ Jesus came into the world to save both. Is not this good news? Surely no word that could fall on mortal ear could give greater joy than this; 'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners!' I read the words and I can say, 'Why, Lord, that means me; I am a sinner, and if Thou didst come to save sinners, then Thou didst come to save me.'"

But think of what it cost Him! To show to the full His love to guilty men, He had to die. His words and works and His holy life were wonderful, but they could not take the sting out of death for us, they could not deliver us from Satan's power, or save us from the just judgment that our sins deserved. To do this, He had to die for us, for without the shedding of blood, there is no remission. Hear what the Scriptures say, "Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." And again, "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed." And again, "When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."

There is a challenge to every one in this saying. What response have you made to the Saviour's approach to you. Consider what He has done. Think of the great love that filled His heart for us when He died for such as we are. I would that we were all like a young Scotchman with whom I talked.

He was an anxious man, a conscience-stricken sinner. I turned him to the verse of Scripture which I have already quoted, Isaiah 53, and explained to him that it spoke of what Jesus suffered on the cross for sinners, and asked him to put himself into it by changing the plural pronouns into singular ones. He understood me, and read, "He was wounded for MY transgressions, He was bruised for MY iniquities the chastisement of MY peace was upon Him, and with His stripes I —" — then he burst into a big sob and could not finish the verse. I put my arm round him and asked, "What is the matter?" He answered, "I can't understand it, I can't understand why He should have loved me so much as to die for me." My reply was, "Neither can I understand it. And God knew that neither you nor I could understand it, and so He calls it in His Word, the love of Christ that passeth knowledge.'"

I preach this great Saviour. God's gospel to men is Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures and was buried, and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. He is willing and able to save all who yield themselves to Him and all whom He saves, He keeps. He gives to them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them from His hand. But this preaching Christ is not easy work, and yet it is it is alike my joy and my despair; my joy, for I speak with gladness of Him who has saved me and can save you, and whom I know to be brighter and better than the brightest and best the world can give; and yet in despair, for I feel that my words are dull and cold words when they ought to throb and burn, and move you, and bend you, and bring you in full surrender to the feet of Him of whom I speak.

THE GOLDEN SETTING

This saying is the gem, now for its setting. A man said to me after a gospel meeting, "If only what you have been telling us were true!" I answered, "It would be very good, wouldn't it?" He admitted that it would. "Let me assure you," I said, "that it is as true as it is good," and my text declares it to be so. IT IS A FAITHFUL SAYING. It will not deceive or disappoint you. It is true, it is faithful. You have heard and believed thousands of false sayings from the lips of men in your time; your credulity in that respect is amazing; but here is a saying from the lips of God, and it is not false but true, and it is as good as it is true. You may safely believe this saying, you may receive it into your very heart, for it is a faithful saying. That is the first part of the golden setting.

Another may ask, "But is it for me? How may I be sure that it is for me?" The text answers the question, for it tells us that the saying is WORTHY OF ALL ACCEPTATION. It is worthy that every man, woman and child should receive it. It reaches out to the greatest of men and they need it, and it comes down to the meanest of men — they too may believe it. It matters not whether you live in a mansion, or sleep on the Thames Embankment it is for you. All excludes none. This saying, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners," is worthy of your acceptation, it is for you. That is another part of the golden setting.

A young actor had come to hear the gospel, and at the close of the meeting he said to me, "If you knew what God knows about me, you would not say that I could be saved." He felt his badness, and it may be that you are like him, feeling that you are too bad to be saved. It is quite possible that you could not be worse than you are, but, even so, look again at our saying, examine further the setting in which it appears, and you will discover what that young actor discovered, that no sinner is beyond the saving grace and power of this great Saviour. The one who was inspired of the Holy Ghost to write it exclaimed as he did so, OF WHOM I AM CHIEF. It was as though he said, None need despair. Christ Jesus has saved me, and if He has saved me, He can save you. The chief of sinners is with Christ in glory. He is there because Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And for the same reason you may dwell for ever in the same glory. And that word completes the golden setting in which the gem sheds its beauty.

It seems to me that my text meets every difficulty and answers every question that can be raised. It encourages even the worst of sinners to put the great Saviour to the test. It surely has an appeal to you. If you will believe the saying and yield to the Saviour now, you will begin to learn His grace, His tenderness, His power. He who died to save you, ever liveth to make intercession for those who trust Him, and He is able to keep them from falling, and to present them faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.

Chapter 2

"Behold . . . the Friend of Sinners": and the sinner at His feet

Let Simon sit, smug and critical, tearless and cold, in his Pharisaical pride despising alike the Forgiver and the forgiven, with him we have nothing in common, for we have sinned much and been forgiven much; we are loved much and must love much in return. We fall with the sinner at the Saviour's feet, those feet which were beautiful upon the mountains, bringing good tidings and publishing peace, feet that were pierced and wounded at Calvary for us. There we pour out our gratitude and adoration "for to whom much is forgiven, the same loveth much."

"The Son of Man is come eating and drinking, and ye say, Behold, a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners! But wisdom is justified of all her children.

"And one of the Pharisees desired Him to eat with him. . . . And behold, a woman in the city which was a sinner . . . stood at His feet behind Him weeping." — Luke 7.

With what scorn the enemies of the grace of God spoke of our Lord. They despised Him because He did not respect their self-righteousness and pride, but sought out the sinful and the poor. Luke, whose high privilege it was to write especially of the grace of God, shows us this more often than the other evangelists. In chapter 5 he tells us that the Pharisees murmured against His disciples, saying, "Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners? Here in chapter 7 they scornfully call Him "The Friend of publicans and sinners." In chapter 15 the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, "This Man receiveth sinners and eateth with them:" and in chapter 19, "They all murmured, saying, that He was gone to be a guest with a man that is a sinner."

The self-righteous religionist always did and always will murmur against the grace of God, but what folly is this, for where should the great Saviour be but among sinners? It was for this He came — to call sinners to repentance. We are glad that His foes called Him "the Friend of sinners"; they gave Him a name that shines out with an imperishable and everlasting lustre, and countless multitudes will rejoice in the glory of God for ever because He befriended every individual soul of them, when apart from Him they were hopeless and lost.

They had scarcely flung their bitter taunt at Him than He took it up and showed how true it was, and showed too, that from among these sinners whom they despised, wisdom would gather her children and fill heaven with them. He showed that there were two families in the world — the family of wisdom and the family of folly. He Himself made the division between them and discovered which was which. The children of wisdom came to Him and clung to Him as the needle clings to the magnet, while the children of folly held proudly aloof; as it was, so it is, and by this very thing every one may test himself as to whose child he is.

The scene where Jesus showed Himself to be the Friend of sinners was the Pharisee's house. A strange and uncongenial place in which to do that we might think, but the background of Pharisaical pride and criticism only served to throw into bright and blessed relief the Saviour's grace. So we read, "One of the Pharisees desired Him that He would eat with him, and He went into the Pharisee's house and sat down to meat." This man may have thought himself a very important person when he extended his patronage to this prophet from Nazareth, and we can easily imagine how proudly he looked upon the multitude when his invitation was accepted. He little knew that his humble Guest was really arranging the feast that day, that He might spread another feast at which thousands have fed since then; a feast of grace for hungry men and women, which is as full and fresh as ever, and which should rejoice and satisfy every one of us.

The Pharisees supposed that Jesus was a prophet, but then a prophet was not, of course, in the same class as a Pharisee, and while he had invited Him to his house, he looked upon Him as so inferior to himself that he did not offer Him the ordinary courtesy of the day. How could a Pharisee treat a prophet as an equal! And what prophet would expect it?

So on entering the house the Lord took the lowest seat at the feast, just inside the door. He could not have done otherwise, for He did not teach others to do what He did not practise Himself, and He had taught, "When thou art bidden to a feast, take the lowest room"; and no friendly voice addressed Him saying, "Friend, go up higher." He was left where He reclined — just inside the door. And just outside the door there stood a woman, bowed and broken by her sin. She had heard Him, and His word had made her feel that He alone could ease her of her burden and heal her stricken soul, and now between her and Him there was but a step. She was just outside and He was just inside that door, with only a step between. If He had been seated at the head of the table at the Pharisee's right hand, her courage would have failed her at the threshold and she probably would not have reached Him that day, but He was so near her. Why, she had but to stretch out her hand and touch Him, she had but to take one step to be at His feet. Thus did the disdain of the Pharisee put the Saviour within reach of the sinner.

There were two great powers that day conspiring together to bring her into the place of blessing; her great need was driving her, and His great love was drawing her, and between the driving power of her need and the drawing power of His love she was forced to the feet of Jesus, the most blessed place in the universe of God. How do I know that the feet of Jesus is the most blessed place in the universe of God for burdened sinners? I know it from experience. It was there my burden rolled away. Happy day!

"I came to Jesus as I was,

Weary and worn and sad."

And He was so kind to me. He made me feel that He was glad to see me. He released me from my sins and attached me to Himself, and I can bear witness to the fact that to be at the feet of Jesus is to be in the most blessed place in the universe of God.

I tell out the gospel truth when I say that between you and the great Saviour there is but a step. In a gospel meeting some time ago I pressed the people on this point. There was a lad in that audience who lived alone with his widowed mother, and that night he could not sleep. He needed the Saviour, he wanted to be saved, and he took the step. It was near to midnight when he crept into his mother's room. "My boy," said she, "what's the matter?" "Mother," he said, "do you remember that the preacher kept saying, 'It's only a step to Jesus, why not take it now'? I've come to tell you that I've taken the step." This is the time. Now is the day of salvation. It is only a step to Jesus, and there's room at His feet for you.

Behold the weeping sinner at the Saviour's feet. What kind of tears were those that flowed down her cheeks? They were tears of repentance we may be sure, but they were tears of gratitude also. She had found the place of rest. He had said, "Come unto Me and I will give you rest." She had heard His word and had come, and had He disappointed her? Nay. He had exceeded her highest hope, as He always does, and though He had not spoken one word to her, her heart had found its rest, where weary souls may always rest, at His feet.

The Pharisee watched her as she washed the feet of Jesus with her tears and anointed them with ointment and kissed them in her gratitude, and as he watched, he disapproved, and the Lord went down and down in his estimation. A prophet he had thought Him when he invited Him to his house; but now he is sure He cannot be that, for no prophet would have allowed such a woman as this to touch him. Perhaps not, but He whom this woman adored was more than a prophet — He was her Saviour and her God. This is the wonder of the gospel, it transcends our highest thought. When sinners did not seek their God, He sought them and came to earth to save them. The Son in the Godhead, by whose power the worlds were made, became flesh and dwelt among us, not to condemn but to save, and if we would see Him in this mighty condescension of love, where must we look for Him? There in the lowest seat in the Pharisee's house with a sinful woman weeping out her penitence at His feet, and a proud, graceless, self-righteous Pharisee despising Him for it. Oh, let us bend at those same feet, let us bring our adoration there, for our God is our Saviour; our Saviour is our God. Yes, Jesus is our Saviour, and He is our Lord and our God.

But if Jesus went down in the thoughts of the Pharisee, He went up in the thoughts of the sinner. The longer she stayed at His feet, the more wonderful He became to her, and the less she cared for the Pharisee's scorn. She knew herself to be worse than even he imagined her to be, but all her deep need was met by her Lord who knew her perfectly. He knew all her sins and did not spurn her, and in Him she could rest; at His feet her storm-tossed soul and unsatisfied heart found all for which they had longed. Heaven looked on and saw in the Pharisee a child of folly, and in the sinner a child of wisdom, and heaven's judgment is just and final. And the Father looked on and judged between these two. He could feel nothing but displeasure for the Pharisee who despised His well-beloved Son, but He loved the sinner who adored Him. We know He did, for Jesus said, "The Father Himself loveth you because ye have loved Me!" and she loved much, hence she was greatly loved of the Father.

The unspoken reasoning of the Pharisee was suddenly arrested by a challenge from the Lord: "Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee," and he said, "Master, say on." Then the Lord propounded to him one of His most beautiful parables, beautiful in its simplicity. "There was a certain creditor which had two debtors; the one owed five hundred pence and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?" It required no special acuteness of mind to discover the answer to that riddle, and Simon was compelled to give it, though he did it without enthusiasm. What personal interest could he have in such a topic? and what was his Guest driving at, anyway? He was not a debtor; he had harmed nobody. He was not like this poor sinner; he had always met every just due and demand; and as for God, well, was he not a Pharisee, fasting twice a week, saying his prayers, paying his tithes, and was not that enough? What need had he for forgiveness who had never felt a burden or acknowledged a debt? Those words of the parable, "He frankly forgave," might thrill others, but there was no warmth, no music in them for him. This Guest of his evidently had no sense of the fitness of things. He ought to have fiercely denounced the extortion of the tax-booths and the sins of the streets, or the follies of the court and society might have been a timely subject for discussion; but creditors, and debtors, and frank forgiveness! These belonged to a sphere of life for which Simon cared nothing, and so, with Pharisaical luke-warmness, he gave his answer, "I suppose, that he, to whom he forgave most."

How swiftly the Lord turned his answer against him and showed him that while the sinner's heart was warm with much love that poured itself out in gratitude and adoration at the feet of her Lord, he remained coldly critical.

Who would have such a heart as Simon had? An unforgiven heart that has never been moved with gratitude to the Saviour and has no love for Him? A heart that has never felt the utter alienation of its sinfulness from God? Such a heart is a dead heart, dead and cold as stone, except when some sinful passion moves it to beat with selfish interest. To live like that is to be twice dead, and to die like that is to be damned in unforgiven sin for ever.

We do not envy the feelings of the Pharisee as he listened to the Lord's words, but, thank God, many of us can understand what the feelings of the poor sinner were as she heard Him say, "Her sins, which are many, are forgiven." David described the blessedness of the man whose sins are forgiven, and this woman knew it. I know it, and I thank God if you know it also. Yet what words can describe this blessedness? The quietness after the storm, the relief after the oppression, the deep, holy peace that fills the heart as the sense of forgiveness steals over it! To sink down into the arms of a pardoning God and to rest on His bosom, the bosom from which the pardon flows, this is a never-to-be-forgotten experience and none who have known it can ever think lightly of it!

A Pharisee could not know it, nor any man who excuses his sins or hides them or refuses to admit to God and himself that he is a sinner. But those who have felt the smart and sting of sin, those who have tried in vain to slay the serpent that has bitten them, they will know it. Those who have discovered that their sins are neither dead nor done with, who have groaned in the night at the memory of them, and found that they could not escape them, that with persistent feet they pursue them and gather round them pointing accusing fingers at them, crying, "Thou art the man," they are on the verge of blessing.

Those whose consciences are awakened, who feel that it is against God that they have sinned, who have looked into the abyss of horror into which their sins were carrying them, these will find no relief, no refuge, no hope except in Jesus, and to Him they will come, as came this woman, with broken and contrite hearts, and He will receive them and frankly forgive them. They cannot forgive themselves, neither angel nor man can clear them, but God can, and He will for Jesus' sake. Forgiveness is His grand prerogative, and when conscience-stricken, sin-laden, honest at last, they come to Him, He frankly forgives. This is Bible truth, this is the first glad note of the gospel, it is the first ray of light that shines from the Saviour's face into the sinner's heart, and the experience of multitudes has answered to it as the diamond flashes back the light of the sun.

And now the Lord deals only with the woman at His feet. It seems as though the Pharisee and his guests with their questionings and scorn fade away into their own insignificance and are blotted out, and we see the Saviour, benign and kind, bending over the weeping, wondering penitent, and by His words, hushing her every fear and answering her every question. He speaks of the past, "Thy sins are forgiven thee;" He speaks of the future, "Thy faith hath saved thee"; He speaks of the present, "Go in peace." And as she arose and went to her house or tarried in the streets until He should come forth, do you think she envied even the most exalted woman in the land? Oh, now she had got what wealth and honours could not purchase, what He alone could give, and she was satisfied.

Let none of us who have believed, imagine we are but little debtors needing only a little forgiveness, for such have little love. They know not the rapture of a glowing and expanding heart, their souls cannot warm towards the Saviour who died for them. They must be ever half-hearted towards their Lord and have little pity or care for weary, burdened, brokenhearted sinners. We are, I trust, like this woman at the great Redeemer's feet, we had nothing to bring to Him but our sins, and these were many, consequently we could only look for pardon, though wrath was our desert. We know the relief, the joy that a full, frank forgiveness gives and we can sing the glad song of the Psalmist, "Blessed is the man whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered."

How great is the price that has been paid to secure this blessing for us, and how great a blessing it is! Even in those parts of the Word of God which unfold for us the highest truths we are reminded of it. In the Epistle to the Ephesians we read, "In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace." Yes, the price that has been paid for this priceless blessing is the precious blood of Jesus.

Let Simon sit, smug and critical, tearless and cold, in his Pharisaical pride, despising alike the Forgiver and the forgiven, with him we have nothing in common, for we have sinned much and been forgiven much; we are much loved and must love much in return. We do not sit with the Pharisee, but we fall with the sinner at those feet which were beautiful upon the mountains, bringing good tidings and publishing peace, feet that were pierced and wounded for us at Calvary, the feet of Jesus. There we pour out our gratitude and our adoration and feel the strength of those cords of love that bind our hearts to our Saviour and make us His willing slaves for ever. FOR TO WHOM MUCH IS FORGIVEN, THE SAME LOVETH MUCH.

Chapter 3

And in the Garden — a Tomb!

It was in a garden that the Son of God was betrayed; in a garden He was crucified; in a garden He was buried. The traitor, the cross, and a tomb were all the world had for Him! It was not in the uncultivated and wild part of the earth, in the habitations of cruelty, where the naked savage lived his ignorant and degraded life that this stupendous crime was committed, but where men boasted of their culture and religion and justice. "The princes of this world crucified the Lord of glory." "In the place where He was crucified was a garden."

"Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they JESUS." — John 19: 41.

A garden! We all love a garden; it means to us the fair sunlight or restful shade; it means beauty and fragrance and colour, and the song of birds, and the joy and ease of life. But in the garden a tomb! Ah! that is another matter. At the sight or mention of a tomb we rise up as though fearing the attack of an unseen foe, the air grows cold, the music dies, and life droops. We love a garden, but not a tomb, for the tomb means — What does it mean? If your heart can tell you, then you know, but if it cannot, you do not know. But suppose your heart could tell you all that it was possible for a human heart to know of the defeat and humiliation, the disappointment and loss, and sadness and tears that the tomb in the garden means, the full truth of it would still remain untold.

But why should a tomb force itself into the same sentence as a garden? Cannot we have a garden without a tomb? May we not exult in a garden without a tomb near by to cast its shadow on our joy? No we cannot, they are brought together in God's Word with a purpose, and they cannot be divorced in this earthly life. The garden first and then the tomb, thus is the story told, and how many have heard it and learnt it in bitter woe, and have seen how soon the garden can shrivel and shrink and all its beauty disappear, while the tomb spreads wide its base and rears its monstrous head until naught save itself is seen in earth or sky.

It is not a tomb and then a garden; that is not the order here. It is the habit of civilized man to plant a garden round a tomb. Sentiment demands it, and the heart cries out for a garment with which to cover naked death, and chooses flowers; and they spring and bloom as a tribute — yes, and perhaps in defiance, in feeble defiance of the tomb. But it is not that here, it is beauty yielding to corruption, joy ending in sorrow, day fading into night, life closing in death. In the garden a tomb.

But why is it so? There was once a garden that God planted "eastward in Eden and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden" — and there was no tomb there. But that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, entered into that enclosure of life, and secured the ear of the man's wife and stirred the ambitions of the man, and they thought that the devil's lie was better than God's truth, and with the hands that God had made the gate was opened wide for the destroyer, "and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Rom. 5: 12). And since that day the tomb has been with us. No matter how full of promise and hope and prophecy a garden may have been, the tomb was there, for sin was there, and death came in with sin and will not retire so long as sin remains. That is why.

It is remarkable that God started man upon his career in a garden. Not in primordial slime as a wriggling maggot, or in the virgin forest as a chattering ape, as the scientists, "falsely so called," would teach us — men who have grown wise in their own conceits, and think their own guesses to be better than God's own account of things — but in a garden, a scene of ordered beauty and delights, planned and planted by God's own hand. In that garden man stood erect, for "God hath made man upright." He did not creep or crawl or climb, he was created in the image and likeness of God, a creature made to turn his eyes upward to his Creator, and there was nothing lacking in his fair surroundings to complete his joy, and no tomb was there to cause him grief. So satisfied should he have been with the bounty of his God, that the tempter would have shrunk abashed from the fulness of his gratitude. But it was not so, his glorious heritage did not content him, he craved for that which God had withheld, and through that uncurbed desire he fell. Thus death passed upon him, and as no tomb could be in the garden where grew the tree of life, he was banished from it, a sinful and dying man, his only prospect on earth a tomb. Such was man's brief history in God's garden without a tomb.

He carried out of that earthly paradise, however, a craving for beautiful surroundings, and has laboured incessantly to secure them; but if God's garden did not satisfy him, it is certain that his own cannot, and in his own garden there is always a tomb to mock his best endeavours. And is there no hope? Shall the tomb for ever triumph? Let us see.

Among the writers of the New Testament, John is the only one who speaks of a garden. He is always great on environment; he writes as an eye-witness, which indeed he was. The setting is necessary in his Gospel to bring out either the full beauty or the stark nakedness of the deeds he records. So he speaks of a garden, and with it he shows us a traitor, a cross, and a tomb. I confess that when I first saw the garden as John shows it to us, it startled me. The purpose of John's Gospel is to present the great fact that God has come down to men. In it we learn that THE WORD was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. And can it be possible that when He came, so suitable to the deep need of men, and entered into man's garden, that He was confronted by the traitor, and condemned to a cross and laid in a tomb? He the Prince of Life, the Father's only Son? Yes, so it was, men had nothing better than that for Him. "He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not" (John 1: 10); and when men saw Him they hated Him without a cause, and said, "This is the Heir, come let us kill Him."

The traitor's kiss ranks as the most dastardly deed ever perpetrated beneath the heavens, and the name of Judas is universally execrated, but what of the men who gave him the money, who bribed him to betray his Master into their murderous hands? They were the chief priests, the teachers of morality and religion. The cultivation of what is best in man was supposed to be in their hands, and they should have driven the covetous wretch from their presence with scorn when he made his base proposal, but they did not; they had determined to rid themselves of Jesus, there was no place for Him in their scheme of things, and they were glad to have the traitor as a confederate in their crime, for they were as base as he. So the Lord of glory was betrayed in a garden, not in the bleak wilderness, where He had hungered for forty days before His conflict with the devil, but in the garden, in a spot that had been tamed and cultivated by man's labour. Thither He had resorted with His disciples for prayer, and it was there that His quietude — for the agony was past — was rudely broken by the advent of the soldiers led by the traitor.

But that was only the beginning of the treachery and insult, and unparalleled cruelty that He had to suffer. Who can describe the road that He trod from the garden to the high priest's house, and from there to the court of Pilate, mocked by Jew and Gentile, beaten, spit upon, scourged, crowned with thorns and condemned to die, until at last, with a cross upon His shoulders He reached the garden again? The garden of the cross may not have been the garden of the betrayal, but this we know, for the Scripture tells us, that "in the place where He was crucified there was a garden" (John 19: 41).

Raised above every plant and tree in that garden was the "plant of renown," the Son of God nailed to a cross, and in the presence of it we bow; we bow our heads with shame for the sin of man, we bow our hearts with adoration for the love of God. Man's sin and God's love! they met in that cross, and it was the proof and the measure of both. It may have seemed to us, when first we thought of it, that God did a harsh thing when he drove the man and his wife from Eden for one act of disobedience; but Golgotha clearly declares what lay in that act. It was a blow aimed at the supremacy of God, an act of rebellion against His throne, a challenge to His majesty, and last but not least, a refusal to believe His goodness and love.

From the time of the fall onward the chief aim of man was to cultivate his own powers; to make himself independent of God, and to make things pleasant for himself at a distance from God. Alas, he was cultivating an evil nature; hatred of God lay at the very root of it; a hatred so fierce and intractable that all the grace that was in Jesus failed to abate it. Nothing would satisfy it but the murder of the One who was the Word become flesh, and that murder was of the most deliberate and calculated kind. Not only must the greatest physical suffering be inflicted on the Object of their hatred, but His every sensibility must be outraged and His character defamed for all time. So He was numbered with the transgressors, laughed to scorn by those who beheld His suffering and shame, and given a felon's death. It was not in the uncultivated and wild part of the earth, in the habitations of cruelty, where the naked savage lived his ignorant and degraded life that this sin of mankind was consummated. No, it was "the princes of this world" that "crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Cor. 2: 8) — "In the place where He was crucified there was a garden."

If that climax of all sin had been the only side of the cross, there would have been no hope. But God's love was greater than man's sin. If the cross is dark with the blackness of man's hatred, it is bright with the glory of God's love and through it He commends that love towards us, for while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4: 10). Raised up there on the cross in man's garden, Jesus was the tree of life, which if a man eat the fruit of it he shall live for ever. And that cross which on man's part was only hatred and murder, has become a new and living way by which sinful men may enter into everlasting blessing; it is the door into a heavenly paradise where death can never come. Thus did grace much more abound where sin abounded.

Now the malice of men would have pursued the Lord beyond death, for "they appointed His grave with the wicked" as Isaiah 53 should read. They had prepared a rough hole near the cross in which to cast His body with those of the thieves who had also died there; but God intervened and "He was with the rich in His death." In the garden there was "a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus."

It was a new tomb; we must lay emphasis upon this. There had never been a tomb like it before, if we judge it by what was laid in it, and by what came out of it. To that hour the grave had stood first in the list of those things that are never satisfied. It had never cried "It is enough." And with one exception, when it had bowed to the authority of the living Lord, it held its prey with relentless power. There had ever been a natural affinity between the tomb and what it held, for God had said, "Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return." But in this new tomb and its occupant there was no such affinity. The death of Jesus was voluntary. He died for the sake of His flock. No man took His life from Him, He had laid it down of Himself. He had power both to lay it down and to take it again. He was the Holy One of God and could see no corruption; death had no claim upon Him, and so the tomb could not hold Him. The grave had never received such an occupant to its close embrace before; it had triumphed hitherto, but now there had entered into it the One who was to break its power for ever.

There seemed to be an eagerness on the part of the Jews to be rid of His body, for they begged Pilate that it, with those of the thieves, might be taken away, and Pilate seems to have been relieved when Joseph besought him that he might have it, for he readily gave consent, and the world rejoiced when the tomb closed upon Jesus. But what a wonderful Seed was sown in the tomb in the garden with the tears and lamentations of Joseph and Nicodemus and the women! And how wonderful was the springing up of that Seed on the resurrection morning! Ah, then was the day of victory, the beginning of a new creation.

The garden had been the scene of man's treachery and shame, of Satan's long mastery over man and the length to which he could drive him, and of the power of the grave. It was now the scene of God's victory, sorrow had given place to joy, the night had vanished before the morning light, death had given place to life, for as by man came death, so by man came also the resurrection from the dead, and the joy of heaven found expression in the angel's words, "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen." "Come, see the place where the Lord lay." An empty tomb at last! The pledge and token of victory over it for all who are Christ's; for Christ is the firstfruits; afterwards they that are Christ's at His coming.

The faith of the believer links him up with God's victory, and that vacant new tomb in the garden has changed everything for him, for he possesses a life in the risen Christ that death cannot destroy; and his hopes and joys are no longer resting in a garden, the beauty of which is all spoiled by death and the grave, but he looks on to the time when he will "eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God" (Rev. 2: 7). And if he falls asleep through Jesus, he does so in the sure hope that his body, sown in corruption, shall be raised in incorruption; sown in dishonour, shall be raised in glory; sown in weakness, shall be raised in power. But while such a glorious hope is certain for the Christian if he dies, it is not certain that he will die, for, "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 15: 51-57).

It is the light of that world into which death can never enter, that, shining into the heart of the believer, enables him to turn his back upon the earth and lay hold on eternal life. And while he does not feel the less that death is here, it holds no terrors for him since his Lord both died and rose again. He may sorrow, but not as those who have no hope, for he has a hope which is as an anchor both sure and steadfast, which holds his soul amid the storms and stress of life, if I may for a moment pass from a garden in which the tomb is to the sea where the tempests rage. It is a blessed hope. "The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord" (1 Thess. 4: 16-17).

Then shall we eat of "the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God" where no tomb will ever be, "for God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away."

"WHEREFORE COMFORT ONE ANOTHER WITH THESE WORDS" (1 Thess. 4: 18).

Chapter 4

The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: His poverty and our wealth

He knew in His own experience the hardships and trials that the poor have to endure, and He cannot forget. He lived a poor man without a resting place for His head, He suffered hunger, thirst and weariness. He was no mere philanthropist or patron of the poor, paying sympathetic visits to their mean dwellings, and when weary of sordid surroundings retiring to the comfort of a lordly home. No. He was one of the poor. He shared their sorrows, their woes. He was the Man of Sorrows. I proclaim Him as the Friend of the poor, and of the sinful, weary, broken-hearted men and women. He calls to you to-day, "Come unto Me, and I will give you rest." Did ever agitator or politician talk to you like that?

"Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich." — 1 Cor. 8: 9.

This gem of Scripture cannot strictly be called a gospel text, for it was written to those who were already saved, and forms part of an exhortation to them not to be mean or niggardly in their giving, but to give cheerfully and liberally as those ought who have been enriched by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Nevertheless it is full of gospel, for it is full of Christ, and the gospel of God is concerning Him.

Notice first the confidence that rings triumphantly in the opening words of it. "Ye know," says the apostle. And is not this worth something in a world in which men can be sure of nothing except that they must die some day? This is not the first time that such language is used in this epistle. In chapter 5 we read, "We know that if this earthly house of our tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." Only the gospel can give this confidence; such language as this belongs only to the family of God; it can only be learnt by His children, for it is taught only by the Holy Ghost. The agnostic cannot use such words. He may laugh at faith and be proud of his ignorance when in health, and be buoyed up by the shams of this life, and yet the cry of the soul of the agnostic for light cannot altogether be silenced. Hear what one of them has written:

"Is there beyond the silent night

An endless day?

Is death a door that leads to light?

WE CANNOT SAY.

The tongueless secret locked in fate,

WE DO NOT KNOW,

We hope and wait."

Yet when brought face to face with death this same eloquent atheist was compelled to abandon the "don't know" mood, and own that he was sure of something, but it was only of darkness and disaster. Speaking at the graveside of his own brother, he said, Whether in mid-seas or among the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck must mark the last end of each and all. Every life, no matter if its every hour is rich with love and every moment jewelled with a joy, will at its close become a tragedy as sad and deep and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death." How differently can the Christian look into the future. I had a friend in Australia who had served the Lord for fifty years, and he was dying. A stroke of paralysis had robbed him of the power of speech. His Christian family was gathered at his bedside, and one of them, longing for a farewell word from the dearly-loved father, asked, "Have you not something to say to us, father?" He heard the earnest question and his eyes expressed his desire to answer it, but his lips could not frame the words. But some years before, he had learnt the deaf-mute's alphabet in order to preach the gospel to an afflicted neighbour, and now this knowledge came to his aid, and he spelt out on his fingers one word — G-L-O-R-Y; and in five minutes he was there. There was no tragedy there, no wreck. He sailed into harbour triumphantly, more than a conqueror through Him that loved him.

But my text speaks not of the future but of the present — it tells us of a present possession. "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ." We are not waiting for this, we know it now, and notice how the Saviour is described — He is OUR Lord Jesus Christ. Thus can the believer speak of Him, and no power can rob us of His grace, no change can separate us from Him —

Jesus, my soul from Thee,

No power can sever;

Saviour Thou art to me,

Now and for ever.

And here stands out in contrast the Christian's possession to those of which the man of the world boasts. He talks about his home, his wife, his family, business, money. Your money, your business, sir! But whose may these be tomorrow? If they are yours, hold them. Let no thief rob you, let no reverse beggar you. And your home! If it is yours, guard it well, keep all sorrow out of it; and as for death! Well, death has entered many a home as happy as yours. Yes, entered though the doors were locked and barred against him, and having entered he had his way in spite of the doctor's skill and nurse's care. Some day he will enter your home, and though you stand up and challenge his right to be there, he will not heed you; and you will discover that the tenure of your possession was a short one, and that your loved treasures were but loaned to you for a while, and that death had a claim that could not be denied when his turn came. And what of yourself? Think of the day when death will not claim yours but you. Ah, how poor you will be then if Christless!

But how do we know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ? His wisdom and power are clearly written in creation —

"All worlds His glorious power confess,

His wisdom all His works express."

But here it is not power or wisdom — these could never have won the hearts of sinful men — it is grace; and we know His grace by the fact that He became poor for our sakes. Mark well what the Scripture says. He was rich, and He became poor. A Christadelphian in conversation with me denied the eternal Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ; he argued that He began His existence in the manger at Bethlehem. My answer was this text. If what the Christadelphian professed to believe was the truth, then our Lord never was rich before He was poor, and our text is a lie. There was none poorer than He on that day when He was born in David's city. He was born in a stable. And why? Because His virgin-mother could not pay for a room in the inn when the time for His birth had come, so poor was she. There was no room in that inn, I know, but if Mary could have paid more than people more fortunate in that respect than she had paid, would not the inn-keeper have made profit for himself out of consideration of her need, and driven somebody else into the stable? But it was not to be. The Son of God must come into the world in the direst poverty, an outcast from His birth. Yet He was rich before He became poor. And if any ask how that could be, the one and only answer is, He was God before He became man; if His Deity is taken out of the verse it is robbed of all its meaning. The Christadelphian was deceived, he had believed a lie. Our Saviour is the eternal God, He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich.

Who can tell how rich He was? Creature thought, no matter how high it soars is here confounded. We know that the universe proceeded from Him, for "all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made" (John 1). The "Russellites" teach that He was the first of all creatures to be created, wrongly interpreting the Scripture which speaks of Him as the "First-born of every creature" (Col. 1), which means that in Creation He has the First-born's place — the place of pre-eminence. If it meant what they say it means, He must have created Himself — which is utterly absurd, for that same Scripture continues, "For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him: and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist" (Col. 1: 16, 17). He is the Creator and not a creature, though He became Man and was poor for the sake of His creatures, He was never less than their Creator.

What infinite resources and power and wisdom were His, the greatest spirit among the principalities and powers in the heavens, and the minutest insect that functions for an hour and dies, were created by Him, and each has its place in the universe according to the design of the Creator. But more than this, He was the Only-begotten Son in the bosom of the Father. He could speak of the love that the Father bore Him before the foundations of the world were laid, and of the glory that He had with the Father before time began. How rich He was, yet He became poor for our sakes. For your sake, burdened, anxious sinner! Does not this thought overwhelm you, and fill your heart with gratitude and praise? Not for the sake of angels, or for sinless creatures who had never dreamt of defying His will, but for us who had sinned and who were saturated with sin! He who spake, and the worlds were made, He, who upholds the universe and controls every force within it; even "fire and hail, snow and vapour, and stormy wind fulfilling His word." He became poor for us, who slighted and hated Him.

"Unfathomable wonder,

And mystery divine;

The voice that speaks in thunder

Says, Sinner, I am thine.'"

This is grace indeed! Unmerited favour! It is the love and mercy of God shown out to those who only deserve His wrath.

I pass by the poverty that He must have known in the humble home of a village carpenter, only remarking that He who was to preach the gospel to the poor must Himself know in His own experience the hardships and trials that the poor have to endure. Yes, He suffered these hardships and He does not, He cannot, forget. He grew up amid circumstances of poverty, He lived, a poor man, without a resting place for His head, He suffered hunger, thirst and weariness. He was no mere philanthropist or patron of the poor, paying sympathetic visits to their mean dwellings and when weary of their sordid surroundings retiring to the comforts of a lordly home. No, He was one of the poor Himself, He shared their sorrows, their woes. He was the Man of sorrows. And it was for our sakes. And He who was poor, is now the poor man's Friend. I proclaim Him as the Friend of the sinful and the poor. Oh, if men understood this, they would turn from their false friends, whose vain words and empty promises can only fill them with discontent, and deceive and disappoint them, and they would find a Friend in Jesus who would not fail them. Weary, burdened, broken-hearted men and women, He calls you to-day. O, hear His blessed voice, "Come unto Me and I will give you rest." Did ever agitator or politician talk to you like that?

But it was not until He hung upon the Cross that He reached the depth of poverty. He was there for our transgressions, delivered for our offences, He suffered for our sins. For our sakes He endured that cross. "It was for sinners Jesus died." No riches, no blessing, could have reached us if He had not suffered there; we should have been bankrupt sinners for ever, unforgiven and lost, if Jesus had not died.

We have the forgiveness of sins through His blood. God will remember no more the sins and iniquities of those who believe, because Jesus died and paid in death the price that cancels them for ever. How wonderful is the proclamation of sin's forgiveness through His Name, but there is more than that; that would have been a priceless boon if it had stood alone; but there is more, we are enriched; the unsearchable riches of Christ are opened to us by the gospel. Who can tell the value to us of the Holy Spirit who is given unto us? Who can measure our possessions as heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ Jesus? How shall we explain what it is to be accepted in Him the Beloved? The very fullness of God is revealed for our joy, and the love of Christ that passeth knowledge. Yes, beggars from the dunghill are set among princes, those of low degree are exalted, and the hungry are filled with good things; but it is because He, who was rich, became poor for our sakes.

He is no longer poor, for He rose again from the grave. Jesus lives! God hath made this same Jesus both Lord and Christ, and in this we can rejoice. If we know Him as our Saviour, we love Him and rejoice in His exaltation but that which draws the sweetest praise from ransomed hearts is not the exaltation of the present, or the glory of the future, but the sorrow of the past; for us He became poor. This will be the subject of our wonder and worship for ever.

Chapter 5

The Credentials of our Lord: The Shepherd and His Sheep

Invincible love and omnipotence dwell in Him; the tenderest heart and the strongest hand in the universe are His. How matchless He is! How worthy to be trusted! Supremely blest are all they who follow Him!

"I am the good Shepherd: the good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep. . . . Therefore doth My Father love me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again." — John 10.

Men must have a leader, and how ready they are to follow any upstart who can make enough promises of good times to come, and how constantly disappointed and deceived they are by those they follow. That must be the experience through life of all, until they find and follow the true Leader, the One whom God has appointed to be the Shepherd and Leader of men.

There is an old text which used to be quoted a great deal more by gospel preachers than it is now; it runs like this, "All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way." Those solemn words were true of every one of us; they are true to-day of every man who has not listened to the God-appointed Shepherd of His sheep. Yes, whether you follow some demagogue with the silly crowd, or choose a leader from the learned amongst men, or refuse to be cajoled by any, and tread an independent road of your own, you go astray. You can only tread the paths of righteousness which end in the eternal glory of God as you follow the One whom God has ordained to be your Leader.

The question is of first importance; the eternal welfare of our souls depends upon our having the right Leader, and God has not been indifferent to this. He promised in the Old Testament Scriptures that He would raise up the One men need, One who would be able to combine in Himself faithfulness to God and mercy to us, and it is for us to search and see how wonderfully His promise has been fulfilled. In the tenth chapter of John, the Lord Jesus presents to us His credentials. He tells us that He is the Shepherd, the Leader, and I propose to examine with you His credentials so that we may prove whether He is the One who should come or whether we should look for another.

1 HE COMES IN BY THE DOOR

"He that entereth in by the door is the Shepherd of the sheep" (verse 2).

The door is the appointed way of entrance, and in the first place we ask, is Jesus indeed the Christ, and did He come in by the appointed way? Did He come in the way in which God said He would in the Old Testament Scriptures? Did He fulfil the ancient Word? Let us see. He is introduced to us in Matthew's Gospel; but how shall we know that it is He of whom wonderful things were foretold? Well, He must be the Son of a virgin-daughter of David's royal house; for seven centuries before He came, Isaiah had prophesied that the great sign of God's intervention on behalf of men would be "A virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel" (Isa. 7: 14). And Matthew gives us the fulfilment of this, for the angel of the Lord appeared unto Joseph in a dream, saying, "Thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a Son, and thou shalt call His name Jesus: for He shall save His people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet" (Matt. 1: 20-22) — and will the critic please note that it was the Lord that spoke in these prophecies. Thus we have the manner of His birth in full accord with the prophetic word.

Then the place of His birth was predicted by Micah another prophet of God, and the visit of the wise men from the East, and their mistaken notion that He who was the king of the Jews must necessarily be born in their capital city, is used to call our attention to the fulfilment of this. For the scribes, when Herod demanded of them where Christ should be born, said, "In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel" (Matt. 2: 5, 6).

Remember that the home of Joseph and Mary was in Galilee, and it was an Imperial decree that carried them to Bethlehem the royal city, according to the prophetic word. The empurpled Caesar little thought when he vaunted his world-wide authority that he was bringing to pass the will of God and demonstrating the fact that the Scriptures are inspired by God; yet so it was. But what a tale of grace is here unfolded; this decree caused Mary and Joseph to be homeless strangers in Bethlehem, with no shelter but a shed, and no bed but a manger when the Holy Christ, the Son of the Highest was born.

But at this point a problem faces us. Micah had said that Bethlehem was to be the place of the birth of Christ, but fifty years earlier Hosea had spoken the word of God saying, "I called my son out of Egypt." This problem, however, is solved by the fact that the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and warned him that Herod would seek the young Child's life. So he arose and he "took the young Child and His mother by night, and departed into Egypt" (Matt. 2: 14). And when this was done we read, "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet (note again that the Lord is the speaker) saying, Out of Egypt have I called My Son" (Matt. 2: 15).

We should have thought that the birth of the long-promised Deliverer would have filled the land with joy, but instead Jeremiah had spoken of lamentation and bitter weeping. This also was fulfilled when Herod in his determination to destroy Jesus commanded that all the children in Bethlehem under the age of two years should be slain, for we read, "Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not" (Matt. 2: 17, 18).

Again, He was to be despised by the great and haughty of the land; hence Joseph did not return to the royal Bethlehem from Egypt, but turned aside to the despised Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene" (Matt. 2: 23).

It would be a pleasant task to continue showing how step by step in His life from the manger to the Cross, Jesus answered to the Word, fulfilling the law and the prophets. See how all the sufferings and shame of crucifixion are detailed in Psalm 22, when, as it has been pointed out, crucifixion was not a Jewish mode of execution. The crucifixion of our Lord Jesus could not have been anticipated by David's or any other Hebrew mind; it was God who inspired that prophetic Psalm, and the Gospels give us the fulfilment of it in Christ's death.

The first proof then that this is "He of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets did write" is that in His coming, His life, and His death, He fulfilled the Word that was spoken of Him.

2. HE IS GOD.

It is clear from those Old Testament Scriptures which speak of the Shepherd that He is God the Creator. Take Isaiah 40 as an example: "Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God! . . . He shall feed His flock like a Shepherd: He shall gather the lambs with His arms, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out heaven with a span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?" Can the lowly Nazarene, who was despised by the people, be indeed the Shepherd, so infinitely great and yet so good and gentle, as is described in this glorious Scripture? Well, in our chapter twice over He says, I am the good Shepherd," and in so saying He declared that He was God.

It is said by the religious enemies of the truth of the Person of Jesus that He did not lay claim to Deity in the Synoptic Gospels, and that the author of the Fourth Gospel cannot be trusted. But they who thus talk read the Gospels with blind hearts; the truth as to the Lord's Deity is woven into the very texture of all the Gospels, just as the gold was woven with the blue and scarlet and fine twined linen in the ephod of Aaron, and to tear it out would leave the whole fabric of them nothing more than useless rags. And here in this tenth chapter of John He declares His Deity, for here we have not the words of His disciples about Him, even though their words were inspired by the Holy Spirit, but His own words about Himself. He says, "I am the good Shepherd" and the Shepherd of Israel was the Almighty Creator of the heavens and the earth.

He also says, "I and My Father are One." Whatever modernists may think of this declaration, the Jews had no doubt as to the meaning of it, for they took up stones to stone Him for blasphemy, saying, "Thou being a man makest thyself God." If we believe that the truth flowed from His lips without adulteration, we must accept this word as it stands; we have no alternative; to refuse it is to brand our Lord as the supreme imposter of all time. It was a great declaration, and it must be owned that for a man to have made it opens up a tremendous question. If He was not what He said He was, those Jews were right when they took up those stones to stone Him for blasphemy; if He lied, He was neither God nor from God, for "it is impossible for God to lie."

He makes another declaration in this chapter which will help us in this matter. He says, "Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down Myself, I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of My Father" (verses 17, 18). What man who ever lived but He could make such a statement? No man taketh My life from Me! That means that it was impossible for men to slay Him; in intent they did it, on their part no effort was spared to bring Him down to death, from this point of view they were His murderers; but when they had done all that their devil-inspired malice could devise, He voluntarily laid down His life as a sacrifice for sin. He did not die by the violence of men, nor by any natural cause. I know the popular hymn says, "He died of a broken heart." It is not true. But was not His heart broken? It was indeed. "Reproach," He said, "hath broken My heart." But He lived with a broken heart. The lowly Man of Sorrows stretched forth His hands in earnest entreaty to men all the day long, and they answered Him with reproach and rejection. And His tender heart was broken by their conduct; but He lived on until His hour was come; then He yielded up His life as a sacrifice for sin, so that when the soldiers came to close up the work of that brutal day, they marvelled that He was dead already. One act alone on their part remained to be done, and that was to pierce His sacred side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. "And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe." (John 19: 35). But why this care to emphasize the fact that blood and water flowed forth? Well, whoever in the history of the world had beheld blood and water flowing from the side of a dead man? Yet John saw it, and what he saw proved that the death of Jesus was supernatural even as His birth was.

In His own power and right, and yet in obedience to His Father's commandment He yielded up His life; and by that same power and right, and according to that same commandment, He has taken His life up again. Death has met his Master, the power of the grave has been brought to naught; the gates of the morning were lifted up for Him, and the King of Glory, the Lord of hosts, sits now in the glory where He was before, glorified with the glory that He had with the Father before the world began; and thus is proved the truth of His word, "I and My Father are One."

3. HE MUST SAVE HIS SHEEP FROM EVERY THREATENING FOE.

To whom do the sheep belong? They belong to God. We might spend much time and gain much profit in searching out the Scriptures that declare this. One comes readily to mind. In Acts 20: 28, Paul, the Apostle, speaks of the blood-purchased Church of God as the flock of God. In our chapter, Jesus claims them as His, but to establish this claim He had to meet the foe and take them from his power. The hireling, whose own the sheep are not, will not suffer to save the sheep; but the Shepherd, who loves them with a never-dying love, will face every foe and every question on their behalf. He became Man that He might die for them, for they lay under the condemnation of death, and only His death could deliver them from this; and by dying, He destroyed him that had the power of death, which is the devil, and so He delivered them from the bondage in which they were held.

Death rolled like a mighty flood between us and eternal blessing. No leader could be of any use to us but one who could subdue those awful waves and make a way through them along which we could travel out of death into life. This Christ has done by His dying.

"He Satan's power laid low;

Made sin, sin's reign o'erthrew;

Bowed to the grave, destroyed it so,

And death by dying slew."

The great prophet Isaiah anticipated this great Victor for the flock of God when he cried, "Art Thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?" And the answer comes, "I am the Lord thy God, that divided the sea, whose waves roared: the Lord of hosts is His Name." "Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away" (Isaiah 51).

4. HE MUST PRESERVE THEM FOR EVER, SO THAT NONE OF THEM PERISH.

This also He declares that He will do. How full of comfort are His words. "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them and they follow Me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand" (John 10: 27, 28).

Here we learn His ability to keep His own, and if He is able all who trust Him must be safe. The hand that holds them is the hand that broke the power of death, it is the hand of a Man in which omnipotence dwells, and so those whom He leads will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. Does not the Psalm say so? "The Lord is my Shepherd . . . I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever." Nothing else is possible. The Psalm that begins with "The Lord is my Shepherd" would not be complete if it did not end "in the house of the Lord for ever"; for His sheep shall never perish. Yea, though they walk through the valley of the shadow of death, they shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever, for He will not abandon them until He gets them there. How could He, since He paid so great a price for them ! How could He, since He has pledged His word that He will hold them in eternal security!

Consider well these four great proofs that Jesus is the one and only Shepherd and Leader for us men; there are other proofs of this in this chapter but these are enough for my purpose; they prove that our Lord stands without a rival. Invincible love and Almighty power dwell in Him; the tenderest heart and the strongest hand in the universe are His. How matchless He is! How supremely blest are all they who put their trust in Him.

Chapter 6

Faith, Faithfulness, Fellowship

No miracle was wrought to save the Son of God from death and there He hung, dishonoured and dead, the whole world against Him, and the world apparently triumphant. He had pleaded with men, toiled for them, wept for them, and now He had died for them. Will His death be in vain? Will any amongst the vast multitude that gathered to watch that crucifixion be moved by it? Shall there be any response in any man to this boundless love ere the sun goes down?

"And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe."

"After this came Joseph of Arimathea."

"And there came also Nicodemus." — John 19.

FAITH

We begin with faith. Faith is the response in a human heart to a Divine revelation. God says it, I believe it. That is faith.

God has made a full revelation of Himself. He has shown to men what He is, but when He did it we were not there to see, and if the revelation is to affect us and bless us, if we are to believe and understand it, we must have a true record of it, a divinely inspired record, and such we have here. "He that saw it bare record, and his record is true; and he knoweth that he saith true; THAT YE MIGHT BELIEVE." What was it that he saw? The Son of God hanging dead upon a cross, with blood and water flowing from His wounded side. That was a great sight, and God commends it to our special attention.

Since the time that the startled earth was first made to drink the blood of a man, foully slain by the son of his own mother, there had been millions of deaths in the world, for death from that time was as common as birth, and tears and misery. We do not wonder at that, for when by one man, Adam, sin entered into the world, death followed quickly and irrevocably upon its heels, and it has passed upon all his children and claimed them as its rightful prey. These multitudes who had died were all creatures whose lives were forfeited to their Creator; they commenced their journey to the grave with the first breath that they drew, for not one of them was without sin. There was nothing noteworthy in the death of any of them, for death was the common lot, but in the death of this Man whom John saw yield up His life there was. Death had no claim upon Him at all, for He was not a sinner, but the holy, sinless Son of God. He had shown Himself to be the Master of death before many witnesses on at least three occasions, for He was the Word, the Creator and Life-giver. Yet He died, and because of what He was and who He was, His death is unique. Never had there been one like it before, and never shall there be one like it again. It stands alone, unrivalled, to be unforgotten for ever and ever. An eye-witness has recorded the fact. He did not argue about it, there is no room for argument, the fact was too stupendous; he did not even interpret it; he has simply told us what he saw, and his testimony commands our earnest consideration. It is a Holy-Ghost-inspired testimony of a great event and it cannot be ignored. It calls for our faith for it has been told us that we might believe. Yet we on our part may reverently ask for an explanation. What does the death of the Son of God, and His death in such circumstances mean? Let us see.

God sent His only-begotten Son into the world not to condemn the world but to save it. He became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. It was the day of revelation and of testing. Never before had absolute goodness appeared in the world; never before had unconditional mercy unfolded its treasures to assuage the miseries of men; never before had the full and true light shone in the darkness, for never before had God been manifested in the flesh. What was the answer to it on the part of men? Hatred, treachery and murder! "Ye have been the betrayers and murderers of the Just One," said Stephen, when he pressed home upon the leaders of the Jews their awful guilt.

"The Father sent the Son

A ruined world to save.

Man meted to the sinless One

The Cross, the grave."

As we read the record of John, "the disciple whom Jesus loved," let us stand in thought near to that cross with him, and fix our earnest gaze upon the Lord as he assuredly did. Many things that are recorded for our learning and faith in the other Gospels John did not see, or if he saw them it was not his work to record them. He does not, for instance, record in such full detail the unspeakable cruelty with which men treated his Master. The other Evangelists show us that nothing was left undone that they could imagine. In the excess of their hatred they heaped suffering and shame upon Him as never was heaped upon a man before, and we do well often to read their records, that we may have no delusions as to what the heart of man is when he is put to the test. But John does not dwell on that side of the cross, he is absorbed with His Lord. So when he described the going forth to Golgotha, he is the only witness who says, "He bearing His cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull." In the other records we read that He was led forth by His foes, and John tells us this too, for that was the culmination of their guilt; but He went forth, that was the triumph of His love. He went forth; do we not discern the majesty of that lonely Man, with thorns on His head and a cross upon His shoulders? He was not driven forth or dragged forth, but in obedience to His Father's command He went forth to lay down His life and to take it again. It was this that John saw, though he could not have understood at that time the full meaning of it, and the sight made an indelible impression upon his soul. We read in the ancient Scriptures that "His goings forth have been of old, from everlasting" (Micah 5). How glorious were those goings forth when as the great Creator He cast the stars before Him as a shining pathway for His feet, and the sons of God shouted for joy as they beheld the wonders of His work, but none of those goings forth were as wonderful as this, when bearing His cross He went forth into a place called the place of a skull. In creation He displayed wisdom and power; at the cross He revealed in all their glory, righteousness and love, and fuller wisdom and greater power than were called for or possible at creation.

John heard Him cry, "It is finished," and saw Him bow His head and give up the ghost, and bears witness to what he heard and saw, and again we feel that there is a majesty about this that fills us with awe, and we do not wonder that "when the centurion (a pagan up to that moment as far as we know) which stood over against Him saw that He so cried, he said, Truly this Man was the Son of God" (Mark 15).

But John seems to gather up all his energy to bear witness to the final scene that was enacted when the Lord had yielded up His life. He tells us that "one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and forthwith came there out blood and water." It is this that he saw, and to this he bears record, and his witness cannot be challenged, he knows that he saith true, THAT YE MIGHT BELIEVE. This witness is essential, it is vital, for here is the revelation that awakens faith and to which faith responds. What does it mean? Let us see. The devil by his subtlety in Eden turned the hearts of God's creatures from Him and made them believe that God did not love them, for was He not withholding something from them that would do them good? The poison did its deadly work, and they fell from their faith and fidelity, and from that time onward the very nature of men has been suspicion of and enmity against God, as the Scriptures declare. That enmity found its final expression in that spear thrust that rent the side of Jesus. The wickedness of men was fully exposed by it, but the blood and water was God's answer to that wickedness and to the devil's lie that was the first cause of it. In the blood we behold the triumph of God; it is the great price He paid to rescue us from darkness and destruction. His care for His creatures' blessing was fully revealed by it. It is the witness to us that GOD IS LOVE. No less a sacrifice would have done, no greater could have been given. "God spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all," and He "commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Our sins have met their judgment in the death of Christ, all that we were passed under God's condemnation when His dear Son was made sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. By the death of Jesus, God is just and the Justifier of all that believe. Here is solid ground upon which we may rest in peace; here is a revelation of God which calls for our willing faith. Here we meet with God in Him whom He hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, and before this mercy seat we bow down and worship. The darkness is past for us and the true light now shines, and hereby we perceive the love of God, because He laid down His life for us, and faith can sing: —

"The precious stream of water and of blood

Which from the Saviour's side so freely flowed,

Has put away our sins of scarlet dye,

Washed us from every stain and brought us nigh."

FAITHFULNESS

If we have believed the witness of the disciple whom Jesus loved, let us still stand with him and watch the sequence of events. The end has come. No miracle has been wrought to save the Son of God from death, and there He hung, dishonoured and dead, the whole world against Him, and the world apparently triumphant. He had pleaded with men, toiled for them, wept for them, and now He had died for them, but they knew it not and were glad to be rid of Him. But will His death be in vain? Will any amongst the vast multitude that had gathered to see that crucifixion be moved by it? Shall there be any response in any man ere the sun goes down to this boundless love? Yes, there is a movement. One man stands forward, separating himself from his fellows; he goes to Pilate and begs the body of Jesus. And now he stands beside the cross, one solitary man in the face of a hostile world. It is as though he said, "O Jews, ye have spurned Him, but I embrace Him. O world, ye have despised and crucified Him, but I love Him. I share in His shame and will bear His reproach. Christ for me. Ye are on that side, I am on this."

Heaven must have been thrilled at that sight, and so are we, as we see Joseph of Arimathea turn his back upon the world and its prizes and honours and stand friendless and alone by that cross for the love he bore the One who hung there. It was here that Paul stood when he said, "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world is crucified to me, and I to the world." It was here that the Eunuch from Ethiopia stood, when, having heard from Philip that the life of Jesus was taken from the earth, he said, "See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?" And his identification with Christ in His death is the only place and path for the believer who would be faithful to Him. "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus were baptized into His death?" and as He suffered without the gate, faithfulness demands that we should go forth unto Him bearing His reproach.

FELLOWSHIP

The love of Christ constrained Joseph to take his stand in faithfulness to Christ regardless of all consequences, and to take it alone; but he has no sooner done it than he is joined by another, for Nicodemus, braving the frowns and scorn of his fellow-Pharisees, throws in his lot with Joseph, and they, with two or three women, are joined together as one to do honour to their rejected and dishonoured Lord. It is a moving sight to see them identified with His dead body, Himself their object, their love to Him the bond that makes them one! And in them we see illustrated what true christian FELLOWSHIP in this world is. Look at those "two or three" as they tend the sacred body of the Lord, wrapping it in linen clothes with the spices and bearing it away to the sepulchre. The world lost to them, they are heedless of its praise or blame, they have one common object, they are absorbed with Him, they are acting according to the mind of heaven and with the approval of God.

It is well that we should ask the question as to how we stand in regard to this same matter. Any fellowship that we may profess is a mere show, if this that moved the hearts of these people is lacking. We may stand for external correctness and strive to have everything according to the terms of truth, and be intolerant of any who do not see as we see, but if there is not this faithfulness to Christ and this affection for Him that binds hearts together as one, it is of no account to God; it is the shell without the kernel, and a stumbling block to others.

Do we know the meaning of the words, "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one bread"? Do we know what it means to "SHOW THE LORD'S DEATH TILL HE COME"? It means that we stand together in faithfulness and affection for the One whom the world rejected, and that by eating His Supper together, which brings Him to mind in His death for us, we declare to all who can take notice that we are identified with Him, that we stand by His cross, that it has become our boast and our glory. It is a solemn stand to take but a blessed one. It will not meet with the world's approval but it will have God's. It will cause us to walk in self-judgment and in separation from the world, but it will open up for us a sphere in which Christ is everything and in which we shall be more than satisfied with His love, for it is written, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things that God hath prepared for them that love Him," but these things are revealed to us by His Spirit and they are our common portion to be enjoyed together as faith produces faithfulness and faithfulness draws us together in holy, happy fellowship,

Chapter 7

A Biography in Prophecy: From the manger to the universal Throne — Isa. 53.

It was for our iniquities and transgressions that He suffered and died, that by His stripes we might be healed. And those stripes were not what men laid upon Him, but those that fell upon Him from the throne of eternal justice. What was it that carried Him to the cross, and enabled Him to endure until justice could demand no more from Him? It was love, invincible, eternal love, the love of Christ that passeth knowledge.

If any one enquires of me as to this greatest chapter in the Old Testament, as did the Ethiopian Chancellor of Philip the evangelist, "I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? Of himself or some other man," I can but answer as Philip did, "Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture and preached unto him JESUS." — Acts 8.

That name which is above every name is the sure key to this chapter, there is none other, and of Him who bears it, it is my determination and privilege to speak. Here we have set in true and divine order the sufferings of Christ and the glory that shall follow. The chapter gives us in vivid terms the great steps in the history of the Lord from the manger-cradle to the universal throne, from the first Advent to the manifested glories of the Second Advent. It is on this line that I ask you to consider it with me.

THE PROPHETIC WORD

"Who hath believed our report?"

The prophets had spoken, telling in appealing words of His coming, of His great love for His people and His determination to save them; but who cared for the prophets? Who believed their report? Not many. So few indeed, that an aged widow knew them all in Jerusalem, and could speak with them. Yet there they were, that godly expectant few who looked for redemption in Israel, for God did not permit the light of faith and hope to wholly die out; but the mass of the people were indifferent to any words that God had sent to them by His holy prophets.

HIS BIRTH IN BETHLEHEM

"And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed."

"The Arm of the Lord" is a divine title. In the 51st chapter of the prophecy the Arm of the Lord is called upon to awake for the deliverance of the people as in the ancient days. "Art thou not it," cried the prophet, "which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for thy ransomed to pass over?" The Arm of the Lord was manifested in such glorious power at the Red Sea, that even the sceptics in Israel's host must have been convinced. But now, where do we see the Arm of the Lord? Not in the thunder, the lightning, the earthquake or the fire, not in the mighty wind that divided the sea, but in a Babe in the manger at Bethlehem. A weak Babe, apparently entirely dependent upon His mother's breasts for sustenance! Could that lowly Babe be the Arm of the Lord? Yes, He was, but to whom was He revealed? for verily a revelation was necessary if He was to be known; a revelation which only faith could receive. And not many received it. A few did, such as the shepherds of Bethlehem, and the aged Simeon, and the widowed Anna, and Elizabeth the mother of John, and the virgin mother who treasured the revelation in her heart. Just these, and very few beside them, for the eyes of the heart had to be opened before men could see in that lowly Babe the Arm, the strength of the Lord.

THE HIDDEN YEARS

"For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground."

Here are described those thirty hidden years in which our Lord grew up before the eyes of Jehovah. Other eyes did not discern the freshness of that apparently insignificant and tender shoot, but no words can describe its beauty in the eyes of God. "Thou art My beloved Son in whom is all My delight," was the way in which the Father summed up all that those hidden years meant to Him.

And it was in a dry ground that He grew. He derived no nourishment from His surroundings. Israel had become debased and degraded, an apostatising and barren nation. They were like a sun-parched desert in which God could find no pleasure, and the godly no sustenance. Not from the schools of the Rabbis, nor from the teaching of the scribes did Jesus draw His supplies as "He grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon Him" (Luke 2: 40). No, they contributed nothing to Him; all His springs were in God. He was cast upon God from the womb; He hoped in God when He was upon His mother's breasts; and in His law He meditated day and night as He grew up to the full stature of a man.

HOW HE APPEARED TO MEN

"He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him."

Thus He appeared to the eyes of men. He had attracted no notice during those hidden, quiet years. The absurd and blasphemous legends of the Romish church as to great deeds that He did as a boy have no foundation in fact. Men had no eyes to see or hearts to appreciate Him, who was altogether lovely in the eyes of heaven. If He had come with power and arrogance, crushing all opposition to His will beneath all-conquering feet, they might have admired and followed Him, but they could not understand His holy separation to God, His loveliness, His meekness and His lowliness. The grace of heaven was unattractive to their eyes; they had no use for Him who sought only the honour that comes from God and lived only to serve, who came not to be ministered unto but to minister.

HIS ENTRANCE ON PUBLIC SERVICE

"He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised and we esteemed Him not."

This was what He received when He stepped out of seclusion into public ministry. Many a man has been rejected by his fellows, yet respected, but this Man — who was none other than the Lord of glory, was despised as well as rejected. How scornfully the great men of the nation spoke of Him; with what disdain they said: "Is not this the carpenter?" "This fellow receiveth sinners!" "He hath a devil and is mad, why hear ye him." And even those who did not treat Him with the undisguised contempt of the Pharisees, hid their faces from Him and His appeals of love. In the last great test, when His visage was more marred than any man's they were afraid to speak out on behalf of Him whom their leaders despised. None, save perhaps one or two women, understood the meaning of His deep poverty; His sighs and tears moved the multitude only to derision and laughter.

THE SORROWS OF HIS LIFE

"Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted."

But it was not for Himself that He sighed and wept, but for them. He would have lifted every sorrow from their hearts, and been exceedingly joyful in doing it, but they would have none of it; they were blind to their blessing, and hugged their sins and rejected Him. It was for them He wept. In the midst of men, because of what men were — sin-loving, devil-deceived, God-hating — He was the Man of sorrows.

Yet their enmity did not change His love. How greatly He loved them! Right on to the end of His day of service He served them with unwearied mercy. He healed their sick; He touched their lepers with compassionate and powerful hand; He gave sight to their blind, and delivered multitudes from the blighting tyranny of demons. And let no one suppose that these were acts of power only as when He created the worlds. No, He felt their miseries and bondage; in His tender heart He carried their burdens; He was afflicted in the midst of them because they were afflicted; virtue went out of Him to heal them, and His spirit was weighed down by the loads that He lifted from them. It was in His spirit that He felt these things, for His sinless, holy body could not be seized upon or defiled by disease, even though His enemies said, "An evil disease cleaveth fast unto Him" (Psalm 41: 8). But they thought that God was against Him when they saw His sorrow: that He was stricken and smitten of God. Why was He so poor if He was in God's favour? Why should He sigh and weep? If God were pleased with Him would He not be popular with Pharisees and priests? So they reasoned, and reasoning thus they appeased their consciences while they rejected Him.

HIS CROSS

"But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed."

Here we reach the cross, the great end for which He came into the world. The nation of Israel will yet take up these words; for the veil is to be removed from their hard and unbelieving hearts; at His feet and with broken and penitent spirits they will bow down in wonder. But we also, who are not of Israel, but are sinners of the Gentiles, we can find room enough for us in this great statement. We might well ask why He, the Prince of life, bowed His head in death? Certainly death had no claim upon Him, and could have had no power over Him, had He not submitted Himself to it. The enmity of His foes, fierce as it was, was not enough, no matter how fixed was their determination to do it, to account for His death. Then where shall we find the answer to our question? We find it here. It was for our iniquities and transgression that He suffered and died, that by His stripes we might be healed. And those stripes were not what men laid upon Him, but those that fell upon Him from the throne of eternal justice.

What was it that carried Him to the cross, and enabled Him to endure until justice could demand no more from Him? It was love, invincible, eternal love, the love of Christ that passeth knowledge, love to us who had no love for Him.

OUR CONDITION FOR WHOM HE DIED

"All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all."

What words are like God's words? Here in two brief sentences there is described our character and condemnation. Like sheep we have strayed and have, in our straying, shown the folly of our sin; "we have turned every one to his own way," and thereby have declared the wilfulness, the wickedness of our sin. What but the just condemnation of God could fall upon us, after we had so definitely and deliberately declared what we are? But God has undertaken for us, and whether it be the folly or the wilfulness of our sin — all our iniquity He laid upon our Surety. It is the saved remnant of Israel that is speaking in these wonderful words, but every believer may use them, for "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4: 10).

HIS CHARACTER WHO DIED FOR US

"He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth."

The Spirit of God would not engage us wholly with the great work that has been done for our salvation, but with Him who has done it, and here is described His character and the way He met all the sufferings that men and devils forced upon Him. There was no resentment in His heart and no resistance to evil. It was the will of God that He should suffer and in absolute subjection to God's will He went to the cross. "That the world may know that I love the Father, and as He hath given Me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence," are surely words that should fill us with wonder and worship, for they describe as no other could, this holy subjection, this complete obedience to the will of God. "And they took Jesus, and led Him away. And He bearing His cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull" (John 19: 16, 17).

HIS APPARENT COMPLETE ECLIPSE

"He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare His generation? for He was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was He stricken."

So complete and unanimous was His condemnation by His judges, that it seemed as though the desire of His foes would be realised when they said, "When shall He die, and His Name perish" (Ps. 41: 5 ). It did not seem as though He would have a generation to declare, for He was cut off out of the land of the living. The whole earth groans beneath the ways of Adam's generation. Violence and corruption, pride and selfishness declare what his progeny is; the world is full of Adam and his disobedience; but this Man, the obedient One, shall those heavenly graces that shed their fragrance amid the moral putrefaction of Adam's world survive? Shall He have a generation that shall fill the earth with His beauty? It did not seem like it when He was led to the cross and when He was stricken for the transgression of the people. "It is expedient," said the godless high priest, "that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not." He did not understand the meaning of his words, but when he succeeded in his design, it did appear as though the visit of our Lord to this world had been a disastrous failure and that He had spent His strength for naught and in vain.

HIS BURIAL

"And men appointed His grave with the wicked [correct translation] but He was with the rich in His death, because He had done no violence, neither was there guile in His mouth."

It was the custom of the Romans to leave the bodies of crucified criminals upon their crosses until the carrion birds had cleaned the bones of every shred of flesh, but as a concession to the Jewish laws, which said: "If a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree: his body shall remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God)" (Deut. 21: 23), they permitted the bodies of Jewish criminals to be buried at night fall; and the custom was to dig a rough hole near the spot of the crucifixion and cast them in there. These soldiers, who had gambled for the clothes of the Lord, were keen to get back to their dice and their wine, and had prepared beforehand a grave big enough to hold the three corpses.

They made His grave with the wicked, for He was nothing more to them than these other poor wretches, and they had their brutal work to do, and the sooner it was done the better for all concerned.

But when the great work was finished, and the darkness was past and His beloved Son hung dead upon the cross, God stepped in and cried, Halt. No further were men permitted to go in dishonouring the One who had done His will with a perfect obedience. His enemies were thrust aside and from this point onwards He was honoured and revered by those who loved Him. "He was with the rich in His death." God had held His man in reserve, and now Joseph, the timorous and secret disciple, stood forth with the courage of a lion, and in the very teeth of a hostile world, and regardless of all consequences, took his stand by his crucified Lord and begged His body. It was an unheard of thing! Whoever before had set any value on the body of a crucified criminal? It was so strange that Pilate made special enquiries as to whether He was really dead, and then he granted Joseph's request. The sacred body was wrapt in pure linen with a hundred pounds of spice, and Joseph and Nicodemus with two or three women gave Him the burial of a King.

And here lies the meaning of the grave being introduced before the sufferings are fully told. The sort of grave He was to fill was not an after thought, either on man's part or God's; both were prepared and ready before He died.

HIS DEATH AS GOD'S JUDGMENT

"Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief: when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin."

Justice has often miscarried in this world's sad history, and men have suffered for crimes of which they were not guilty; but here was not a miscarriage of justice; though He had done no violence neither was there any deceit in His mouth, "Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him," and there is no unrighteousness with the Lord. He is the just God. He is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works (Ps. 145: 17). Oh, why did the just God bruise Him, who is "that just One"? (Acts 22: 24). Why did God who is holy forsake Him "that is holy, Him that is true?" (Rev. 3: 7). Why was the sinless One put to grief? There is only one answer, and it is that God chose to deal with Him as our Surety and Substitute. It gave God no pleasure in the way in which we understand pleasure, to do this, but it was the only way if He was to be a Saviour God, for just He must ever be. And this bruising was not the physical wounds that He endured, but the indescribable sufferings of His soul when He was made an offering for sin. Injustice there was from man's side, inveterate and unrestrained wickedness was in the judge's seat and absolute goodness at the bar; sin upon the throne, crowned with almost universal acclaim, and holiness on the cross, despised and execrated by Gentile and Jew. But God was over all and permitted men to go thus far that they might fully declare themselves in their hatred of Him and that He might show in absolute justice the exceeding riches of His grace to them.

HIS RESURRECTION AND PRESENT WORK

"He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hands."

Not until resurrection could He see His seed, for "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground  and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" (John 12). And it was after death and in resurrection that He said to Mary "Go unto My brethren, and say unto them . . . My Father and your Father, My God and your God." These were His seed, His generation, and the multitudes who "have believed on Him through their word" (John 17), are the answer to the lament of the prophet, "Who shall declare His generation, for He was cut off out of the land of the living?" "He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of One, for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren" (Heb. 2: 11). His life, His character, His graces are not lost, the earth is to be filled with them through His seed, and their great destiny is to be conformed to His image that He may be the Firstborn among many brethren (Romans 8: 29). Israel also will be gathered and He will be able to say as He presents them to God, a redeemed nation and a wholly right seed, "Behold, I and the children that Thou hast given Me."

And He "dieth no more" He lives "after the power of an endless life." Having glorified God and saved His people by one offering He prolongs His days into eternity; God's answer to those who would have cut Him off for ever.

"And the pleasure of the Lord" prospers in His hand "for Him hath God exalted with His right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and the forgiveness of sins" (Acts 5: 31). And to this day He is working from His throne in glory and winning men for God.

HIS COMING AGAIN

"He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied."

A great hope fills our hearts and His, and I believe that I am justified in bringing it in here, though the Old Testament does not speak specifically of it. We have read in the Word that "Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it by the washing of water by the word; that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish" (Eph. 5: 25-27). When that hour of presentation of the church to Himself comes He will see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied. He will say the prize is worth the price, for His church will yield everlasting joy to His once broken heart as she receives His boundless love into her heart and responds to it without reserve. How near the hour of His supreme joy may be we cannot tell, but this we know, He has said, "Surely, I come quickly"; and His church, the Bride of the Lamb replies, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus."

HIS GLORIOUS KINGDOM

"By His knowledge shall My righteous servant instruct many in righteousness, for He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He hath poured out His soul into death: and He was numbered with the transgressors; and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

He will establish a kingdom according to God's own righteousness and everyone who enters it will be instructed by Him in ways of righteousness, and He Himself will be for ever the manifestation of the righteousness in which He instructs His subjects; for they will never forget that they could not have been in the place of blessing at all if He had not borne their iniquities. "And He shall be great . . . and of His kingdom there shall be no end," but He shall have companions with Him in that kingdom — the great and the strong — and who are these? Those surely who have taken character from Him and learnt His ways, and have delighted to follow in His footsteps; to suffer with Him and for Him in the day of His rejection that they might reign with Him in the day of His glory. "He that is greatest among you let him be as the younger; and he that is chief as he that doth serve . . . I am among you as He that serveth." Yes, that is the way of true greatness and for it strength is needed; and it is those who are conscious of their need of strength that are made strong, for He has said, "My strength is made perfect in weakness."

But among all the crowns that shine upon His sacred brow in that day of glory this will shine with the greatest splendour — He is the Lamb that was slain. This shall never be forgotten: He poured out His soul unto death: and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bare the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.

Chapter 8

The Seven Words on the Cross: His Last Will and Testament

Let us stand by the cross and consider His words. We will not stand with the mocking multitude but with Mary, the mother of Jesus, and John, the beloved disciple, and we will look into the face of the Saviour and hear Him speaking. We will remember that it was prophesied of Him that He should die to gather together in one the children of God that are scattered abroad. Consider those sufferings! Consider the Cross! Let us ask ourselves the meaning of it and hear this answer. "To gather together in one the children of God that are scattered abroad."

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life." — John 5: 24.

I invite you to a meditation upon the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ and the grace that was in Him as expressed in the words that He uttered when upon the Cross. When we meditate it is the heart that is engaged, and it is the heart only that can appreciate and understand the meaning of the cross.

The first word is recorded in Luke 23: 34:

"Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."

This prayer did not break from the lips of our Lord Jesus Christ when He began His ministry amongst men and when they first of all wondered at the gracious words that proceeded out of His mouth, and then, moved with anger when He applied the truth, led Him to the brow of the hill upon which the city was built, to cast Him down headlong. It was not then that He prayed this prayer, but after He had ministered among them for three and a half years; after He had told out His most wonderful love to them in unsurpassable words; after He had blessed their children and fed them when they were hungry, and healed the sick and cleansed the leper, opened the eyes of the blind and raised the dead; after He had gone about amongst them doing good "for God was with Him"; and when, in answer to all that heavenly grace that had been poured out without reserve amongst them, they cried, "Away with Him! Crucify Him!" When they had spat on His sacred face and seamed His back with the scourge and crowned His head with thorns and nailed Him to a gibbet and, not satisfied with that, had sat down to watch His sufferings, to gloat over His anguish and to mock Him, it was then, when the tide of man's hatred rolled upon Him, wave upon wave, that He spoke; then His voice was heard above the storm praying, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."

He might have prayed another prayer. When one of His disciples drew a sword in Gethsemane to protect his Master, as he thought, the Lord said, "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels?" He did not pray that prayer; if He had it would have meant damnation, it would have meant the blackness of darkness for ever for them and for us. He did not pray that prayer; He waited until they had done their worst and then He prayed, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." It was the answer of invincible love to implacable hate. It was the answer of absolute goodness to incorrigible badness, and it was a prayer that was not only made but heard and answered, for in this He expressed His will. I would speak of some of these words at least as the last will and testament of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in this prayer He expresses His will to God — His will for mankind at large. For not only was the Jew there at that Cross, but the Gentile was there as well. Mankind was represented there. The thoughts of many hearts were revealed there and the heart of man in its enmity against God, in its determination to be rid of God was fully declared; and when it had declared itself so absolutely, so conclusively, the voice of Jesus answered in divine, heart-moving love, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."

When the Lord prayed that prayer He not only looked upon that seething mass of godless men that surged about Him, He looked down through the ages upon mankind to the very uttermost bounds of the earth and He prayed for mercy, for the salvation of men, and the gospel is going forth in the world to-day as the result of that prayer. And if we have believed it, and if we know God as our Father and Jesus as our Saviour and the Spirit of God as our abiding Comforter, we owe it to that prayer that Jesus prayed when men had done their worst to Him.

The next saying is in the same chapter, verse 43:

"Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise."

You will notice that His first word had men in general as its burden but the second word had one particular individual sinner as its object. From the multitude surging there the Lord turned to this poor wretch, agonising and dying at His side. The heart of the man had been awakened, his soul had been enlightened and he had turned his dying eyes upon this One Who hung by his side, and he saw in Him not only glory but grace. He saw glory, for he spoke of His coming kingdom and owned Him as Lord. This Person who hung by his side, put to shame, execrated, mocked and crucified was THE LORD; the dying malefactor recognised that, and he looked beyond the clouds that had gathered so darkly upon Calvary's hill, beyond it all to the Sun rising, to the time of His Kingdom. But if he had only seen the glory, how hopeless he would have been. He not only saw the glory, he saw the grace, and so he was emboldened to say, "Remember me." What a "me" he was! Poor drudge of the devil, hanging over hell fire, saturated from top to toe with sin, with nothing to commend him but his need. Yet he presented himself in all his foulness and his guilt and his need to the Lord. Presumption, was it? Nay, it was faith, and it honoured the Lord. Listen to the answer, "Verily I say unto thee, this day shalt thou be with Me in paradise." What an answer! An answer of grace to the cry of faith.

I don't know which to marvel at the most, the prayer that was uttered for the multitude or the concentration of grace upon this one poor wretch. What grace! And this is the grace with which the Lord meets every individual who cries to Him. This world is but a speck in the midst of the mighty universe, and there are two thousand millions of people upon it, yet if one sinner cries in faith to Jesus this is the sort of answer He will give. It seems to me that that poor sinner must have felt that he had the Saviour all to himself, and that is what the Saviour means every sinner to feel.

But, such a man, so foul, so guilty, having served the devil so long, having to be cast out of the world for his crimes, that man in Paradise! Paradise is a spotless place, holy, stainless! That man in Paradise! Well, of course, if the Lord said, "To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise," if He pledged His word to put that sinner there, He would see to making him fit. That goes without saying. Yes, a sinner may feel deeply his guilt, he may be conscious of the foulness of his soul, but if Jesus offers him salvation that sinner may rest with absolute assurance that the Saviour who offers salvation will deal with his sins. So that when Jesus passed into Paradise with this trophy of His grace in His arms, so spotless was he, so fit for that place, that not an angel in heaven could challenge his presence there. "The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin."

The third saying is John 19: 25-27

"Woman behold thy son." "Behold thy mother."

It is not now the multitudes of godless men, nor the poor sinner needing grace, but here we have the two people who above all people on earth loved the Saviour, His mother and the disciple whom Jesus loved. And as the Lord had expressed His will in regard to men and had expressed His will in regard to one sinner who believed on Him, now He expresses His will in regard to those that love Him. I have no doubt if we look at the passage dispensationally we can see in Mary, the mother of Jesus, the representative of the old dispensation, of that remnant of Israel that had looked for the glorious Messiah; and in John we may see the representative of the new dispensation, the Church. That remnant of the old dispensation that had looked earnestly for a glorious Messiah, were they to lose by His death on the Cross? No, they were to be merged into a better dispensation, they were to have their place in the Church, and so John took Mary, the mother of Jesus, to his own home and there she rested and there she dwelt. The chosen remnant of Israel that had faith passed into the Church to share her great and glorious destiny.

But there is something more than that in it, and something that should appeal to every one of our hearts. It is as though Jesus said, almost with His last words, to those two that loved Him so well, "You love Me, love one another. My will for you is that ye shall love one another. Your love to Me has brought you into relationship with one another." "Woman, behold thy son. Son, behold thy mother." And responsive to that last will and desire John took her to his own home and there she dwelt. They dwelt together in love. Christian friends, and beloved of the Lord, my heart is sad as I think of the feeble response we have made to this declaration of His will. He has said to you and to me, "If ye love Me, love one another. If ye are the disciples whom I love, don't forget to care for one another." John received Mary to his heart and to his home. He cared for her. Are we caring for one another with a love begotten in our hearts by the Lord's own love to us? Are we, as those who profess to know Him, caring for one another?

Let us stand by the Cross and consider His words. We will not stand with the mocking multitude, but with Mary, the mother of Jesus, and John, the beloved disciple, and we will look into the face of our Saviour and hear Him speaking. We will remember that it was prophesied of Him that He should die to gather together in one the children of God that are scattered abroad. Consider those sufferings! Consider that Cross! Let us ask ourselves the meaning of it and hear this answer. "To gather together in one the children of God that are scattered abroad." Alas, alas! how lightly we think of division amongst the saints of God! We need the Cross in its appealing power in regard to this question that we may be found more in the spirit of John, who took Mary to his own home. But whatever we think or feel about it we have the Lord's last will and testament here, His expressed desire in regard to those that love Him.

Now we turn to Matthew 27: 45, 46:

"My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me."

This is the central saying of the seven and we can understand why it should be so. Every circle of mankind has been considered, the multitude of men, the individual sinner, those who are saved by the grace of God. Now the Lord is in the midst of that darkness. He is forsaken. Forsaken by His disciples He had been, and poor, frail, fickle men that they were we can not wonder; but now we learn that He is abandoned by God. "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Can we give an answer to that cry? The Lord Himself gives it in Ps. 22, "But Thou art holy." But, was not Jesus holy? Yes. When announcing His birth the angel had said to Mary, "That holy Thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." And even the devils confessed Him in the synagogue saying, "We know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God." He was holy, harmless, undefiled; this was the testimony of the Holy Ghost to Him. As He hung upon that Cross He was just as holy as He was when He sat on the Throne and created angels. Just as holy in His perfect manhood as He was in His Godhead glory. Then if Jesus is holy, and if God is holy, what is the meaning of this cry? It is because we were unholy, because we were sinful, because we were far from God and unfit for His Presence. It is because of this that Jesus was forsaken, for there in that darkness He was made sin for us.

He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed. He was taking up questions that had to be taken up if we were to be blest. If we were to be received into everlasting favour He must suffer in the darkness. Only by His stripes, by His bruising could we be healed — and when we read in the Scriptures of His bruising we must not connect that with the blows that He received from the fists of brutal men or of the nails that pierced His hands and feet. He was bruised physically, but His soul was bruised also. His soul was made an offering for sin. He was there beneath the stroke of Divine justice that God's throne might stand in everlasting rectitude and that His grace might pour out in salvation to you and me. And no tongue of mortal can tell what those sufferings meant to Him, no heart can conceive them. He suffered there under the weight of God's judgment. God hid His face from Him, He sank beneath those waves of judgment, down, down into depths beneath which there is nothing; down into the ocean of divine wrath against sin that we might be "brought to God" that we might be made fit for the Father's presence.

Thus He suffered! Our Christianity will have no foundation if we pass over this. Any change brought about in our lives that leaves this out will be but a temporary, a superficial change. But if we understand this it will go right down into the very roots of our being and change us there. What a consideration, almost too sacred for human comment, is this cry that broke from the soul of the suffering Jesus amid the darkness of the cross. Throughout all Eternity we are going to bless Him for it. He is to be the theme of the ransomed saints throughout those countless ages. We shall never exhaust the theme, we shall never be able to tell out the greatness of it, but blessed be God for the grace that has anointed our eyes and given us to see in that Sufferer upon the Cross the very salvation of God. At that price He has won us; that was the cost. He gave all for us. Let us bow down at the feet of this great Saviour saying, Lord, I am Thine, I am Thine"

The next cry is in John 19: 28-29:

"I thirst."

I think sometimes we forget that the Lord suffered physically, probably as no other could suffer. He never used His Godhead power to alleviate His human suffering, and when He cried, "I thirst," we see the suffering Man, the suffering Man in His perfection expressing the fact that He suffered. Was there any relenting in His foes who heard that cry? That cry of distress? Was there any pity, any mercy in any of them? He tells us in the 69th Psalm, that they gave Him gall for His meat and in His thirst they gave Him vinegar to drink; and that that Scripture might be fulfilled, though they did not know they were fulfilling Scripture, the sponge was pressed to His mouth. There was no pity, no mercy for a suffering Saviour.

But may we not see something else in that cry? For what did the Saviour thirst? He thirsted for the love of our hearts — for your love and mine. May we refresh Him this day. May we give an answer to that cry. Has He been thirsty for our love? Are there rivals to Him in our affections — the world — self? Oh, let this cry from the Cross search our hearts. He died because He thirsted — because He wanted us. He died because nothing would satisfy His love but having us for Himself for ever. What shall the answer to this cry be?

The next cry is in chapter 19: 30:

"It is finished."

Now we enter into the triumph. Though He still had to bow His head and the blood had to flow from His spear-ripped side, as Lord He could speak of it all as done. So we have His triumphant cry, "It is finished." We bow at His feet, who left nothing for us to do who could do nothing. He undertook Himself to accomplish the mighty work and has done it in absolute perfection so that Almighty God can find no flaw in it.

It is finished! Yes, indeed.

Finished every jot.

Sinner, this is all you need —

Tell me, is it not?

"It is finished." Triumphant cry! Glorious Saviour! Oh, wonderful Jesus! It is finished! The power of hell vanquished, the work of redemption accomplished, God glorified, salvation open for sinners, blessing for you and for me. It is finished!

The last cry is in Luke 23: 46:

"Father into Thy hands I commend My spirit."

It is very beautiful that that final cry should be recorded in Luke's Gospel. It is only there, and it is only in Luke's Gospel that we have those first words recorded as having come from the Lord's lips. In Luke's Gospel as a boy of twelve we read He said, "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?" And that Father's business is unfolded for us in Luke's Gospel. It was a business of grace, pardoning sinners and giving peace and rest to the weary and heavy laden. A wonderful Gospel unfolding the Father's business. And now the Father's business is finished and the One who had accomplished it so blessedly could say, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit." Oh, what must have been the feelings of the Father then? What must have been the joy of heaven then? The suffering over now, the work accomplished and the blessed Workman passing into absolute rest and peace, into the Father's presence.

We can rejoice that Calvary closed as far as His words are concerned like that. It is true the soldier had to pierce His side and the blood flow forth from that pierced side; but oh, what joy! Does it not move our souls, to consider Him with His last words commending Himself to the Father? Thank God, we know that He is raised from the dead. We know that the Father Who was so glorified by His suffering on the Cross, raised Him and has seated Him on His right hand in heaven, and this we can realise and exult in now. If He died that His last will and testament might come into effect, He has been raised up from the dead to administer it. His will would have been of no effect if He had not died. It was necessary that the testator should die. But He has been raised up again from the dead that His will might be administered, not only in the letter of it but according to its spirit, and that is what He is doing now in the glory and that is what He is going to do when that day of glory dawns for this world and He is owned as universal King, and that is what He will do for ever and for ever. He is the blessed Administrator of the will of God.

Chapter 9

The Lord's Farewell Words: Our dangers; His provision

It was not the rabble, untaught and knowing not the law that planned the greatest crime that night or day has ever looked upon. It was the chief priests and respected leaders of the people, religious men, men of education, who boasted of their culture and elevation above the common herd. They brought it about, but they could not have done it alone; one of the Lord's own disciples was necessary, and he was ready for the foul deed when Satan entered unto him. You could not find men in better circumstances than these were. The chief priests had the law, and Judas had the Gospel, but neither law nor Gospel changed them or him. But such is the heart of man and such is the world, and as we consider it we do not wonder that the Lord said to Nicodemus, "Ye must be born again."

I want you to consider with me these final words of our Lord to His disciples before He went forth to His agony in the Garden and His death upon the cross, as Luke inspired by the Holy Ghost has given them to us. They set before us the position of the disciples of the Lord as His witnesses in the world during His absence from it, and His tender solicitude for them: upon this I lay the emphasis. They show us His intimate knowledge of our fickleness and frailty, and of the dangers and vicissitudes that beset us, but also His unwearied and unwearying love, and His ability to make us more than conquerors until He comes again.

Nothing could be more moving, surely, than this chapter (Luke 22) nothing more calculated to fill us with wonder than what is there recorded and it will give us the setting, the surroundings, without which, as always in the case of the words of the Lord Jesus, the infinite and divine beauty of the words and acts are partly lost.

The chief priest and the scribes sought to kill Him, so verse 2 tells us. That was because they hated Him with a bitter and incorrigible hatred, and that in spite of the fact that it was the Feast of unleavened bread, which spoke symbolically of all malice and hatred and evil being put out of the heart; but what cared they for that? To rid the world of Him whose very presence in it was a continual rebuke to their sin and hypocrisy and pride was their purpose, but how to do it was their problem. They were cowards, every one of them, base cowards, and they feared the people whom they despised. They had no need to have feared them, for those people could be swayed either this way or that like saplings in a gale; they, too, were as foolish as they were sinful, and had no love for the Lord. All they cared about were the loaves and fishes with which He had fed them. They would defend Him if He fed them well, if not — "Let Him be crucified." But the perplexity of these rulers disappeared when there slunk into their council one of the Lord's own disciples. Here was the solution of their difficulty, here was the devil-possessed implement of their plot.

Judas had slipped away from the Lord's company under some pretence or other that must have deceived his fellow-disciples, but not the Lord. Do you not see him hastening furtively through the streets, hastening as only a guilty man bent upon a foul crime could hasten, to the place where he knew these enemies of the Lord were? There was no time to waste in haggling or bargaining, the deed must be done, and done speedily; thirty pieces of silver was "the goodly price" that they offered him, and for that price he sold his Lord and agreed to bring about His capture while the people slept. Then this devil's dupe — oh, the horror of it! — returned to resume his place among the disciples, as though none were more devoted than he, and the chief priests proceeded to plan the execution of their murderous design, and then went to their prayers and to their preparations to eat the Passover. Such is the world, such was the world on the night of the Lord's betrayal, and He knew it, He knew it thoroughly and completely.

It was not the rabble, untaught and knowing not the law, that planned this greatest crime that night or day has ever looked upon, it was the chief priests and the respected leaders of the people, religious men, men of education, who boasted in their culture and elevation above the common herd. They brought it about, but they could not have done it alone; one of the Lord's own disciples, His own "familiar friend," was necessary, and he was ready for the foul deed when the devil entered into him. You could not find men in better circumstances than these were in. The chief priests had the law, and Judas had the gospel, and all the grace of it in the Master whom he had followed for more than three years, but neither law nor gospel changed them or him, though both increased their responsibility and added to their guilt. But such is the heart of man, and such is the world, and seeing it we do not marvel as Nicodemus did when the Lord said to him, "Ye must be born again."

Now the Lord knew all this. If Elisha the prophet was enlightened by the Lord as to the journey that Gehazi took in order to gratify his covetous heart, the Lord of Elisha — for Jesus was that — knew all that had passed between the traitor and His foes. He knew too, all that would follow this plotting; He knew that man's hour and the power of darkness had come, and knowing all, what did He do? Let us see.

Exercising His authority as Messiah for the last time, He sent Peter and John to demand a guest chamber, in which He could eat the Passover Feast with His disciples, and pour out His heart in a last farewell before He suffered; and at that supper He clearly showed them what their position in the world would be during His absence, and what the resources they would have. The storm was gathering outside, preparations for His arrest and condemnation and crucifixion were being rapidly completed, and Judas, who knew all about it, sat there at the table with Him, the price of his treachery in his bag. And Jesus knew all this. Never before had the powers of darkness been so stirred; this was their supreme hour, men were but the puppets on the stage, guilty puppets, playing their part with willing hearts; but behind them were the forces of evil determined to crush that one lowly Man, and to finish at one blow and for ever their long fight with God, and Jesus knew this. But His disciples, and we, were His one thought. Behold Him as He looks round upon them and says, "With desire have I desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer."

They loved Him, but He loved them more; and it was His desire, not theirs, that had brought them together for that sacred occasion. The Passover Feast commemorated the deliverance of Israel from Egypt; the lamb roast with fire upon which they fed year by year turned the eye of faith forward to His coming, who was the true paschal Lamb. And now He had come, and there He sat to share with them that meal which spoke so eloquently of what He would do ere once more the sun sank down over the western sea.

It was at the Passover Feast that He instituted the Supper which we know and love as THE LORD'S SUPPER (1 Cor. 2); and this He did entirely in view of His absence from them. It is this which we must specially consider because it is definitely for us, which the passover was not. One of the chief features of this period in which we are called to witness for Him is, that He is absent from this world; His disciples were to witness for and serve an absent Lord, and so have we.

AN ABSENT LORD AND A SUPPER OF REMEMBRANCE

He was to be no more with them and they would miss His blessed company; and the measure in which they would miss Him would show the measure of their love to Him. And so it is now; the Lord is not here, He has no place in this world, its politics, social circles, pleasures and schemes of reconstruction give Him no place. Are we conscious of His absence, and of this? If we love Him, we shall miss Him and shall long for the time when He shall come to take us to His Father's house, that where He is we may be also; nor shall we long with less desire for the day when He shall be glorified in this world that despised and rejected Him. Christ is not here. What other than this is the meaning of those words we prize so highly, "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them?" If He were here, why gather in His Name? But why is He not here? There are two reasons the world hated Him and slew Him; and He loved us and died for us. These are the two sides of the Lord's exit from this world by death, as they are given to us in this Gospel by Luke.

The world is so seductive and can put on so fair an exterior, that we soon forget that the cross of Christ is the witness of its awful hatred of Him, and that whoso will be a friend of the world is an enemy of God. It is well that we should learn that when all things are normal and right with us the cross of Christ is our only glory, and that by it the world is crucified to us, and we to it.

The Lord's Supper brings before us the fact that He is not here — we show the death of our Lord until He returns and one reason why He is not here is, the world cast Him out. This that was written had to be accomplished in Him: "And He was reckoned among the transgressors." His name was blotted out from David's royal line, and inscribed on the criminal roll of Jerusalem. Yes, if the criminal roll of that proud city for that eventful year could be discovered, the name of Jesus of Nazareth would be found along with the names of thieves and murderers. And we show the Lord's death until He comes again. As we eat His Supper, we announce the fact that we are identified with Him whom the world slew, we are identified with Him because we love Him.

But He died for us. He made us His own for ever by a love that gave Himself for us. How easily we forget this. If He stood in our midst and showed us His wounded hands and feet and side, as He did to His disciples on the resurrection day, His love would without doubt be a great reality to us; but "out of sight" is so liable to be "out of mind," so fickle are we; knowing this, He instituted His Supper, which should be a constant and perpetual reminder to us of a love which was stronger than death.

As we sit at His Supper, we follow Him in thought through the gates of David's city, that city which He loved so well and for which he wept, to Calvary. We see Him there for us, no light shining on Him from above, no friend ministering comfort from below. We hear His broken cries, but heaven is dumb, and men only mock, and at last He dies. The Prince of Life hung dead upon a cross for us; His body was there given for us and His blood shed for us. It is this that the broken bread and the poured-out wine speak of — Christ dead for us. And we need this Supper to keep Him in this great love ever fresh before our soul. If He were here we should not need it, because He is absent we do.

How necessary it is that we should have this eucharistic feast; this Supper of love, which expresses so blessedly to us what our Lord is, and our fellowship together — the fellowship of the Lord's death; the true fellowship of the many members of one body! What a joy to recall Him whose love many waters could not quench! With the storm gathering thickly about Him His thoughts spanned the whole time of His absence, and He then and there gave us this supper of remembrance until He comes again. "And He took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is My body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of Me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in My blood, which is shed for you." And as we respond to His request we say, "Lord, we do not forget."

A LIFE OF WITNESS AND A PERFECT PATTERN

Those disciples were to witness for Him, and we are to witness for Him during His absence; we are to be His letter of commendation before the world and to shine as lights in it. But how unlike Him we are by nature, just like those disciples indeed, who, even at that Supper table, were striving as to who should be the greatest among them. They needed, and we need, to have a perfect pattern if we are to understand what our witnessing must be.

He set Himself before them; they were not to be like the Gentiles, but like Him; they were not to exercise lordship over one another, but to follow His example and serve one another in love. It is in the world that men endeavour to be great, and jostle one another in their scramble for the chiefest places; but these disciples, and we like them, are not of the world, then the spirit of the world had not to show itself in them, nor must it in us. They belonged to Christ and so do we, and consequently it is His spirit that we have to bear and to show.

Let us incline our ears to hear His words. He said to them, "I am among you as he that serveth." Are there any more affecting words in Scripture than these? Consider what they mean! When they awoke in the morning He had often been awake before them and prepared their breakfast; they never needed a servant if He was near; His love made Him watch for opportunities to labour on their behalf, and if there was one task more menial than another that was the task He undertook. He, the Lord of glory, was the servant of those rude, unlettered fishermen; His love bound Him with unbreakable fetters to a life of service. He is our pattern, and our witnessing for Him must be after that pattern. He who loves most, serves most, and he who would be most like his Lord must take the lowest place amongst his brethren that he may serve them all.

THERE IS A TIRELESS FOE, BUT AN ALL-PREVAILING INTERCESSOR

Now if we are to witness for Christ, there will be opposed to us a sleepless and subtle foe; and the greater our determination to witness faithfully for Him, the more we shall be challenged and attacked. "Simon, Simon," said the Lord, "behold, Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you (all the disciples) as wheat."

What could Simon do in the presence of Satan? Poor, impetuous, self-confident Simon! And what can we do who are as foolish and weak as he? Satan's effort was and is, to separate the souls of those whom Jesus loves from Him and to destroy them; and if he cannot destroy them, he will endeavour to destroy their testimony. What easy prey he would have if it were not for the blessed fact that we have an Intercessor, whose ceaseless and blessed activities on our behalf are all-prevailing. He has died to make us His own; He ever liveth to maintain our faith in witness for Himself during His absence.

How cheering are the words, "I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." The Lord had anticipated that fierce trial through which Simon was to pass; Satan is always too late for the Lord's vigilance, the prayer arose before the temptation came, and so it always does. He was ahead of Satan; Satan might catch Simon sleeping, and take you and me unawares, but he could not forestall the Lord. He had gauged the power of the foe and the weakness of His well-meaning disciple; and He had spoken to God His Father, about it all, and secured for Simon all the grace that was needed even if Simon failed. Simon did fail; he was allowed to do so, for he had lessons to learn; but his faith did not fail, and he came out of the distress and the dishonour a thoroughly converted man, distrustful of self, to strengthen his brethren, and to storm the devil's stronghold at Jerusalem, and take captive for Christ thousands who had hitherto been Satan's lawful captives.

The intercession of our Lord is not less effectual for us; He is even at the right hand of God for this purpose. There, amid the glory of the throne, He pleads for us so that we may be more than conquerors through Him that loves us (Rom. 8: 34, 39).

A LIFE OF LABOUR WITH A BLESSED RECOMPENSE

But these disciples of the Lord had to learn also of what sort their lives would be as witnesses for Christ in the midst of a world that hated Him. Hitherto it had been an easy matter to serve Him, for He had exercised His authority as Messiah on their behalf, and they had gone forth without purse or scrip, or shoes, or staves, and had lacked nothing. Wherever they went their needs were abundantly met; but now all was changed; He was to be rejected; to be cast out as a malefactor, and they were henceforward to be identified with that Name which was dishonoured by man though honoured of God in heaven. Theirs was to be a life of toil and conflict. They had to sell their garments and buy swords. The garment spoke of ease and comfort, and the sword of hardship and conflict. They had to exchange the one for the other.

It has been thought that the Lord spoke here of an actual sword; indeed so thought these disciples, for they said, "Lord, behold, here are two swords." And He said unto them, "It is enough." If He had meant an actual sword, He would not have said, "It is enough." He would have said, "You will need one each." The fact is, they did not understand then the spiritual significance of His words. But Paul understood them afterwards when he described the Christian life, not in the language of the drawing room, or couch of ease, but in the language of the battlefield. Mark well how he speaks of "the good fight," of "enduring hardness as a good soldier," of "wrestling not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." We are told by him to "watch and be sober," to "put on the whole armour of God"; to withstand and to stand.

How we shrink from this hardship and the sacrifice that witnessing for Christ involves! We labour to save our own lives, for we so little appreciate the love of Christ that made Him die for us; and it is only as that love of His constrains us, that we shall do any other; but when that love takes possession, full possession, we sell the garment and buy the sword, and go forth to witness for our Lord regardless of the consequences to ourselves. In this there is compensation; the compensation of the Lord's approval in this present time, and in the future there is glory with Him, for if we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him (2 Tim. 2). "I appoint unto you a kingdom," said the Lord to these men, who afterwards sealed their testimony for Him with their blood, these true martyrs of our Lord. May we be like them through His grace.

Let us in our meditation put ourselves in thought among that company of men in that upper room, and listen to those wonderful sayings of our Lord, spoken with such quietness, such tenderness, until their full meaning fills our souls. Then let us follow Him as the Holy Spirit here shows Him to us, going forth to the Garden, then to the Cross, and down into the grave, then rising in the triumph of His victory over death, and ascending at last to His Father's throne; then like those disciples who saw Him go up, we shall worship Him, and be filled with great joy, and be continually praising and blessing God. Amen.

Chapter 10

Jesus Showing Himself: and on this wise showed He Himself

If you are a backslider, and have become cold of heart; if divine things have lost their lustre and reality to you; if a distance has come in between your Lord and you. What do you need? You need to come afresh into the realisation of what Jesus suffered for you. You need to stretch forth your hand afresh and come into contact with His wounded hands and side. Say, The Son of God loved me, and gave Himself for me. It will bring you where it brought Thomas, prostrate on his face at the Master's feet. It will make you cry as he cried, "My Lord and my God."

"He showed unto them His hands and His side. Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord. . . . Thomas answered and said unto Him, My Lord and my God. . . . After these things Jesus showed Himself again to His disciples. . . . This is now the third time that Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after He was risen from the dead." — John 20, 21.

John's Gospel gives to us the resurrection and the results of the resurrection on the very highest possible plane. In each Gospel we see that side of resurrection truth that is in keeping with the character of the Gospel, but John sets the disciples, and us, for they represented the whole Christian company, in an association with Christ, as risen, that the other writers do not give us. He shows us the way in which Jesus showed Himself to His disciples. It is HIMSELF and the incomparable grace that is in Him that John unfolds.

THE FIRST SHOWING

In the first appearing, we have the Lord Himself in what I might call the most intimate circle — His own circle — the saints gathered together. His disciples ought to have remembered His word, that on the third day He would rise again from the dead, and they ought to have been assembled outside the sepulchre to greet Him with songs of triumph, as the Victor from the dead. But their faith had all but failed, and their hopes they thought had been blasted, and they were filled with despair. They were not there to welcome Him from the dead. The Lord had to spend a very busy day seeking them out and restoring their faith and souls in order to gather them together to meet Him at the end of the day. There was Mary. He had, first of all, to drive the sorrow from her loving, broken heart, to show her that there was no cause for tears, but every cause for laughter and triumph. There was poor, burdened, conscience-stricken Peter. The Lord thought of back-sliding Peter; He knew the shame and sorrow that filled him, and graciously He sought him, for He loved him, and He did not want him to be an absentee at the evening's meeting. There were those two who, disconsolate and discouraged, were returning to their home in Emmaus. The Lord took that long journey with them to bring them back to Jerusalem. What a busy day He spent in His loving service! Think of those nail-pierced feet following those wandering disciples until He reached them, and then think of Him speaking to them with such tenderness and patience, coming down to their ignorance and unbelief to remove it all and to make their heavy hearts burn. The Lord laboured that day for His own; they were His great thought, and His labour was not in vain, they were ready in the evening, and in the evening when they were ready, He was there with them. Think of Him showing Himself like that to His disciples: and in showing Himself to them He is showing Himself to us, that we may know what kind of a Saviour and Lord we have. Do not we dishonour and grieve Him many times by doubting Him? And having doubted Him we often continue to grieve Him by thinking that our failure is too great for His grace.

They were gathered together in the evening of the day. He had made Mary His messenger. To her He revealed what up to that point had not been revealed to anyone else. He found her without the sepulchre weeping, distressed and desolated at His absence, and to that affectionate heart He imparted the most wonderful message that mortal lips ever carried: "Go unto My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God."

We do not get this in the other Gospels. It is the great revelation that John gives. The Lord had said before His death: "I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" There were great things in His heart, but He could not speak of these things until after His death. But now that death had taken place and resurrection was a fact, He keeps nothing back, He makes haste to tell all that is in His heart. "Except a corn of wheat fall to the ground and die, it abideth alone," He had said. If He had not died, He would have been alone for ever, alone as the Object of the Father's love, alone in His Father's bosom. He would have had no companion to share that eternal favour and love with Him. But in resurrection He has brought forth many grains — much fruit. The disciples were the beginning. We have come into it. He addresses us and says, "My brethren." That does not mean that He has come down to our level. But that He has brought us up to His. Let no one of us call Him "elder Brother." The only one who is spoken of as "elder brother" in Scripture is the disgruntled and graceless son of Luke 15. We bow down before Him and say, "My Lord and my God," and yet, matchless grace! He is not ashamed to call us "brethren." That is because He has lifted us up to His level and given us His own life and nature. The youngest babe in the family of God has the same life and nature as Christ, the risen Christ; He has imparted this to all His brethren. The flesh is still within them. But they have that which neither sin nor death can touch. They have that which is eternal, for eternal life is theirs; it is the life of the risen Christ. This never could have been if He had not borne all the judgment that their old sinful life deserved. It passed under God's unsparing judgment when Jesus died that they might be united to Him in this new life. He looks upon us all with infinite tenderness, with infinite love, and He says, "My brethren." That means that His Father is our Father, that His God is our God, as He said, "I ascend to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God."

This is different from that which we get in Matthew's Gospel, "Our Father which art in heaven." There "our Father" had to do with our needs in this world. He is caring for us in our earthly circumstances, numbering the very hairs of our head. But this is something else. It is not the Father's care that is in question, we must never have a doubt about that, but here no question of need arises, but we are brought into the very relationship with God in which His Son stands, to find our full satisfaction there. The love of the Father is upon us, and not only upon us, but He would have it to be in us, that it might be the deep and continuous experience of our hearts. This wonderful message gathered the disciples together, and there they were in that upper room; the doors shut for fear of the Jews. Despised people, they were — "the things that are not." But to them Jesus comes, He Himself stands in their midst. And being there He gives to that company His own dignity. The glory had left the Temple, that magnificent structure was of no account in Heaven's eyes; instead the glory was there in the midst of those Galilean fishermen, they were the companions of the Son of God, and though the world did not see it, those simple fishermen gathered there in the presence of the Lord were greater in the eyes of Heaven than the angels. They were His companions, His brethren. It is upon this plane that the assembly of God stands. When we come together in the full truth of what the Lord has called "My church," we do not come as saved sinners exactly, we are that most surely from one point of view, but we come as the brethren of Christ.

What matchless grace, what incomparable love is here, Christ in the midst of His brethren! His love cannot endure any distance; He wants His loved ones near to Him. The story of Joseph and his brethren illustrates it. Often it has moved our hearts. He said to his brethren, "Come near unto me." So the Lord stretches out His hands to us as His brethren, and He says, "Come near unto Me." And when they came near, Joseph kissed all his brethren and wept over them. He had no favourites. He treated them all alike. He kissed all his brethren. Then they talked with him. Thus the Lord puts anew the kiss of His love upon us, and makes us thoroughly at home with Him, and we are able to talk with Him. Blessed and wonderful privilege!

He said, "Peace be unto you." It was His first word to them. God is not the Author of confusion. He is the Author of peace. Where the presence of Christ is realized, and His supremacy in the midst of His saints is acknowledged, there will be peace. He came into the world and the world would not have Him, and Israel rejected His rightful claims as King. He was cast out of Jerusalem, which was His own city. His rights were utterly denied, but in resurrection life He could come into the midst of His brethren. There He could be supreme — there His rights were acknowledged.

"Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord," we read. It does not say, "When they saw Jesus." Of course, the Lord is Jesus, and Jesus is the Lord, but they were glad when they saw the Lord. They recognized His supremacy, and yielded a complete allegiance to Him. And this is a matter that should give every one who desires to be faithful to Him much thought and concern. Are we owning His Lordship, not in our individual lives only, but when we gather together as His brethren, as those early disciples did. One mind alone should guide and govern there, and that mind the mind of the Lord. Every heart should be subject to Him then, and there can be no practical unity in the truth in His church apart from that, no fellowship according to God. There will be unity in heaven, but why? J. N. Darby's beautiful hymn explains it:

"Every knee to Jesus bending,

All the mind in heaven is one"

But how did these disciples know that it was the Lord who stood in the midst? He showed Himself to them. He showed them His hands and His side. He revealed Himself to them in His love, that had suffered for them, He showed them the marks of His suffering in His body. What is it that gives Him the right to be supreme in the midst of His saints? Those pierced hands and the wounded side! He has the right, of course, to be supreme everywhere, for He is the eternal God, but it is those wounded hands and that pierced side that give Him supremacy in His church beyond all question. He is supreme in His love. Did He not say to His disciples, the one who serves most is the one who loves most and he is the greatest? He has served us even unto death, and His suffering and self-sacrificing love give Him the supreme place. On the resurrection day, Peter was not looking to John, or John to Peter. Every eye was looking at the Lord, and the disciples were glad, when they saw the Lord. None of them would want to be greater than the other that day. He alone would be great in their eyes.

THE SECOND SHOWING

Thomas was not with the disciples on the first Lord's Day, but when they came together again he came with them, but it was with a cold and unbelieving heart. How will the Lord bring that stubborn, faithless disciple, who would believe nothing that he could not feel or see, into a right frame of mind? He brings him into contact with His wounded body: "Come hither, Thomas," He says; "reach hither thy hand. Behold the wounds in My hands. Thrust thy hand into My side, and be not faithless but believing." It was as though He said, "Those wounds were for you. Come near to them, Thomas, see what My love has done for you. Do not doubt Me. Do not stand coldly by with heart of stone. I want you near to Me to know what I have suffered for you. Be not faithless but believing." This has something to say, surely, to each individual heart. Are you a backslider? If you have become cold, if Divine things have lost their lustre and reality to you, if a distance has come in between you and the Lord, what do you need? You need to come afresh into the realization of what Jesus suffered for you. You need to reach forth your hand afresh and come into contact with His wounded hands and His side. Say, "The Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me," and it will bring you where it brought Thomas, prostrate on his face at his Master's feet. It will make you cry as he cried, "My Lord and my God!"

THE THIRD SHOWING

We come now to the third time that He showed Himself, and "on this wise showed He Himself to them." The Spirit of God very specially emphasizes this. The disciples went out fishing without any direction from Him, and they toiled all through those long, weary hours and caught nothing, and when morning began to dawn Jesus Himself stood upon the shore, and He spoke to them. His gracious voice sounded in their ears. He said, "Children, have you any meat?" "Children!" What does that mean? Affection and reproof were in it. It meant that He cared for them and they had forgotten it. Children are dependent upon someone else. Children do not provide their own breakfast, it is there for them when they awake. "Children," He said, "have you any meat?" They said, "No." He said, "Cast the net on the right side of the ship," and the disciple whom Jesus loved said, "it is the Lord." They come ashore, awed and abashed. And to their astonishment they find a fire there, a fire lighted by His own hands, and bread and fishes laid thereon, all ready for them. This is how He showed Himself to them. He knew they were cold, so He lighted a fire. He knew they were hungry, so He prepared them a breakfast He knew they were timid, so He, invited them to come and dine. It was as though He said to them, "Why do you doubt Me? I am just what I used to be." Many and many a time He had prepared their breakfast before His death. He arose a great while before day to meet their needs, and when they arose, their breakfast was ready for them, for He was among them as their Servant (Luke 22). It was as though He said, "My heart is just the same. I have just the same care for you as ever I had. Death and resurrection have not changed Me." And He showed Himself thus that we might see and know Him. He is the same to us as He was to them, He knows the needs of every one whom He loves; He knows your needs, burdened and troubled believer. Do not doubt Him? He is acquainted with every trial, and He shows Himself on this wise to you. He is equal to every difficulty. He is alive to every need. Arising up a great while before day, He is ready to meet your need when it arises. He is up before you, and if you got up hours before you usually do, He would be there! And if your needs began with your waking moment, and were ten thousand times greater than they are, there would still be the grace to meet them. Your need will never exhaust the resources of the Lord.

How blessed it is to see the risen Lord, the Conqueror of death, showing Himself on this wise to His disciples, so that they might henceforth trust Him! That they might say to one another: "These are great difficulties in which we are, but we must not doubt Him. Do you remember how He lighted the fire, prepared the bread and the fish, so that we might be warmed and fed, when after that night of fruitless toil we feared that we should have no food? Do you remember the tender way in which He invited us to sit down, and then served us, our risen Lord? Served us with the pierced hands, gave us the bread and fish, and was our Servant in resurrection just as He was before He died?"

Oh, the Lord grant that, as He shows Himself to us, our hearts may be awakened; that we may be alert; that our eyes may see; that our hearts may adore Him; that we may never doubt Him, but that He may be everything to us! The Lord grant it for His Name's sake.

Chapter 11

Standing by the Cross: The way of "the disciple whom Jesus loved"

The cross is to us the supreme manifestation of the love of Christ, that passeth knowledge; it is the revelation of the heart of God to the world. It was there that our sins were atoned for; there the cup of our judgment was drained to its last drop by our suffering Saviour; there the hatred of men was fully exposed, but there the love of God shone out above it all in all its splendour. We must stand by the cross and let its meaning move our souls; as we do so we shall be consciously the disciples whom Jesus loves and shall respond to His love in faithfulness and praise.

"Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of the disciples whom Jesus loved." — John 13: 23.

"When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple standing by whom He loved." — John 19: 26.

"Peter turning about seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following." — John 21: 20.

The sincerity of discipleship is tested when the Lord and Master is rejected. When He was on earth many were ready to follow Him when they saw His miracles, or did eat of the loaves He fed them with. They had never had such a satisfying meal as that which they ate by the Sea of Galilee. He was popular then, and these fair-weather disciples loved good food and popularity; but when His words indicated that the way He would lead His followers was not such as they thought it would be, they turned from Him and walked no more with Him, until at last, in chapter 13, they are reduced to twelve men, and of those twelve one was a traitor. But this crisis revealed the basis of true discipleship and what it is that can keep the disciple true to the Lord until His return. Mark how the Spirit shows the Lord to us here. "When Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of the world unto the Father, having loved His own which were in the world He loved them unto the end." His time for departure had come, and He knew all the shame and unspeakable sorrow that would come upon Him with that departure, and it was all to be borne for the sake of His disciples, and for our sakes, but He loved them not one whit less because of that. Nothing could alter His love for them, it was greater than the waters of judgment and death — He loved them unto the end. Bind together these two things — His departure out of the world by the way of Gethsemane, Gabbatha and Golgotha, and His unchanging love for His own through it all, for in the true knowledge of these things lies the secret of true discipleship. It is not the sacrifices that we make for Him that make us "disciples indeed," but the knowledge of the sacrifice that He has made for us; it is not our love to Him, but His love to us that constrains us to follow Him.

But the Lord knew more than the fact that the time of His departure had come. He knew that "the Father had given all things into His hand." How great is His glory as thus revealed! Reach up to the highest height of the purpose of God and down to the deepest depth of His judgments, and embrace if you can the vast range of His will — all has been put into the hands of Jesus. He will command angels, He will bless men, He will judge devils; He will subdue every hostile force to the will of God and fill the universe with His glory. Such is the confidence, the absolute trust, that the Father has in Him, that all things have been put into His care; nothing has been withheld from Him. That is the measure of His glory. Knowing this, and also "that He came from God and went to God," and could go back to God as having accomplished all His will, what does He do? He lays aside His garments and girds Himself with a towel and stoops down before His disciples to wash their feet!! The most glorious Person in the universe renders a slave's service to His disciple!! Let that indescribable grace, let the love that was in that great act affect us rightly as we ponder over it!

There was more in that act than appears on the surface, but in searching for its inner meaning, don't let us miss the beauty that lies on the surface of it. The Lord will yet fill the universe with the glory of God, so great is He, but will He ever be greater than when girded with a towel He gave to His disciples an example that they should walk in His steps? No, it was when He stooped that the glory of His Person appeared transcendent over all, when He became the servant of all He was greatest of all. But what was it that brought Him into this place of service? It was His love. But what was its object? Why did He serve them thus? That they might have part with Him. He desired that they should be brought into and maintained in the most blessed intimacy with Himself. He loved His disciples so tenderly, so ardently, that He could not endure any distance or indifference. He must have us near to Himself, enjoying the holy intimacy that love affords. Have we considered that? One of those disciples realized this, the sort of love wherewith Jesus loved him dawned upon his soul, and realizing it, all reserve was cast out of his heart, and HE LEANED UPON JESUS' BOSOM. It was an immediate response to the love that had expressed itself so blessedly, and it must have given a great joy to the sorrowing and troubled heart of the Lord. Leaning upon His bosom, he could speak of himself as "the disciple whom Jesus loved." The love of Jesus became the dominating factor in his life, and all true discipleship begins, continues, and ends there; it finds its spring and its power in the love of Christ. Here, in John's attitude, we see the renunciation of all self-confidence. Peter was self-confident. It was as though he said, "Lord, you may trust me, I will not fail You; all others may, but not I; rest in my love, lean on my bosom." We know the end of that. John's conduct stands out in contrast to Peter's sincere but vain boasting. It was as though he said, "Lord, I cannot trust my love to You, but I can trust Your love to me; the place of my confidence and rest is Your love, Your bosom."

The next time we see "the disciple whom Jesus loved" he is "STANDING BY" (John 19: 26.) He was not hiding away in shame and fear as Peter was, nor setting himself to some busy service of his own devising, but "standing by." And note well where it was that he stood: it was BY THE CROSS. He stood there in the face of the world. Three women were there, for devotion and faithfulness to Christ regardless of what others thought and did, always did show itself in these women who loved the Lord; but John was there also — he stood by the cross. What mattered it to him what the world thought of him, a love stronger than death had bound him to his crucified Master, he was "the disciple whom Jesus loved," and what else could he do in that dark hour but stand by the cross? But he would not have been there at all if he had not leaned on his Lord's bosom, and if the Lord's love had not been to him the supreme thing in his life. But he was there, the pattern disciple, and being there he indicates our place in regard to the world and Christ. Paul stood by the cross when he cried, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (Gal. 6: 14). But what was it that put him there? He also knew that he was the disciple whom Jesus loved, for he said, "The Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me."

We must stand by the cross to-day; we are not true disciples unless we do. The cross is not popular in the religious world. Men want a Christ without the cross, and a gospel without blood. As of old they taunted the Lord and said, "Come down from the cross and we will believe," so now they clamour for a Jesus, who is a great and winsome personality, a fearless reformer, a teacher of ethics. There is no such Jesus except in their darkened imaginations. He came to be the Saviour of men, because men were lost sinners, and He could not be the Saviour apart from the cross. It is to the Greek foolishness and to the Jew a stumbling block, and the reproach of it has not ceased, for it still strikes at the foundation of all man's boasting and pride, but to us who are saved it is the power and wisdom of God. Hence we stand by the cross. It is to us the supreme manifestation of the love of Christ that passeth knowledge; it is the revelation of God's heart. It was there that our sins were atoned for, there the cup of our judgment was drained to its last drop by our suffering Saviour; there the hatred and sin of men were fully exposed, but there the love of God shone out above it all in all its splendour. We must stand by the cross and let its meaning move our souls; as we do so we shall be consciously the disciples whom Jesus loves, and we shall respond to His love in faithfulness and praise.

And now see what came of John's faithfulness. "Jesus, therefore saw His mother and the disciple standing by whom He loved." Who can tell the solace it must have been in that dark hour to Him to see John there! "He saith unto His mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith He to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home." The Lord was able to trust John now; He could commit to him a precious legacy. And John was faithful to the trust. And He desires to trust us, to have us as His friends upon whom He can rely. What privilege could be greater than that? To have the Lord say to you, "I want you to care for some who are precious to Me. I want you to look after My interests on earth during My absence." Nothing could be greater or more desirable than that; and that is within the reach of us all. We have but to lean on His bosom and stand by his cross and the Lord will commit some charge to keep for Him.

In chapter 21 of our Gospel the risen Lord stood on the seashore and addressed His disciples after their long night of fruitless toil in words of tender solicitude, and brought the hitherto reluctant fish to their empty nets. Who could speak with such tenderness and authority but He? John recognized Him, and henceforward he followed Him and he did it without being told. Peter had to be told to follow the Lord, but not John in this Gospel. He is introduced at the beginning of it, following the Lord without being told, and the last sight we have of him in it he is still following without being told. He followed because he could do no other; the treasure he had found in the Lord's love had made him a disciple. He was attracted and not commanded, and in that lies true discipleship.

Peter turned about and saw him following, and said, "Lord, what shall this man do?" But that was not Peter's business. It should have been enough for him that the Lord had given him a path in which to tread, and the Lord gently rebukes him, but at the same time declares what pleases Him. "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee, follow thou Me." Then went the saying abroad among the brethren that that disciple should not die. But the Lord did not say that he should not die, and His words are repeated as if to give them emphasis: "If I will that he tarry till I come." What did He mean? He surely meant that He would have that kind of disciple here when He comes again. What kind of disciple? The disciple who leans on His bosom, stands by His cross, AND FOLLOWS HIM WITHOUT BEING TOLD. Ah, that is the sort of disciple we should all like to be.

Discipleship is a very individual thing. John had to follow for himself, and Peter for himself, and each of us must follow each for himself; yet for our full development in the blessed traits of it we need each other. We must have a Master to follow, and brethren to follow with. "By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if you have love one for another," He has said. What He is to us we must be to one another, for He has left us an example that we should do to one another as He has done to us. In this true discipleship is secured, true, vital fellowship according to God. Neither rules nor regulations can secure this, and to make rules and restrictions is to go back to the age of law, and to be transgressors (Gal. 2). But to be dominated by the love of Christ and to be showing His love one to another, to be walking in love, is to be walking practically in the light and in the truth.

Now it is by the way of discipleship and fellowship that a full response to the revelation of the Father is given; for worship which the Father seeks is in its highest phase collective. "I will declare Thy Name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praises unto Thee." When fellowship does not exist there is not this character of responsive worship to the Father's Name, and love and fellowship of this sort can only be enjoyed and practised as we lean on the Lord's bosom, stand by His cross, and follow Him without being told, AND WAIT FOR HIS COMING AGAIN.

Chapter 12

Blinding, Beguiling, Buffeting: The Activities of the Devil

Our Epistle begins with "Blessed be God," and it closes with our greatly-loved benediction: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all, Amen. We are marching home to glory, and our great enemy the devil besets us, and ever hangs on our flanks, but God is round about us. Father, Son and Holy Ghost attend us, and grace, love and communion fill us with triumphant song. Blessed for ever be the Name of our God.

My subject is the devil. A strange subject! Yes, but a most important one. It would serve his purpose well if we ignored or forgot his existence, for he would then be able to carry on his activities against us and we would be entirely unaware of them. And it is a fact that nobody was ever of much use to God who did not believe in the existence and malignant activities of the devil.

In Revelation 20, we are told that he is to be bound with a great chain and cast into the bottomless pit. When that judgment is executed upon him his character and work will be fully exposed, but it is there already revealed for us who believe. He is "the dragon, that old serpent, the devil and Satan." As the dragon he is the destroyer; as the old serpent he is the deceiver; as the devil, he is the accuser; as Satan, he is the adversary — the adversary of God, and of all good, and of our souls. Here then is his four-fold character — destroyer, deceiver, accuser, adversary. Now I want you to see how our Lord Jesus Christ stands out in contrast to the devil. If the devil is the destroyer, our Lord is the DELIVERER; and if the devil is the deceiver, our Lord is the TRUTH — the Holy and the True; if the devil is the accuser — the accuser of the brethren (Rev. 12), our Lord is the  INTERCESSOR AND ADVOCATE; and if the devil is the adversary, our Lord is THE FRIEND. You must choose, Christians, under whose control you will come. If you go in for the world you will come under the devil's control, for he is the "god" and the "prince" of it; if you seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness you will come under the control of Jesus, the Saviour, for He is Lord in that realm.

BLINDING

From this second Epistle to the Corinthians we learn that the devil is active against us in four distinct ways The Epistle shows us Christian character — that is why the writer speaks in it of "the meekness and gentleness of Christ." There is in it also a remarkable autobiography of the Apostle Paul, in whom Christian character was so clearly displayed. Now the thing the devil hates above all else is that Christ should shine out through us in this world. He cannot shine out if He has not shone in, so the first great effort of the devil is to prevent Him from shining in. "If our gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." The first of his activities is to BLIND the minds of men against the light of the knowledge of God.

How exceedingly devilish is this work of the devil. He would keep men in ignorance of the God who loves them, therefore he blinds their minds against the light that shines in the face of Jesus, for it is from His face that the light of what God is is shining now from that face that smiled upon the children, that looked with compassion upon the leper, and was wet with tears at the grave of Lazarus, and was marred more than any man's when He gave Himself to suffer for sinners! The devil uses all his subtlety and power to blind men to the light of grace that shines in that most blessed face. This is confirmed by the Lord's own words, when He interpreted the parable of the Sower to His disciples. He said, "Those by the wayside are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved." There is no pity in the heart of the devil, he labours for the damnation of men's souls; he wrought on us with this end in view, and succeeded for a while, but, thank God, we have been delivered from his blinding influence.

"Jesus, the Lord, our night broke through

And gave us light divine."

And we know God now; we can say with rapture, "God is love," and in that we rest.

I speak to those who are specially interested in the going forth of the gospel, and that should be true of every Christian. In preaching the gospel we have not only to meet the increasing indifference to God in the hearts of men, but we have to contend with the blinding power of the devil. How are we to deal with that? That great opposition cannot be overcome by eloquent words, and clever arguments. Fine singing and bright services cannot deliver souls from that darkness. This is a spiritual conflict, and we shall have to remember that we possess a pair of knees and we must use them in the presence of our God. We must learn what that means. "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." With man it is impossible, but not with God, and if we preach the word in dependence upon God, and carry on our service through God, or if He carries on His service through us, we shall not be ineffective, but shall have the joy of seeing sinners turned from darkness to light, even as we were. Blessed be the Name of our God!

BEGUILING

Think again of the face of Jesus, and of the grace that has beamed upon you from it; think of the fact that He in that glory is your righteousness, that in Him you have a righteousness that is without a flaw, and that you know now that God is for you, revealed to you in His grace in your glorified Saviour. How attractive is your Saviour, and how glad you are that you have escaped from the blinding power of the devil and that you live now in this glorious light — the light of the grace of God that shines in His face. But now follows a marvellous thing; and I beseech you to consider it well; YOU ARE TO BE MARRIED TO THE MAN WHO HAS SAVED YOU! It is that that chapter 11 tells us. "I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." Let that statement arrest and rivet you. The Man in the glory whose love and beauty have won your heart, the Man to whom you owe your deliverance from Satan's darkness, and to whom you owe your eternal salvation, is the One to whom you are to be bound by a bond that can never be dissolved. Not only will you bow in everlasting worship before Him, exulting in the fact that He is your Lord, but you are to be brought into this most intimate relationship with Him. The marriage day is not yet; these are the days of the espousals, but they are blessed days, and have their own peculiar sweetness.

Now the devil takes a hand in this business, he has set himself to mar these days of the espousals. He has been beaten in his efforts to blind you, and he cannot prevent the marriage day, but if he can BEGUILE you from your whole-hearted devotion to Christ, to whom you are espoused, he will do it. "I fear," wrote the Apostle, "lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from your simplicity as to Christ." He will come to you with enticing words, and "a besugared mouth"; and shrewd old John Bunyan tells us that he is never so dangerous as when he comes like that. He will insinuate that you may have something else as well as Christ, and that your Christian life will be none the worse for it, indeed it will be all the better; he may even use doctrine, and make you into a theologian; or service, and make you into a preacher — proud of yourself, your knowledge and your work. Then it will be self and not Christ. He will get the world into your heart if he can; it is this he desires above all things, and here his subtlety has full play; it will not seem to be the world at first, it will be the thin edge of the wedge that he will insinuate, but having accomplished that he will handle the beetle with force, and drive home the wedge, and thus he will separate you in your affections from your great Lover. It was thus with the church at Ephesus, to whom the Lord said, "Thou hast left thy first love." Oh, what a fall was there, my brethren, and what a grief to the heart of Christ; and how did it come about? Satan who beguiled Eve had beguiled them from their devotion to Christ. Are you safer from his wiles than they were? Are you stronger than they? In no wise. If Christ is the absorbing Object of your love, the devil is watching for an opportunity to beguile you; if Christ is not your absorbing Object, he has found that opportunity and has succeeded in his effort, and you too have fallen.

I am not urging you to be diligent in service, nor am I asking you to be valiant in fight. What I am pressing is that you keep yourselves for Christ. That is the greatest thing you can do. Everything else will be right if you are right as to that. How can that be done? You will have to keep His company and listen often to the words of love that flow from His lips. Hear Him say to you, for instance: "As the lily among the thorns so is My love among the daughters." What words of love are these! and what do they mean? Dr. Thompson, in his well-known book, The Land and the Book, says of this lily, "Our flower delights most in the valleys; but it is also found on the mountains. It grows among the thorns, and I have sadly lacerated my hands in extricating it from them." Do you now see the meaning of the words? Ah, it cost your great Lover something to secure you for Himself. How sorely lacerated was He, when He set Himself to extricate you from the thorns in which you grew, that you might be His, His wholly, now and for ever. His flesh was lacerated, for He showed. to His disciples His wounded hands and side, and you will see those same wounds one day, but who shall tell what He suffered when His soul was wounded and bruised, when He was made an offering for your sin? Will you be indifferent in respect to Christ? Can you be fickle, or lukewarm towards Him who has suffered so much in His love for you? Resist the devil when he would beguile you from Christ; cleave close to the Lord, and then even if Satan comes as an angel of light, you will detect his wiles, and to detect him is to defeat him.

BUFFETING

There was one man whom he could not beguile from Christ, and that man was Paul. Then he would BUFFET him, "There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me." You must be prepared for like treatment; if the devil cannot beguile you he will buffet you. As we read in this Epistle what Paul suffered for Christ's sake, we wonder that mortal man could have survived it; yet we never hear of him praying for relief from those sufferings, or complaining of the hardness of his life; but when this messenger of Satan began to buffet him it was different. This was something so terrible that he began to pray for himself. Behold him bowing down on his knees and stretching imploring hands to his Lord and beseeching Him to deliver him from this thorn in the flesh and the buffeting of it. It is an affecting sight, what shall be the issue? Three times he urges his case and then there comes the answer. Oh, wonderful answer! "My grace is sufficient for thee." "My grace" and "thee." How those words throb with the tenderness of a perfect love. And consider them: The Lord at one end of the sentence and Paul at the other, and an all-sufficient grace between. The Ocean and the thimble, and the ocean enough for the thimble! And Paul cries, "I glory in my infirmities." He exults; he hugs his thorn as a great treasure, and the devil is beaten. "Buffet as you will, O Satan, you do but drive me nearer to my Lord," is the triumphant cry of this weak saint.

Are you being buffeted? Are you undergoing some peculiar trial, perhaps something that you had dreaded, some special form of suffering, it may be physical, or spiritual, or through your circumstances; are you being battered and buffeted? Satan hopes that you will compromise in your faithfulness to Christ, or seek desperately for relief from your trial and get it. He hopes to make you murmur, or be discouraged and give up. Consider buffeted Paul, and consider his Lord and yours, and let the words that stilled the storm in Paul's heart sing their peace-giving melody to you. "My grace is sufficient for thee, My strength is made perfect in weakness."

If the devil attacks the saints of God, he gets the worst of it. He is already a defeated foe; he knows that he has met his match and Master. The devil's Master, who is your Saviour and Lord, ever liveth for you. If the devil desires to have you that he may sift you, your Intercessor has prayed for you, and through Him you may be more than a conqueror. That is a great word. It belongs to the Divine Scriptures, and would have no meaning in mere human literature. There have been conquerors in the world's history; some of them have been great conquerors, such as Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, but they were not more than conquerors. What then is it to be more than a conqueror? To be buffeted and yet sing praises, to go through the storm and yet rejoice in the Lord; to have escaped the blinding, resisted the beguiling, and rejoiced in the buffeting of Satan: that is what it is to be more than a conqueror, and that you may be through Him that loves you.

BESMIRCHING

Now a brief reference to his fourth activity, which is not individual but aimed against the whole company of the saints. These Christians at Corinth were slow to forgive a repentant brother. Their zeal for righteousness, for discipline, for correctness had outstripped their grace and love, and the Apostle wrote FORGIVE, "lest Satan should get an advantage over us: for we are not ignorant of his devices" (2 Cor. 2: 11). God had forgiven them, they were an assembly of God, to show forth His character; Satan's purpose was to blur that image, to BESMIRCH the Name of the Lord. He wanted those saints to give a blemished representation of God and of Christ. He is just as busy at that to-day. "He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear."

Now see how this Epistle of the devil's defeat and of the saint's triumph closes. It begins with "Blessed be God," and it closes with our greatly-loved benediction, "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen." We are marching home to glory, and our great enemy besets us and ever hangs on our flanks, but God is round about us. Father, Son and Holy Ghost attend us, and grace, love, and communion fill us with triumphant song. "And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly." Blessed for ever be the Name of our God!

Tales of the Sea

Tales of the Sea

J. T. Mawson.

"There go the ships." From the noble liner with her freight of ten hundred souls down to the trim schooner. Taut and fair they look as they gallantly plough or gaily skim the sea, all having some port in view, we wish them a safe voyage. And yet some of them may never reach the port again. The tempest may seize them in its angry grip and leave them tangled and broken on some rock-bound shore.

"As the swift ships," so is your life. Old and young, rich and poor, are all sailing over the waters of Time. We put the trumpet to our lips and with earnest and friendly voice we cry, "Men and women, youths and maidens, Whither Bound?" Shall the voyage upon which you have started end in harbour and home, or in storm and wreck and ruin?

Ah! this is a question of stupendous importance. May it be faced and answered satisfactorily by every reader.

* * *

Our book shall tell of Jesus, the one and only Saviour, of His grace and power and love and free salvation. He alone can save your soul and guide you clear of rock and shoal, through foes and storms to the hoped-for port beyond the fog. And this He offers to do without money and without price.

* * *

Our book shall also warn of the dangers that lie ahead of those who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour. Time is short. The "now" of God's salvation day may soon be past and gone. The barometer is going down and the storm cone is going up. Oh! Wake up! Wake up! Hasten away to Jesus, and do it now. That those who read may be saved eternally is the prayer of the writer.

Contents

Boundless Wealth and Perpetual Youth; or, The Cruise of Juan Ponce de Leon

Sins Exposed; or, The Tale of the Nancy Brig

The Uncertainty of Life; or, The "Amazon," the "Drummond Castle," and the "Royal George"

Grace Darling's Story; or, Willing and Able to Save

Unable to Save; or, The Loss of the White Ship

Danger Despised; or, Bow the "Thetis" was Lost

"Ready, Aye, Ready": A Motto for Christians

A True Friend or, Nelson and Hardy

Misplaced Confidence; or, Winstanley's Lighthouse

"A Sail on the Lee Bow"; or, The Burning of the "Kent"

Saved by Blood: A Tale of Spanish Treachery

A Sea Captain's Folly; or, Salvation Rejected

The Christian's Character; or, Perrault's Generosity

A Despised Deliverer; or, How Venice was Saved

Enciso's Expedition Against the Dead

The Value of One Soul: A Deal Lifeboat Incident

Out of the Jaws of Death: A Shark Story

God's Way of Deliverance; or, How the Sea Saved Leyden

Salvation Neglected; or, The Wreck of the "Royal Charter"

All Saved! God be Praised

Boundless wealth and Perpetual Youth; or, the Cruise of Juan Ponce de Leon.

"Boundless wealth and perpetual youth." Well the very mention of such things, so greatly to be desired, almost takes away one's breath, and we cannot wonder that in days long ago, when people were less enlightened and more superstitious than they are to-day, expeditions were fitted out, and went forth to search beyond the seas for the land where such things were said to exist. But to-day we laugh at the folly of our forbears, for everybody knows that the wealthiest are often the least satisfied, and that every rolling year — nay, every swing of the pendulum, puts youth further behind, and brings old age, wrinkles, pain, and the grave nearer and nearer.

And yet what would not men endure even in this enlightened day to lay hold of these things, to never grow old, but to have the buoyancy of youth for ever, and to be possessed of limitless wealth — well, you exclaim, that would be "Paradise regained."

In olden days it was firmly believed that a land existed somewhere surrounded by blue and stormless waters, whose springs yielded the blessing of which they had dreamed; nor was it only the credulous-minded who believed these things.

Peter Martyr, a man of eminent learning, wrote to Pope Leo X. in the 15th century: "Among the islands on the north side of Hispaniola, there is one, as they say, who have searched the same, in the which is a continual spring of running water of such marvellous virtue, that the water thereof, being drunk, perhaps with some diet, maketh old men young again."*

{* Washington Irving's "Companions of Columbus."}

Small wonder, then, that Juan Ponce de Leon, a famous Spanish seaman, set sail with three ships from Porto Rico in search of this island, which was believed in, in Europe, and of which Indian tradition spoke.

He sailed towards the Bahamas, but failed to find the island there; nor had any of the natives heard of it, and though he himself drank of many springs in that group, he became not one whit more youthful in appearance or spirits.

Disappointed, but not discouraged, he refitted his ships, and taking a new course, arrived eventually off the coast of Florida.

The sea was very tempestuous, but at length he contrived to bring his ships to anchor. Everything was in the fresh bloom of spring; the trees were laden with blossom, and the fields covered with fragrant flowers when he landed. It was the beauty of the land which led him to name it Florida. Here he stayed three months, but found neither gold nor youth.

Returning to Porto Rico, he took a new route, and on the way sighted a new group of islands. Landing here, still bent upon his search, he discovered that the only inhabitant was a wrinkled old Indian woman. This fact, and probably the chagrin he felt at being again disappointed, led him to call the islands La Reja, or the Old Woman Group.

At last he gave up the search, and returned to Spain, poor in purse, a thoroughly disappointed and disillusioned old man.

Now Ponce de Leon failed to find what he sought, because he searched in the wrong place. In a world where sin is, death and pain and sorrow must be. And yet there are blessings for all who will have them — blessings brighter and fairer than ever poets dreamed or sung. Perennial youth and boundless wealth may be had for the asking, but these things are connected, not with earth, but with the heaven from which Jesus came.

By His coming and dying He opened that heaven for sinners, and all who believe in Him receive everlasting life, and are made the heirs of God. Here are perennial youth and boundless wealth for you; will you not go in for both?

You may have tried the springs of this world's pleasure in some measure, and discovered that they do not satisfy, and they never will.

This has been proved by thousands. Take the discoverers and explorers of the Western Hemisphere for example. Like Ponce de Leon, they all hoped to find that which should satisfy them; but of the greater part of them a historian writes: "They were cut off in the flower of their days, and few laid their bones in their father's grave." And if any of them became famous and lived to an old age, it was often to reap bitter disappointment — to be neglected, prosecuted, and even imprisoned.

True, indeed, are the words of the Son of God: "He that drinketh of this water (the springs of earthly pleasure) shall thirst again." And equally true are the words that followed the foregoing: "But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." (John 4: 13-14.) No wonder that the one to whom these words were uttered said: "Sir, give me this water."

Oh, does not your heart desire it? If so, you may have it, for if you ask of Him who has it to give, He will give you this living water.

But it is all connected with heaven; that is the land of eternal life and incorruptible wealth, a land brighter and fairer than all the imagination of man can conceive.

"Dreams cannot picture that world so fair;

Sorrow and death cannot enter there;

Time does not breathe on its fadeless bloom:

Beyond the cloud and beyond the tomb,

It is there."

But who can discover that world for us, and bring us there in safety? Thank God He has opened the Golden Gates of that land of glory. He sent His Beloved Son to die for our sins that we might be made fit to be there. His invitation comes ringing down to you to-day. God wants to have you in heaven forever, eternally happy and enriched with the choicest blessings that are there, and all may be secured through the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, blessed is the prospect of those who trust in Him.

Nor have they to wait until they reach heaven to be happy and satisfied here and now; the Holy Ghost, which those that believe receive, makes them joyful and bright in the knowledge of God's wonderful love. They sail the waters of time to the land of glory, knowing full well that they will reach the port in safety, and the sun shines upon them as they sail — even the Sun of Jesus and His love.

Once again, will you have the present blessing of the Christian, and will you reach the home of the Saviour at last? There is room for you there. The blessing is near to you now. Oh, see to it that you do not miss it.

Sins Exposed; or, The Tale of the "Nancy" Brig.

In the month of September, 1799, a most interesting trial was in progress in the old Court-house of Kingston, Jamaica.

A ship had been captured which was gravely suspected of piracy and other crimes calculated to harm the persons and property of the subjects of the King.

The trial had lasted some days, and the case seemed just about to fall through, as there was nothing at all amongst the ship's papers that could be used in evidence against her except that they were perfectly new, and had not been handled at all, while the ship was said to have been sailing from port to port for two years.

It seemed evident to all that the prosecution must lose the case, and the sharp grey eyes of the Yankee skipper shone with excitement and triumph as his lawyer wound up a good speech in his defence by demanding the dismissal of the ship and substantial damages for wrongful detention.

Then rose the attorney for the Government. He held in his hand a bundle of papers, crumpled and soiled, which had but a few moments before been handed to him. His words were few, but startling; for turning to the Judge, he said: "May it please your honour I am now in a position to prove to you on the most undeniable evidence, and by a most disinterested witness, that the vessel in court is none other than the pirate ship "Nancy," and thus save you any further trouble in this case."

The face of the skipper flushed crimson he was taken completely by surprise; and, turning fiercely upon his men, he demanded to know who had betrayed them. But none of them had. The witness which the Government proposed to bring forward to prove their guilt was not one of the crew, but the bundle of papers which the lawyer held in his hand.

A great hush of eagerness fell on all present as he went on to tell the story of the way in which they had been discovered.

It was as follows: His Majesty's ship-of-war "Abergavenny" was cruising near the coast of San Domingo, when the commander, Michael Fitton, noticed the carcase of a bullock floating on the water, surrounded by sharks. One of these sharks was caught, and in its maw was found the true papers of the brig Nancy, and these papers were the parcel that had just been produced in court.

When the ship was first pursued these had been thrown overboard, and the captain thought they — the evidences of his guilt — were buried in the depths of the sea for ever; but instead they had been swallowed by the shark, and now they had a resurrection — a resurrection which proved to be to the confusion and condemnation of the captain and his crew.

This tale of the sunny Caribbean seas shall teach us a lesson, and that lesson shall be that sins cannot be hidden away by the sinner.

In this matter it is necessary to be personal, even at the risk of offending the reader. You cannot hide your sins from the eye of God; the day is coming when your sins will all be uncovered and exposed. The Scripture says: "Be sure your sin will find you out." And if you miss God's forgiveness through the Name of Christ Jesus, what a terrible finding out it will be!

You remember the story of Sir Ralph the Rover (as told us by Mrs. Hemans), who in malice cut the warning bell from the Inchcape Rock. Little did he expect that his sin would find him out as it did. "He roamed the seas for many a day," and doubtless forgot all about his wicked exploit; but when his ship's keel went crash upon that dreaded reef, his sin had found him out; it met him when he least expected it, and hurled him to despair and destruction. So it must be; if you do not acknowledge to God that you are a sinner indeed, and seek forgiveness in this day of God's grace, your sin will find you out in Eternity. Your sins will meet you at the judgment throne of God, and utter despair and condemnation will be your portion then, as you find yourself for ever banished from God and heaven and Christ and joy. You may excuse and seek to justify yourself now; in that day you will be speechless, for then you will see plainly that hell could be the only possible end of thy road of sin which you had chosen.

But why should you excuse yourself now, and why try to appear better than you are? To do so is worse than useless, for God knows you through and through. His eye never slumbers, and all your sins are faithfully recorded in His book. Don't forget those four soul-searching words, "Thou God seest me."

The Master of the "Nancy" gained nothing by pretending to be an honest man, nor will you gain anything in seeking to hide your sins from God; better by far for you to make a clean breast of all your guilt, and cry like the conscience-stricken publican: "God be merciful to me a sinner." You will be safe in taking this ground; for it is here alone that you can find the Saviour. He did not come to call the righteous. It was for sinners He came to seek and save the lost. He died for the ungodly. If you trust in this Saviour, His blood will cleanse away your sins; then they will never come against you in judgment. Instead, God will bury them in the deep and fathomless sea of eternal forgetfulness, from which no hand can bring them. (1 John 1: 7; John 5: 24; Micah 7: 19.)

The Uncertainty of Life; or, The "Amazon," the "Drummond Castle," and the "Royal George."

I would urge even upon the most youthful of my readers the necessity of immediate decision for the Lord Jesus Christ, for, leaving aside for the moment the question of the present peace and joy of the Christian, there is the uncertainty of life.

This is a very serious matter. Death often snatches away first those who seem most likely to live and prosper. The voyage of life is short for some; they seem scarcely to have put out upon the sea of time before reaching eternity.

The Amazon was a gallant vessel, greatly praised by all who beheld her noble form as she sailed forth from the Southampton Docks upon her maiden voyage. She was the best and biggest of her kind — a perfect specimen of the art of shipbuilding as known at the time, for science and skill had combined to outstrip all former productions.

It was on Friday, the 2nd of January, 1852, that she sailed, the West Indies being her destination. At one o'clock on the following Sunday morning the awful cry of "Fire! Fire!" startled the sleepers from their beds, and the black night was made lurid by the forked flames from the doomed ship, and before morning's dawn only the wreckage of this fine vessel marked the spot where she had gone hissing down full fifteen hundred fathoms deep in the Bay of Biscay.

How like is this to many a young life cut off in an hour — gone from earth for ever! Oh, well it is for such if they have trusted Jesus as their Saviour, for in such a case to pass from earth means to be ushered into the presence of Christ, which is far better!

* * * * *

Others sail prosperously, for a while everything seems to go well, they are within speaking distance as it were, of the realisation of their hopes, when suddenly all is over with them, and the world sees them no more.

The wreck of the good ship Drummond Castle will not yet be forgotten. The 148 passengers and 105 of the crew were no doubt all excited with the thought of "home" the voyage was all but over, and a parting concert was held in the saloon. A vote of thanks was moved to the captain, and in reply, he spoke of the meeting of long-separated friends on the morrow. Then the National Anthem was sung, and most of the passengers retired for the night.

A fog had settled down upon the sea, and the current had carried the ship out of its course. Suddenly there was an awful shock — the engines stood still, and all was silent save for the horrible grinding of the ship's keel upon the cruel Pierres Vertes off Ushant on the coast of France. Seven minutes after this the Drummond Castle had gone down, carrying 250 souls to their death.

How awfully sudden! And yet not more sudden than the cutting off of some. We have known such cases — men who have been cut down in their prime, with heads full of schemes and hearts full of ambition; but they have gone apparently without warning; the waters of time roll on, and, as far as this world is concerned, they are seen no more.

You may be full of vigour to-day, anticipating great success in this world, and forgetting the next. Oh, beware! you too may be cut off in a moment. You have had many warnings from God — warnings of love which longs to bring you clear of destruction; this may be your last. To-morrow may find you in the grip of death — dark and hopeless death.

* * * * *

The Amazon went down at the start of her voyage. The Drummond Castle was wrecked almost in sight of the port. Swift and unexpected was the destruction of both, but who could have anticipated the sinking of the Royal George.

She was an old vessel it is true, and had seen long and honourable service, for she had been the flagship of such renowned Admirals as Anson, Hawke, Rodney, and Howe. But she neither met her destruction amid the whirlwind of war, nor the blast of the storm.

"It was not in the battle;

No tempest gave the shock;

She sprang no fatal leak;

She ran upon no rock."

Snugly anchored off Spithead, in perfect weather and broad daylight, she sank beneath the wave.

Twelve hundred souls at least were aboard at the time — mothers, sisters, wives, sweethearts, and friends. Laughter and merriment rang throughout the ship, when a sudden gust of wind struck her upon her broadside, which had been heeled up for repairs, and over she went, drowning by her terrible capsizing over 700 souls like rats in a trap.

Who could have foreseen this terrible tragedy? Every thing appeared so peaceful and secure, and none were prepared for such a calamity. But while we feel a pang for the brave —

"The brave that are no more,

All sunk beneath the wave,

Fast by their native shore,"

let not the lesson be lost upon us. We know not what a day may bring forth. Many hope to have the chance of turning to Christ on their deathbeds: you may never have one. The cold waters of death may gather round you and swallow you up speedily, and without warning.

O we warn you now do not refuse to listen, for he that being often reproved and refuses to regard the reproof, shall be suddenly cut off, and that without remedy. Christ is the Saviour. Decide for Him to-day. His blood can cleanse away your sins, and fit you for heaven then come life or death, all is well — peace and safety will be yours through Him.

Grace Darling's Story;  or, Willing and Able to Save.

Above the swirling waters of the North Sea, off the coast of Northumberland, rise the Farne Islands. Gaunt and desolate, and almost uninhabited, they are anything but inviting in themselves, and yet they possess a great interest, for it was from the lighthouse of one of them — the Longstone — that Grace Darling started forth on the morning of the 6th September, 1838, to save the shipwrecked crew and passengers of the steamship Forfarshire.

Few there are who have not heard of this heroic maiden and of the deed which has made her name so famous, yet I here re-tell the story in order to illustrate another of the greatest importance to you. Grace Darling had lived for years with her parents in the Long-stone Lighthouse, and had doubtless become used to the fierce storms which raged about her sea-girt home; but rarely had she seen one so terrible as that which she braved on that memorable morning.

All through the preceding night the inhabitants of the lighthouse had been unable to rest, for before the sun went down they had seen an ill-fated vessel battling with the gale, and they thought they heard above the noise of the sea some cries of distress. They were not mistaken, for at four o'clock in the morning the vessel had struck a rock about one mile away. At daybreak the lighthouse keeper descried the wreck, and could also see that the crew were still clinging to the mast, and in constant danger of being overwhelmed by the great waves that were beating about them.

One thing was certain, those poor sufferers were in great danger; they needed not to be told of this; they well knew that any moment might find them engulfed in the sea.

* * * * *

Has it ever struck you that your case illustrated in theirs? I know the application may not be very pleasant, but it is awfully true. If you are unconverted, whether young or old, you are in great danger — in danger of being engulfed for ever in the sea of righteous judgment.

Those perishing souls upon the Forfarshire needed a saviour, and so do you.

So madly ran the sea, as William Darling watched the struggles of those sailors, that he judged it impossible to save them, and so also thought the people on the mainland, for the boatmen of Bamborough refused to run the risk of an attempt. But Grace Darling had taken the glasses, and she watched with pitying eyes the perishing sailors. Her pity nerved her to urge her father to attempt a rescue, and to her joy he yielded to her entreaties. The father, mother, and daughter launched the boat, and father and daughter each taking an oar, began to row that tempest-tossed mile.

Ah, some had appeared who were willing to save them! None could doubt that, as Grace Darling and her father bravely stepped into the boat. Whether they were able was another question; but the fact of the attempt being made proved their willingness.

We have glad news to declare, though your danger is worse a thousandfold than that of those shipwrecked mariners. A Saviour has appeared who is willing to save you. He is none other than Jesus, the Son of God.

As the heart of Grace Darling was moved to pity as she looked out from her lighthouse home, so was the heart of the Son of God as He looked forth upon perishing men, and the love and pity of His heart prompted Him to come forth to save them.

It was the will of God that He should do so, and He said, "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God." (Hebrews 10: 9.)

But before sinners could be saved the Saviour had to go through a storm of judgment and death — a storm the fierceness of which no tongue can tell or mind conceive; and Jesus the Saviour knowing this, came forth; He stepped from heaven to earth, and onward to Calvary's tree.

Oh, there can be no doubt as to His willingness to save. This has been proved by his wondrous down-coming. He undertook to rescue sinners from sin and death and judgment; He loved them so much that He died for them.

You are a sinner. Jesus loves you, and has proved how willing He is to save you by dying for you.

* * * * *

But let us finish our story. The task that Darling and his daughter had undertaken was an almost impossible one. At every instant during that fearful journey they were in danger of being swamped by the sea, and yet they kept on until at length they reached the wreck.

There were only nine survivors, and they were so numbed by the cold, weak and exhausted, that it was with difficulty they were got into the boat; but God's mercy was over them, and at length they were all safely housed in the lighthouse. Grace Darling had accomplished her desire. She proved that she was not only willing to save them, but able also.

"Willing and able to save" — let these words fasten themselves on your memory, for they are so true of Jesus. If He had not been willing to save, He would never have come down from heaven to die. If he had not been able to save, He would never have arisen from the dead; but His resurrection proves that He has finished the work which He came to do. He has come out of the storm yea, He has quelled it for ever for those who trust in Him. He is now in heaven; yes, Jesus the Crucified is now enthroned at God's right hand, and He is there as a Saviour, willing and able to save even to the uttermost.

You are not too far away; you are not too great a sinner. He is greater than your sins, greater than the judgment your sins deserved; and this great Saviour is waiting to be your Saviour. Oh, will you not trust Him now?

"He is willing, He is able

Doubt no more."

On a tablet to Grace Darlings memory is inscribed: —

"Out of her silent grave

She bids us this lesson prove:

The greatest power for good below

Is the might of unselfish love."

An epitaph well fitting her self-forgetting act on that terrible September morning. But if you would see unselfish love in all its perfection, you must look to the Cross of Jesus. And how mighty is His unselfish love. It has subdued the hearts of millions; it has taken more hearts captive than tongue of men can count. Heaven will be filled to its utmost bounds with a multitude from earth, and every soul there will have been won and saved by the exceeding might of the Saviour's unselfish love. May you be amongst the number.

Unable to Save; or, The Loss of the "White Ship."

I have tried to show you in our last chapter that we need a Saviour who is able and willing to save, and this is of such special importance that I must lay stress upon it. Love and power must go together or there will be no salvation. A well-known sea incident from England's history will prove this.

Henry I. of England, with his son William, the heir to the throne, had been spending some time in France, receiving the homage of the barons of Normandy which was then a British possession. They were about to return to England when a celebrated sea-captain, Thomas Fitz-Stephen by name, came forward and begged the King to cross the channel in his vessel the "White Ship."

The King had already chosen his vessel, so could not accompany Fitz-Stephen, but he allowed Prince William and his company to sail with him.

The King set sail, leaving the White Ship to follow later. Fitz-Stephen boasted that his ship was the fastest afloat, and would overtake the King's barge even if they did not sail until midnight. In consequence cask after cask of wine was opened and freely drunk, and the Prince and his gay companions danced on the deck in the moonlight. When the vessel was ordered to start there was not one sober man amongst the fifty sailors who manned her.

And here I would remark that sinful indulgence often brings swift retribution. None can plunge into sin with impunity. All sin is terrible in the end, no matter how fascinating it may be at the start, and amongst the many sins of which we would warn the youthful reader is that of wine drinking; it may be pleasing at first, but in the end it bites and stings and destroys.

At midnight the sails were set and the oars rattled in the oar-locks, and the "White Ship" shot out of the harbour of Barfleur.

The sea was smooth, and everything seemed to go merrily for a tithe; when, suddenly the splash of the oars gave place to a terrible crash, and the stillness of the night was broken by an awful cry from three hundred lips. The "White Ship" had struck upon the Cutte-raze rocks, a great rent had been made in her side, the waters were rushing in, and she was going down.

Fitz-Stephen hastily lowered the boat, and forcing the Prince and a few nobles into it, he said: "Push off quickly, the land is not far off, the rest of us must die."

They plied the oars, and swiftly through the water they sped, leaving behind them the terror-stricken people on the sinking ship. They had not gone far, however, when the Prince heard the voice of his sister Marie calling bitterly for help. This was too much for him, for he loved his sister, and he cried: "Row back again at all costs we must save my sister."

They rowed back to the side of the wreck, and William held out his arms to catch the Princess, but at that moment so many jumped into the boat that it was overturned, and at the same moment the "White Ship" went down.

One man only escaped to tell the story, and when the sad news reached the King he fainted away, and was never seen to smile again.

Prince William would have saved his sister if he could, his love for her was great enough to induce him to try; but he was not able, and they perished together.

But what a different story we have to tell of our Saviour. He came into the world to save sinners, and there was no doubt at all as to the result of his coming from the very beginning. You will remember that the angels sang his praises with joyful tongues when he was born in Bethlehem. They sang because they knew He could not break down or fail. If there had been any doubt as to this in their minds, they would have kept their song until the work of salvation was finished. The Princess Marie cried out in her distress, and that cry touched the heart of her brother, and brought him back to attempt to rescue her; but Jesus' love led Him to come to save before ever we cried to Him; before we felt our need or saw our danger He braved the storm and suffered death. His love brought Him down, as we have already seen; His resurrection proves that He has finished the work, and that His power is sufficient to save. His love is as great as His power.

Oh! what a Saviour He is, just the Saviour you need, full of love and full of power; then see to it that He is your Saviour.

Danger Despised; or, How the "Thetis" was Lost.

H.M.S. Thetis was steaming up the Mediterranean, bound for Naples, with the British Ambassador and his suite on board. It was late in the evening, and dinner was just over. The captain of the vessel had been for some time eagerly scanning the charts; but now he stood before the company in the saloon rather more excited than usual, and with his watch in his hand, he addressed the company somewhat as follows: "Ladies and gentlemen, I have a story to tell you which will probably be of interest to you. About two years ago I was cruising with the Thetis in these waters, and had orders to search for a reef said to exist hereabouts, and report accordingly. I spent days in the search, but found nothing. Now, one of my officers did not agree with my conclusions, and he managed to come out here again and renew the search. He pretended to find the reef, and reported the same. He was believed at home and promoted, and now that reef is noted in the charts. I believe the whole thing to be a myth, and I vowed then if ever I sailed the Mediterranean again I would run my ship clean over the spot. We are exactly there now, and in five minutes time shall have passed the imaginary danger.

* * * * *

There was a great stillness in the saloon as the captain's eyes followed the minute hand of his watch. Presently, with a ring of triumph in his voice, he said: "We have passed the spot; I have proved my point — there is no reef."

* * * * *

He had scarcely uttered the words, when first a grating on the keel of the vessel, and then an awful crash awoke him to his folly, but it was too late then to undo the mischief. The vessel heeled over, and in a few seconds was in a sinking condition. By great efforts the whole of the ship's company was saved; but the captain refused to quit his ship, and as the Thetis made her last plunge he was seen with set face and clenched teeth holding hard on to the bridge of the vessel he had so madly thrown away.

There are thousands who treat eternal matters as the captain of the Thetis treated this reef. They laugh at the idea that danger threatens them, because they themselves have not seen it. But God's Word plainly testifies as to this matter. Sin and its consequences, death, judgment, and hell-fire are realities, and God warns men of them that they might take the way of escape which He has provided.

But many refuse to believe the Bible; they think they know better than God, and despise the danger of which He warns.

This is a great snare of the devil. You see, if he can persuade a man that he may live as he likes and be all right at last, that man will go on in his self-willed and sinful course, despising and rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ.

I tell the story of the Thetis by way of warning. Oh! be not guilty of the captain's folly. Thank God for His warnings of mercy, and take His way of salvation.

It is not wise to close the eyes to danger but this is what the devil would have you do in order to destroy you. Do not play into his hands and be lost for ever, but believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and through Him find perfect safety from every danger that threatens you.

"Ready, Aye, Ready." A Motto for Young Christians.

If ever you happen to he in Landport, in the south of England, search out the monument to Sir Charles Napier there, you will find inscribed upon it these three forceful words, "Ready, Aye, Ready." Nothing else is said about him, but it is quite sufficient. It was his motto throughout his service in the British Navy, and as a sailor he lived up to it.

He would be a poor sailor indeed who was not ready for every emergency, and would be constantly in trouble. But if the sailor needs to be ever on the lookout for hidden rocks and shoals and ready for sudden squalls, how much more the Christian, for if your Christian life is to be one of joy to yourself and glory to the Lord, you must be "ready, aye, ready."

The first thing that the Christian is ready for is the coming of the Lord. He is coming as the Bridegroom, and those who are ready will go in with Him to the marriage supper. There is death also, and those who are not ready to leave this world are not Christians at all.

None are made ready however, by their own work, but by the work of Jesus. His blood has washed away their sins and made them fit for heaven above.

On the burning "Birkenhead."

Amongst those British soldiers, who stood with set faces shoulder to shoulder as the ship went down, was a Christian. As the last boat left the ship he handed his Bible to a comrade whose lot it was to go, and said to him, "Find out my mother if ever you reach England, she gave me that Bible when I left home, and tell her that I know how a fellow feels when the angels in heaven rejoice over his repentance." Ah! he was ready. When the Birkenhead went down he went up to be with Jesus, who had saved his soul.

It is well to be ready for the future, to meet the Lord when the call comes, and thank God every Christian has been made ready for this great event. Ready to go when the Lord calls. Ah! that is well, and happy indeed is the soul that can say with confidence, "I am ready."

Now the next thing to see to is that we are ready to serve the One who has saved us, while we wait for His coming again. You will remember that the Word of God says, "The love of Christ constrains us. . . . He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again." (2 Corinthians 5: 14, 15.) Are we ready for this?

To say "No" to self and "Yes" to Christ, to refuse our own way and will and live unto Him. Well, this can only be as His love constrains us; but if we taste the sweetness of that love and see its greatness, we shall say, "Ready, aye, ready," to be wholly surrendered to and altogether for Him who loved me and gave Himself for me.

Then we need to be ready every day to meet the wiles and snares of Satan, his gins and snares and pitfalls are laid with great subtlety, and he is ever ready to trip us up and make us fall. We must keep our weather eye open. "Be sober, Be vigilant." (1 Peter 5: 8.) "Watch and pray." (Matt. 26: 41) are words of exhortation to which we need to take heed. But it is great encouragement for us to bear in mind that our great High Priest lives on high to make intercession for us, and that the Holy Spirit dwells within our hearts to keep us in the right way. May we be ever "ready, aye, ready" to be led and guided by Him so that our lives shall glorify our Lord Jesus Christ.

A True Friend; or, Nelson and Hardy.

Everyone will agree that it is a downright good thing to have a real and true friend — one in whom you may always trust, who will stand by you at all times, and never play you false. Such a friend is well worth having.

Now I can introduce you to a Friend of this kind. He will never deceive you, and upon Him you may always safely depend. The Book which never lies says "He sticketh closer than a brother" and "loveth at all times," and those who know Him best are the readiest to bear witness to the fact that all the Bible says of Him is true. His name is Jesus. This is the Friend in whom I glory, and it would be well if He were the boast of every one who reads this page.

Yes, Jesus is the Friend of whom I write and the Friend whom you need; in every walk of life you need Him, whether, so to speak, you ship behind the mast or walk the quarter-deck, whether your responsibilities are great or small, your trials heavy or light, you cannot get on aright without Him.

The most successful life is a stupendous failure, when judged in the light of Eternity if it is lived without the Lord Jesus Christ.

But He is not only indispensable to you, He is all sufficient — fully equal to every emergency in which you may find yourself.

Now do not turn away as though He were not worthy of your notice, or the time will come when you will heartily wish you knew Him. When will that be? When the hollow shams that please you now have ceased to be, and you are confronted with the tremendous realities of the vast Forever, and the reason why it would be well for you to know Him at that supreme moment is because He is greater than all that could make you afraid then.

He is greater than your sins, greater than the judgment they deserve, greater than the power of death, the grave, and Satan; in short, we who know Him proclaim Him to be the greatest and most blessed Person in God's universe.

Well, if He is greater than all these terrible things, He is surely greater than this world, more glorious than its greatest glory, more powerful than its utmost might; He is greater and better than the things that please you; He is greater than your foes and trials; and being so is the very Saviour and Friend you need.

How happy is the portion of those who belong to the Lord Jesus! He is sufficient in every time of need. His power and grace are ever put forth on their behalf, for He is at all times true to them.

An incident from the life of Lord Nelson, may in some sort of a way illustrate for us the unfailing love and Friendship of the Saviour. It is well known that Nelson had a strong and life-long affection for his lieutenant Hardy. On one occasion this affection was put severely to the test. Nelson was then Commodore, and his flag flew from the mast of the frigate Minerve. On the 11th February, 1797, he sailed from Gibraltar to join the fleet under the command of Sir John Jervis.

Nelson had no sooner weighed anchor than he perceived two Spanish battleships moving in pursuit of him, the foremost of which was gaining upon him. As the Minerve was inferior in size and equipment to the Spanish vessels all sails were set to get out of their reach.

At this moment a sailor fell overboard, and Hardy, who had just been released from Spanish captivity, leaped into a boat with a party of men to attempt a rescue; their efforts proved useless, and they sought to regain their ship; but the current was against them, and then to their consternation they found that the foremost Spanish ship was now within gun shot.

It was also evident that if Nelson waited to pick them up, his ship would be overtaken, and run the risk of being destroyed or captured.

He took in the situation at a glance, and at once decided to take the risk of saving his friend. "I will not lose Hardy," he exclaimed; back the mizzen top-sail." At once the Minerve's course was changed, and she began to drift towards Hardy and in the direction of the Spanish ship Terrible. Now was the Spaniard's opportunity to avenge themselves upon Nelson, and he fully expected an engagement and prepared his ship for action.

But the Dons feared his prowess, and were utterly taken by surprise at this daring manoeuvre, so much so that the Terrible shortened sail in order to allow her companion to come up before commencing an attack. This gave Nelson the time he desired; he was able to save Hardy from falling into the hands of the Spaniards again, and setting his studding sails, he got clear away from the foe. It was a daring thing to do, but it proved the reality of his friendship; he risked his ship, his reputation, his liberty, and his life in order to stand by his friend and save him from his perilous surroundings, and I am sure that Hardy would never doubt the sincerity of Nelson's love to him after such an exhibition of it.

But let us think for a moment of the constancy and love of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was said of Him when here on earth, He is the friend of publicans and sinners, and verily, though this was said in bitter derision, He has gained for Himself this title, gained it by proving the reality of His love. It was written in olden days — "If a man would have friends, he must show himself friendly"; and truly the Son of God has shown Himself to be friendly in order that He might gain friends. He could say, "greater love hath no man than this — that a man lay down His life for His friends." This is what He did, and having done it He offers Himself to all. You, yes, even you, may accept Him, you may trust in Him as your Saviour; then you will prove how great a Friend He is. You will be able to sing: —

"I have found a Friend in Jesus,

O, how He loves!"

And His love will never change.

Having saved you He will care for you all the way home. It is true that Christians have many foes in this world. Satan desires to harm them and hates them bitterly because they belong to Christ; but he cannot destroy them, for Jesus has said of them "they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand."

Nor need we fear the foe, for our Lord Jesus Christ has also said "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." And he is greater than all our foes. He proved His greatness by overcoming them all upon the cross.

He did not merely risk the conflict with the foes in order to save sinners, He met them in stern battle, and, by dying Himself, has gained the victory, and He has now risen triumphantly from the grave. He is the conqueror, His right hand has gotten Him the victory, and the Christian can say, "I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me."

When in the midst of the raging tempest of Galilee's lake the disciples were just as safe as they were when Jesus in His majesty rose and quelled the storm; they were as safe in the storm because He was with them, and you are safe if a believer in Jesus, safe for ever. His name and glory and word are all pledged to bring you to the harbour of heaven in perfect safety. The foe shall not again enslave you because you belong to Him. But if you are not His, if you cannot say, "I am His and He is mine for ever and for ever," your danger is most terrible. Oh, that your eyes may be opened to see it; that you may discover your sinfulness and the need of this Saviour, then you will turn to Him and turning to Him you will prove Him to be a present and eternal Saviour, "a Friend that loveth at all times, a Brother born for adversity."

Misplaced Confidence; or, Winstanley's Lighthouse.

There are many ways in which Satan seeks to destroy souls, one of which is to induce people to put their confidence in an unworthy object. Disappointment and disaster must always follow upon this, no matter howsoever sincere the misplaced trust.

The mariner sees the light of the wreckers' fire gleaming across the dark wave, and firmly believes it to be the harbour light, and for his misplaced trust he loses his ship and is robbed of his possessions. The captain follows the guidance of a deceptive chart, and his ship smashes upon the rocks. In like manner the sinner, who turns to any hope or trusts in any saviour but the God-provided One must eventually lose his soul.

It is my desire to press home upon you this solemn fact; and, in order to do this, I will recall the story of "Winstanley's Lighthouse," which will serve my purpose well.

Winstanley was, without doubt, a well-meaning man, and his desire to build a lighthouse on the Eddystone Rocks was most commendable, but his work was not trustworthy.

Such a lighthouse was certainly needed, for many a homeward-bound craft, with its gallant crew, had met destruction just in sight of home upon that terrible reef.

Now Winstanley firmly believed that he was able to build the desired lighthouse, and he set about the great work; but when he exhibited his model, those who understood the aggressive power of the sea warned him that his proposed wooden structure would never survive a storm. But he persisted in his designs, and at length accomplished his task, and declared, when it was finished, that he only desired to be in it in the fiercest storm that ever blew. He had it painted and decorated with various mottoes, one of which was "Pax in Bello," meaning, I suppose, that it would be secure and peaceful in the midst of warring elements.

It was completed in the year 1696, and certainly stood the test for a time, but at length Winstanley's desire for a great storm was gratified. He had gone out to the lighthouse towards the end of November, 1703, to superintend some repairs, when "The Great Storm" commenced, which lasted for days. When that storm had exhausted itself the people looked out across the water from the Plymouth Harbour, but no trace of Winstanley's lighthouse could be seen. He and it together had been swept into the sea. His confidence was misplaced, and destruction was the result.

* * * * *

Now there is a storm of judgment coming which will test every man, woman, and child; your works will be put to the test, and your safety will altogether depend upon where your faith rests. If you are hoping for salvation because of anything that you have done or been, you will find that you have trusted an unworthy object—a house built upon the sand which cannot withstand the storm. You may be sincere in your belief in yourself; in spite of that you will be lost for ever. Winstanley had strong faith in his lighthouse, but that did not save his life in the storm. You may believe in your good works, that will not save you from hell. The fact is, you are a sinner, and you need a Saviour — One Who can be safely trusted. This saviour must not be one of your own devising, for however right your intentions may be, you would surely make mistakes in this matter.

Your Saviour must be the One Whom God has sent into the world, even the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the worthy object for your faith. You may safely trust in Him. He has weathered the fiercest of storms. When upon the Cross he passed through the storm of God's righteous judgment against sin: He was there as the sinner's Substitute.

"The tempest's awful voice was heard;

O Christ, it broke on Thee;

Thy open bosom was my ward;

It bore the storm for me.

Thy form was scarred; Thy visage marred.

Now cloudless peace for me."

Can you truthfully sing these words? Thank God, no storm can ever reach the one who has trusted in Jesus. They are sheltered for ever, for He is the one true and only Covert from the tempest. All refuges and foundations will be swept away when the fierce hurricane of righteous judgment blows, and the poor dupe who has trusted to these unworthy objects will be shelterless and truly undone in the midst of the pitiless blast.

Take warning, dear reader. Fly to Jesus. Put your trust in the One in whom millions have already trusted, and you shall be for ever safe.

* * * * *

But there is another solemn consideration in connection with this matter. It is this:— you are deceiving yourself, you are probably deceiving others, too.

I can well understand some ship bearing up the channel during the fierce storm which destroyed Winstanley's lighthouse, looking out anxiously for the warning light, and believing that they were far from the dangerous rocks because they could not see it, until to their dismay they found themselves wrecked upon them. And what would be to blame for this? Why, Winstanley's unworthy lighthouse. And what if, because you are trusting a false saviour, others, hoping that you are right, follow your guidance and share your destruction? Are you not blameworthy? Then, for your own sake, and the sake of others, fly to Jesus, and do it now. Then, for ever safe yourself, your light will shine brightly for the guidance of others.

"A Sail on the Lee Bow"; or, The Burning of the "Kent."

"Sail on the lee bow!" rang out the sailor who had mounted the foretop; "A sail on the lee bow!" How that cry thrilled every soul upon the burning Kent, and raised them in a moment from the depths of despair to the height of ecstatic hope.

The Kent was a new ship bound for Bengal, with a troop of soldiers and other passengers, making in all 641 souls. On her fifth day from England she got into a violent gale, and from that time until her doom she had evil weather.

The storm was bad enough, but when in the midst of it a pale-faced man rushed on deck, shouting "Fire! fire!" the consternation and terror can be well imagined.

"Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell;

Then shrieked the timid, and stood still the brave,

Then some leaped overboard with frantic yell,

As eager to anticipate their grave."

Presently through the hatchways thick volumes of smoke rushed, and with a cargo of five hundred barrels of gunpowder aboard, there seemed little chance of saving the ship.

In the desperate hope of overcoming the fire the captain ordered the lower decks to be scuttled, and the lower ports to be opened.

The sea rushed in with great force, and for the time checked the fury of the flames, but the ship became waterlogged, and began to go down.

The ports were closed again, but every effort made to put out the fire and keep the Kent afloat seemed but deferring the terrible end that awaited those six hundred and forty souls.

Everyone by this time had given up hope, and many had crowded directly over the powder magazine, hoping that the explosion would put a speedy end to their suffering. Then it was that the cry, "Sail on the lee bow!" rang through the ship like an electric shock.

With great eagerness every eye scanned the horizon in the direction indicated, and there, sure enough, they saw at length a vessel plunging into sight out of the grey gloom.

Distress signals were instantly hoisted and minute guns fired. In reply the Cambria, as the vessel proved to be, hoisted the British colours and crowded all sail.

She was but a small brig of two hundred tons, and the seas were making a clean break over her; often she seemed half buried by some of them, but on she came, head to the gale, and presently lay as near by the Kent as the explosive character of her cargo would permit with safety.

Again keen distress wrung every heart, for it seemed very evident that owing to the smallness of the would-be rescuer all on board the burning ship could not be saved.

"The women and children first, and see that any man who presumes to get into a boat until they are safe is instantly cut down," cried the colonel of the regiment; "then let the juniors amongst the men follow."

Far into the night, across mountains of waves, backwards and forwards, from one ship to the other, the frail boats plied, until at length the fire became so fierce that further endeavour was impossible.

At about one hour past midnight the fire reached the gunpowder, and with a roar that seemed to hush the storm into silence, the Kent blew up, then the darkness of the night settled down on the sea, closing up the awful tragedy of a ship on fire.

The Cambria and her crew did well, as any other British ship would have done under like circumstances, for out of those 641 souls 520 were crowded into her narrow space, and three days afterwards she was moored in Falmouth Harbour.

"A sail on the lee bow!" Never would that one cry, so laden with hope, be forgotten by those rescued souls, and it shall be our text to-day. It meant hope and salvation for those who needed it most desperately.

There are the same blessings, certain hope and perfect salvation, for others who need them equally. But from whence can these come? From Jesus the Son of God, and we cry, "There is a Saviour at hand."

To Joseph the Angel Gabriel announced: "Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins." (Matthew 1: 21.)

To the shepherds of Bethlehem the angels sang: "Behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." (Luke 2: 10-11.)

Old Simeon, taking that Blessed and Holy Babe in his arms, could say: "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation." (Luke 2: 29-30.)

Jesus Himself said "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost." (Luke 19: 10.)

The Apostle Paul, by the Holy Ghost, proclaims: "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief." (1 Tim. 1: 15.)

Yes, there is a Saviour, and He is close at hand. You have no need to fear, my reader; if you desire to be saved, He can and will save you.

The Cambria could not offer to save all upon the doomed Kent. But Jesus offers to save all sinners, and only those who neglect or reject His salvation will be lost.

The officers, soldiers, sailors, and passengers of the Kent attended a solemn thanksgiving to God for His providence to them ere they left Falmouth, while Captain Cook of the Cambria and his gallant crew were richly rewarded by the Government.

Aye, and those who trust in Jesus are filled with thanksgiving, and will never let Him hear the end of it. In heaven above they'll sing: "Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen." (Revelation 1: 5-6.) And the prayer of the writer is that you may be amongst that happy and blood-washed company.

Saved by Blood: A Tale of Spanish Treachery.

During the sixteenth century the Spaniards were a great power in Europe, for their fleets dominated the seas and their armies were mighty upon the land. More often than not they were fighting the battles of the Pope of Rome and endeavouring to subdue Protestant countries to his hateful yoke.

At the time of which I write Holland was under Spanish dominion, and in order to arrest the march of Protestantism in that country Charles V. and his son Philip, kings of Spain had introduced the relentless Inquisition.

Sad indeed was the lot of the Hollanders then; they were greatly oppressed, robbed of their possessions, cast into prison, tortured and put to death on the merest suspicion of favouring Luther and his doctrines.

The Duke of Alva, an inhuman tyrant, was governor of the country, and he used to boast that he had himself ordered the execution of nearly nineteen thousand people.

* * * * *

This went on until it could be endured no longer, and the country rose in rebellion, under the leadership of William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, against the might of Spain. At this rising the rapacious cruelty of the popish soldiers found full play; whole towns were put to the sword, and blood flowed everywhere.

Meanwhile the city of Rotterdam had seemed to escape the worst of these horrors, but early one autumn morning the inhabitants were startled from their slumber by the news that the Spanish fleet had entered the river Maas and was riding at anchor before the town.

Great was their dismay, for they knew that the Spaniard's thirst for blood was almost insatiable; but they determined to resist the invader, and sell their lives and homes dearly. In the midst of this storm of grief and consternation the burgomaster received a letter from the Spanish admiral, Count de Bossu, stating that he had no wish to harm them, and desiring to be merely permitted to march his men through their town, so as to join the main body of the army.

With the guns of the Spanish ships frowning upon them, they judged it better to submit to his proposals, and went to their homes calmed and satisfied. Alas for them, they little realised how treacherous was their foe!

There was, however, in the city a wealthy burgher who had absolutely no faith in the promises of the Spanish admiral, and as he thought of the terrible slaughter that would probably follow the admittance of the Spaniards, he determined if possible to save some of the people.

His home was a large mansion at the corner of the public square; this he determined to turn into a house of refuge. His wife entered into his project, and the furniture was all taken out and thrown into a back yard, then the windows were smashed and the shutters closed, so as to give the house a wrecked and deserted appearance.

Meanwhile the Spaniards had entered the city, the admiral gave the signal for a general slaughter by cutting down the gateman with his own sword; thousands were massacred, and an agonising cry of despair rang forth from the blood-stained streets.

By this time the house of the wealthy burgher was filled from attic to cellar. Fully a thousand people, it is said, were crowded within its walls. Then the master of the house took a kid which had been kept in readiness, and, killing it just inside the door, allowed the blood to stream across the threshold and into the streets beyond.

* * * * *

Just then the clash of steel, and shrieks of the stricken people, told that the Spaniards had reached the square. They looked upon the house, and seeing the blood upon the steps leading to it, they passed it by. That blood seemed to say, "The sword has already fallen here; there has been slaughter enough pass elsewhere."

Thus were the refugees in the house with the blood-stained threshold saved from the carnage which was everywhere rampant in the city.

* * * * *

We do not liken the judgment of God to the treachery and rapacity of the Spaniards. Judgment is His strange work, and if He unsheathes His sword it is in perfect righteousness; but men had sinned, and in so doing had put God in the place of the Judge, and though his heart is full of tender pity, His wrath must fall upon sin. Yet God has found a way of escape for guilty sinners, He has provided a place of shelter; and the house of the wealthy citizen of Rotterdam shall stand as an illustration of this. It was the fact of blood having been shed that protected those terror-filled people; apart from that, they would have shared the fate of their fellow-citizens. And the only way to escape the righteous judgment of God is to be sheltered by the blood that has been shed — even the precious blood of Jesus. His death has satisfied the claims of justice, and if you make His blood your plea, you are safe for evermore.

* * * * *

You will remember that when the avenging angel passed through the land of Egypt, this was the God-ordained way of safety.

Not the good deeds of the people of Israel, not the fact that their fathers knew God and had taught them of Him; no, they had to abide within the blood-sprinkled houses until the judgment had passed by.

My reader, the judgment is assuredly coming. Oh, fly to the shelter of the precious blood of Christ, shed for sinners like you and me.

That corner house still stands in Rotterdam; over its portal is inscribed, "The house of a thousand terrors." If I had the power to give it another title it should be named "The house of the blood-stained threshold," and it should be a monument to the fact that the way of safety from judgment is through blood-shedding, and that God has said "When I see the blood, I will pass over you." (Exodus 12: 13.)

"Without shedding of blood is no remission." (Hebrews 9: 22.)

"The blood of Jesus Christ . . . cleanseth from all sin." (1 John 1: 7.)

A Sea Captain's Folly; or Salvation Rejected.

How sad must have been the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ when He had to say to the Jews of old: "Ye will not come unto Me that ye might have life." And again, when He stood outside Jerusalem and wept over the sinners therein, because they had rejected Him, and refused the salvation He would have brought to them. And how strangely sad it is to-day to see men and women and youths and maidens still rejecting this Saviour choosing the way of destruction rather than safety and blessing. I greatly doubted whether any tale of the sea could illustrate such folly as this, but I have a letter open before me now which records a case which, I think may do so.

The facts in this letter are as follows: A ship was stranded during a gale on the rocks near Boulmer, a small fishing village on the coast of Northumberland. The brave and kind-hearted fishermen at once manned their little lifeboat, and after much tossing and a weary struggle, they succeeded in reaching the wreck. But their disappointment can well be imagined, when, after risking their lives in their gallant attempt to rescue the shipwrecked crew, the captain absolutely refused to get into their boat, nor would he allow any man of his crew to do so.

The fishermen besought him to allow them to save them; but the captain refused to believe that this was their object, and cried out that they had come to plunder the ship and rob him of all he possessed. The fishermen replied: "Man, we have come to save you! — we have come to save you!"

At length the captain allowed his men to get into the lifeboat, but he himself refused to quit his ship. Sadly, they had to turn from him, leaving him to his fate, while they reached the shore in safety.

The ship went to pieces, and a few days after the captain's body was picked up at Newton-by-the-Sea, about six miles from the scene of the wreck.

We can have very little patience with the madness of this captain, and I expect will say he deserved his fate, and yet we could find an excuse for him, for there have been men hardhearted enough to pretend to save, when they only intended to destroy. But there can be no excuse for the rejector of Christ. Who ever heard of Him deceiving and robbing a sinner? Nay! On the other hand, He Himself said: "It is more blessed to give than to receive"; and He delights to take this more blessed place. He came from heaven to earth to proclaim God as the "Giving God." He went even unto death that He might save men, and that they might become the recipients of God's blessing.

Still, there is the notion that to become a Christian means to be robbed of mirth and pleasure, and the world with its attractions. But these things are but the glitter that dazzles the eye in order to obscure the bitterness and the misery at the end. You may depend upon it that the best things the world can possibly offer can only bring disappointment. And if the world and its prizes are sought after to the exclusion of Christ; sorrow, death, and hell will follow in their train. The Word of God tells us that Satan is the god of this world, and he is a deceiver and a thief. He robs men of their souls, of happiness and heaven, and he accomplishes this very often by giving them some fancied advantage in this world, which they fear they would lose if they were to become Christians.

But let us face this question: What is the best that this world has to offer? Can fame, honour or wealth really fill the heart? We will take the testimony of England's greatest seaman, Lord Nelson.

As a young naval captain he had said to a friend: "I shall live to be envied." And truly he did; his highest ambition must have been overtopped by the pinnacle of honour which he reached.

His great victory over the French in the Battle of the Nile filled Europe with his fame. He himself said of that fight: "Victory is not a name strong enough for such a scene — it is a conquest."

In the House of Commons Mr. Pitt, in announcing the fact that Nelson was to be raised to the peerage, said: "Admiral Nelson's fame will be co-equal with the British name. No title can express what we think, or add anything to him." Thus he was honoured and enriched by his country; but, in a letter to a friend at this time, he wrote: "The only people who I envy are those whose estate measures six feet by two." On another occasion he wrote to the Earl St. Vincent: "There is no real happiness in this world."

This is the experience of landsmen and seamen alike. Then why lose your soul for those things which do not satisfy now, and which you must eventually lose for ever. Oh! be not deceived; look ahead into Eternity. Put the things which are of the greatest importance first. Take salvation now from the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then you will be able to say with the writer: —

"Better than grandeur,

Better than gold,

Better than fame ten thousand-fold,

Is the love of Christ, who died for me,

Who shed His blood to set me free."

The Christian's Character; or, Perrault's Generosity.

Our "Tales of the Sea" are written more especially for those who are unconverted, that they might be led to see their danger and turn to Jesus the Saviour, for all that they need. But we must have a few pages also for those who have believed in the precious Name of the Lord. It may be that some who were unconverted when they commenced to read these tales have ere this turned their hearts to Heaven, and said, "Christ for me." How happy if this is so! One thing is certain — if this is your case you will never regret having made such a decision.

Now it is the privilege of every Christian, whether young or old, to show forth in this world the character of their Lord and Saviour. In fact if we are not doing this, we are certainly coming short of God's design in leaving us here. But if we are to be like Christ, and thus be true and practical Christians, we must understand first what He was and what He has done. Before we turn to the story of Perrault's noble generosity, I will give you an incident which happened at the burning of the troopship "Birkenhead" in 1852, which shall feebly illustrate what the Lord has done and given for us.

Upon the ship there was a young officer — a mere youth, fresh from school. He helped to row one of the boats between the doomed ship and the shore with boatload after boatload of women and children. As the boat was making its last trip to the shore, the big ship made its last plunge, carrying 438 souls into the blue depths of the sea. Two men, who managed to escape the wreckage, reached the boat, and were taken in, in consequence of which it was laden to the water's edge. A third swam up, and catching the side of the boat, begged to be taken out of the shark-infested waters; but it would have meant the sinking of the boat if his pleadings had been listened to, and he was refused. His agony and dread moved the heart of the young officer. He rose deliberately from his place in the stern of the boat and plunged into the sea, giving up his place to the drowning sailor. He struck out for the shore, but was never seen again.

It was a brave deed, the sacrifice of a noble heart; but our thoughts turn from it to the sacrifice of Christ. He took our place in the waters of judgment; He gave Himself for us. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." He died that we might live, and that He might reveal to us the true character of God; and we understand now, as we look at the Cross of Christ, that God is love, He is the giving God — the God of matchless grace.

Now we who belong to Jesus are born of God, and we have received His Spirit that we might not live after the flesh, which is always selfish, but that we might be like Christ — always ready to serve others, not thinking of our likes and dislikes, but seeking the blessing and good of those around us.

Perrault was a Canadian, one of the party which the famous Sir John Franklin led on an expedition to the Polar Seas in the year 1819. Their sufferings during the whole of the expedition were very great; but in the early winter of 1820 they found themselves ice-bound in those cheerless regions with but a very small supply of food. This was carefully distributed day by day, but at length it was exhausted.

They were a band of brave and heroic men, but when they saw the last of the food handed out a great despondency settled upon them.

At this very distressing time, when they were all feeling keenly the fierce pangs of hunger, their hearts were greatly touched by a wonderfully act of unselfishness on the part of Perrault.

Day by day, as he had received his allowance of meat, he had put a portion by, of which none but himself knew, and now, when his companions had nothing, and starvation stared them in the face, he brought out the whole of his supply and divided it amongst them.

Standing round the fire, their feelings were too deep for words. They wept their thanks as they silently partook of that which his unselfish generosity had supplied them.

A lump came into my throat when I first read that story, and I have very little doubt that Perrault was a Christian. Certainly it was a Christian act, and I do not wonder that the hearts of his comrades were deeply touched.

We read, "The Lord loveth a cheerful giver" (2 Cor. 9: 7), "Do good unto all men" (Gal. 6: 10), "To do good and communicate forget not" (Hebrews 13: 16), and many other exhortations; and it is by finding our joy in acting according to these exhortations that the character of God shines out through us, and the folk with whom we come into contact learn that our God is a giving God. But a good many people whom we know have no need of temporal help. We can still show forth Christ in our dealings towards them in self-forgetting service and love. In this way we shall be following the Lord, who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.

But more important than all is to be able to distribute to them the Living Bread. Rich and poor, old and young, alike need Christ as Saviour — aye, they are starving without Him. If we know Him let us not weary in telling others of Him, and thus we shall be able to share what we have with them.

The blessed thing about so doing will be that our own supply will not be the less.

What Perrault gave away he lost, in a sense; but the more we speak of Jesus, and share what we know of Him with others, the greater our joy in Him becomes. As we scatter the blessing, we receive abundant measure ourselves — then

"Hide not the precious light,

But keep it burning bright

Until we hear His sweet

Well done.'"

A Despised Deliverer; or, How Venice was Saved.

When Venice was "Queen of the Adriatic," not only because of her beauty, but because of her wealth and power, she had many enemies. Doubtless many of these were made by the arrogance of her rulers, while some were her foes because they were jealous of her greatness.

About the year 1378 several of the neighbouring states formed a strong confederacy in the hope of humbling her pride and destroying her power. In this the State of Genoa took the lead. A fierce war was the result, and most of the fighting took place upon the sea.

It happened about this time that an epidemic broke out in the Venetian fleet, which carried off a great number of the fighting men. In this weakened state the Genoese opened an attack upon them, and drove them into Venice. Enraged at this reverse, the fickle Venetians took the admiral Vettor Pisani, and cast him into prison. There he lay for some time, and though he loved his country, he was unable to render her any assistance.

Meanwhile the successes of Peitro Doria, the Genoese admiral, continued, and in one engagement he took 5,000 Venetians prisoners. This made him certain of final success, while it reduced Venice to the verge of despair. This was deepened when the Genoese fleet appeared before the ramparts of the city.

It was then hastily decided that the only chance of saving the city was to treat for peace, and delegates were sent out, offering to make very great concessions; in fact the Venetians were ready to give up everything to the invaders but their liberty.

Doria answered with a bitter sneer, saying there should be no peace for Venice until he had entered the place a complete conqueror, and bridled the bronze horses in the square of St. Marks, and he at once prepared to blockade the city and reduce it by famine.

In their extremity the Venetians remembered the man whom they had despised and treated unjustly. Pisani was taken out of prison, and besought by the Senate to defend his country. This he gladly undertook to do, refusing the adulation of the people, and the honour which the Doge of Venice would have put upon him.

He was a man of vigour and decision, and soon had a fleet equipped, and gave battle to the invaders. The tide of victory now turned, and instead of the Venetians being forced to surrender, they drove the Genoese into the harbour of the town of Chiaggia, which they had taken some time before. Here they held out for a while, but in one battle they lost very heavily, and Doria was killed, then they yielded to Pisani, who dictated terms to them, which were most honourable to his people. Thus did the one whom the Venetians had accounted unworthy of their confidence become their deliverer.

This incident shall illustrate for us a more serious matter, and one which concerns each reader of this page.

The truth is not always pleasant, but it is necessary to make it known. Every man, woman, and child needs a deliverer from a foe who will give no quarter. Nothing but abject and utter surrender to his power will satisfy the devil, who is the foe of man; the power which he wields is death. All that men have will they give to escape death, but it is of no avail. As Doria refused to be bought off, so death refuses to relinquish his claims it must be a conflict to the bitter end, utter defeat or complete victory.

Who amongst the strongest and the wisest of the earth-born race can grapple with this foe and overcome? There is none; a deliverer must be found, or all will be lost.

Joyous news! There is a Deliverer, One who cannot fail those who trust in Him. He is the One whom men despised; the One whom they set at naught and reviled in bitter scorn, naming Him "The Nazarene." But all this changed not the love of Jesus. He would meet the foe on the behalf of poor sinners, "who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." He has met the foe, and in single combat has gained a glorious victory. He died for our sins, but has risen again from the dead, and now a happy and eternal deliverance is the portion of all His people, and they will share for ever in the fruits of His victory.

How do you stand with regard to Jesus?

Have you thankfully bowed to Him and accepted Him as your Saviour? If not, you are still exposed to the relentless power of the foe.

There are thousands who despise this only Saviour. Oh! the madness and base ingratitude of so doing!

* * * * *

You have doubtless read of John Davies, a celebrated English seaman and explorer. In the year 1604 he was sailing for India when he fell in with a party of Japanese drifting out to sea in a leaky junk and without provisions. They were a cut-throat looking set of men, and he believed them to be pirates in spite of their protestation of honesty, but he took pity on them in their perilous situation, and took them aboard his ship. These very men plotted together and murdered their benefactor in cold blood.

What would be said to-day of such an act of black ingratitude. Why the wretches would be hounded down and hung by the neck for their base crime. And even the most tender-hearted would acknowledge that such an end was richly deserved.

This world is guilty of an act of infamy, which throws the murder of John Davies into the shade. The holy Son of God, full of grace and compassion, came into this world to bring the blessings of heaven to men, and they took him with wicked hands, and crucified and slew Him. And if you have not yet bowed to Him and owned Him as your Lord, you are still on the side of the world that was guilty of such an act. Judgment, swift and terrible, must fall upon this world some day; if you would escape it, take side with Jesus. Trust Him as your Saviour. Honour Him as your Lord. The Venetians did not withhold the honour that was Pisani's due when they discovered his real worth. You have heard of Jesus, what He is, and what He has done. Is He not worthy of your praise? Then despise Him not, reject Him not; but trust Him now.

Enciso's Expedition against the Dead.

Many and interesting are the incidents recorded of the adventures of the early discoverers of America. The coolness with which they appropriated everything worth taking, and claimed the New World for the Old, was most extraordinary, and somewhat ridiculous to the mind of the twentieth century people.

There was amongst these adventurers a man who had practised law in San Domingo, named Martin Enciso, who eventually became quite noted for his exploits.

One of his first expeditions was a very remarkable one. Those who had gone forth before him had gone against the living; he went forth to rob the dead.

He had been induced to give up his law practice by the famous Ojeda, and fitting out two brigantines, he turned their prows towards the mainland, and cast anchor at Carthagena. Whilst here he was told by the Indians that some distance to the West there was the Province of Zenu, which was the general burial place of all the Indian tribes in the country.

Now as the Indians decorated their dead with their most precious ornaments, Enciso concluded that immense wealth could be procured by the digging for it, and set sail from Carthagena for Zenu to take possession of the place, and search for the hidden treasure.

But on landing at Zenu he found himself opposed by two powerful chiefs at the head of their warriors. Nothing daunted by this show of opposition, he at once proceeded to lay claim to the country in the name of Ferdinand, King of Spain, according to the form laid down by that clever, but avaricious, monarch.

The Indian chiefs listened attentively to the document which Enciso read, and had interpreted to them, and then, with very commendable logic replied: They fully believed that part of the document which declared there was but one God, but could not accept the Pope of Rome as His representative on the earth; and if this Pope, of whom they spoke, had really given their country to the King of Spain — well, he must have been drunk to do such a thing, when it was not his to give; and the King of Spain himself must have been mad to ask at the hands of the Pope that which belonged to others.

They also added that they were lords of that land, and would own no other sovereign, and if the King of Spain came there to take possession of their country, they would cut off his head and put it on a pole, as that was their usual mode of dealing with their foes.

Enciso, who himself related the story in his account of his travels, then threatened them with war and slavery. But they pointed out to him a row of grizzly heads on poles, and bade him depart from their land, unless he wished to be treated in like manner.

All this failed to impress Enciso. This was the country where gold could be taken in nets from the rivers, so he had been told, and here was buried untold wealth, and he meant to take possession of it. He routed the Indians, and searched the tombs, but gained little for his trouble, and was eventually very glad to take to his ships, and to get out of the range of the poisoned arrows of the Indians.

I have in my mind an expedition of a totally different nature to the foregoing — an expedition which contrasts strongly with it from start to finish.

God sent forth His beloved Son to claim the world for Himself; but there is this great difference between God claiming this world and the Castilian King claiming the Western Hemisphere. This world belonged to God; it was His, for He made it, but it had rebelled against His authority, and refused to own His sway. So He sent His Son — the Heir to win it back again. But all His ways in this wondrous mission were ways of tenderness and grace. He did not seek to subdue men by flaming sword and unsparing vengeance, but by perfect love He sought to win their hearts. He came to claim their heart's allegiance, but that was not all. In order to gain this He brought them blessings, the greatness of which could never have entered their most exalted dreams.

But men were dead towards God — dead in trespasses and sins. So that the mission of the Lord Jesus Christ was really toward the dead.

"We in death were lying,

Lost in hopeless gloom."

But Jesus came even to where we were; and, blessed fact, He died that we might live.

He came, not to rob us, but to enrich us. Not to take from us this world, where all is marred by death; but to give us an inheritance in a land where neither blight of sin, nor shade of sorrow can ever come.

Oh, it is well with those who do not resist Him. It is wisdom indeed to bow to His claims and own Him as Lord.

But we do not see the world at large putting the crowns upon His brow, and laying their swords at His feet. Alas, the world still refuses God's claims and rejects His grace, and the only consequence of this can be — judgment.

But have you yielded to the Lord? If not, do it to-day. Let your heart become His kingdom — the place where He can rule without a rival. Haul down the world's flag — the flag of selfish ambition, or whatever else it is that has held you under its sway, and live henceforward for Him who died and rose again.

For this loving, living Saviour, the risen Christ of God, we claim you to-day.

"Follow Him,

Say 'No' to self,

And own Him Lord."

The Value of One Soul: A Deal Lifeboat Incident.

Is it possible that the great God above can care for one soul amongst all the millions of the earth? It is, for the One who came to tell us all we know of the heart of God said "Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." (Luke 15: 10.)

God desires that all shall be saved; but He and all His angels rejoice over one. Have they rejoiced over you yet?

The lifeboat men will save the whole of the shipwrecked crew if they can; if not, they will rejoice to be able to bring even one safe to land. An instance of this is to be found in the records of the Deal lifeboat.

Looking out through his glass late one spring evening Richard Roberts, the brave captain of the boat, descried a new wreck upon the Goodwin Sands, and close to it a solitary man. He was running wildly about, afraid of standing still lest the treacherous sands should suck him in.

Only one man! was it worth while launching the lifeboat for his sake? The lifeboat men had no question at all about that, for as soon as the tide would permit there was a rush for the belts, and over the wild waves the boat leaped to the rescue. But to save that one man was no light matter. The night was inky black, and their eyes could see nothing. The waves roared over the boat, and, though they shouted and strained their ears for an answer, no voice could be heard above the noise of the sea.

They cast anchor and waited through the long night for the dawn. With the first grey light they caught sight of the object of their search. He was not more than four hundred yards away staggering towards the boat that had come to save him.

It was but the work of a few moments to get him off those deadly sands into the safety of the boat.

He was captain of a Norwegian brig which had run on the sands the morning before, and he had seen the six men that formed his crew drowned before his eyes. He had lashed himself to the windlass, and thus escaped the fate of the rest. When the tide fell and the wreck stood out of the water, he unlashed himself, and had for hours run up and down the sands, returning to the wreck again when the tide rose and night came on.

He received a British welcome when he reached the town of Deal, and, depend upon it, not one of the gallant lifeboat men grudged the labour and the hardships they had undergone because there was only one to save. Oh! the value of one soul none can estimate; the world is naught in comparison to it. For one soul, as well as for millions, Jesus died. For one soul He seeks to-day, and that one soul is yours.

Welcome Him, welcome Him now. Then over your one soul there will be joy in the presence of the angels of God.

Out of the Jaws of Death; A Shark Story.

SWISH-SH, swish-sh.

The swimmer started and turned. About a length behind him he saw a V-shaped ripple upon the surface of the blue waters, and beneath them a grey-brown object. The paralysis of fear seized him, and his cry of distress died in his throat! It was the shark.

What a fool he was to plunge into danger like that, and in spite of warning.

That shark had become notorious in Kingstown, St. Vincent, the bay of which town was its haunt, and many were the victims that had fallen to its rapacity.

The Governor of the island had forbidden bathing in the waters which it frequented, and had offered a large reward for its destruction. Knowing all about the shark, and in spite of his father's commands to the contrary, and his brother's entreaties that morning, this English youth had vowed that he would defy the monster and swim past its haunt. Now the folly of his daring confronted him, and certain death seemed to stare him in the face.

He was a strong swimmer however, and recovering from the first shock of fear he struck out for the shore but it was an unequal struggle, and every moment the dreaded shark gained upon the fast-tiring swimmer.

It is the old story. Retribution follows disobedience; sin puts those who commit it into the power of the foe. Had he but listened to those who were wiser than himself he would never have got into such terrible danger. In the beginning Adam disobeyed God, in spite of the warning of God, and he fell; he went astray and suffered terribly thereby. And we have all followed in the ways of disobedience and sin, for God's Word says, "All we like sheep have gone astray." So that everyone of us who have not yet been saved are in terrible danger. There is a foe who seeks to destroy the souls of the young as well as the old. "He goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour." And if there were not a Saviour provided by God for us our case would be hopelessly terrible.

The frantic struggles of the swimmer, and the pointed nose of the shark protruding from the water immediately behind him were seen from the shore, and it was evident to all that he could not save himself. But amongst those who saw his danger was one of his father's slaves, a negro named Mungo; he was devoted to his master and loved his master's son, and, without a thought of his own safety, he threw himself into the sea and struck out to the rescue. He reached the lad just as the shark had opened his mouth to destroy him, and, seizing him round the waist, literally snatched him out of the jaws of death. The lad's life was saved, but he was terribly injured, for the shark had with that one snap severed his arm from his body.

Look out, young reader. Sin will leave its marks upon you. There are many who have been saved by the sovereign grace of God, but they will carry the scars of sin to the grave. The longer you stay away from God your danger increases; but not only so — the wounds of sin are multiplied, and the wounds of sin are terrible.

But how glorious is the news that comes to us from God. He proclaims the Name of His Son Jesus as the Saviour for all. Our sins had made us the lawful prey of the mighty destroyer; but Jesus came to snatch us from the jaws of death, and to put us for ever beyond the reach of the danger that threatened us. If you do but feel your need of His saving power He will save you, and that right speedily. He is able to do so, do not doubt Him.

Mungo made for the shore with the wounded lad, and to the joy of the spectators landed him safely there. But he suffered for his loving courage. The shark returned to the attack, and before he could struggle to the shore himself he had lost a leg. But he — brave fellow that he was — thought this a small matter in the joy that he had in having saved his master's son. You will not be surprised when I tell you that Jesus had to make a great sacrifice in order to save sinners. The story is very familiar to you, and may have lost its charm; but I tell you there is no story so wondrously thrilling as the story of the love of Jesus. He sacrificed Himself. He gave Himself to death and judgment in order to destroy our foe and save us for ever.

"O, sinner, Jesus died for thee." Don't despise Him. For the sake of your soul trust Him, and none shall snatch you from His hand.

Mungo recovered eventually from his first encounter with the shark, and was able to stump about on a wooden leg. He determined to have another encounter with the shark, and destroy him if possible. Arming himself with a huge knife he rowed out in a boat, and drawing the shark from his hiding place by a tempting bait he attacked him with his knife, and eventually returned to the shore in triumph, dragging his dead foe at the tail of his boat. He received his liberty and a pension from the Government for his bravery.

Well, that is the end of the story of Mungo's victory. But we shall never come to the end of the story of Jesus' victory over death and Satan. Those whom He has saved will celebrate that victory in heaven for ever. They will never cease to praise Him there. May you be amongst that happy company.

God's Way of Deliverance; or, How the Sea Saved Leyden.

Many and great are the difficulties that often arise in the minds of those who are awakened to the need of their soul's salvation, as to how this can be brought about. They know that they are sinners — guilty, unsatisfied, and in Satan's power; but how God can deliver them and yet be perfectly righteous they cannot tell. And truly the matter is beyond the wisdom of men to solve. But God has displayed His wisdom as well as his love and power in the death of Jesus, and His death is the solution of all the difficulties. There we see our foes vanquished, our deep need met, and God glorified. The way in which the sea saved Leyden may help us to understand it better.

From October 31st, 1573, to October 3rd, 1574, with the exception of a few days only, Leyden was surrounded by a large Spanish Army and exposed to all the horrors of a siege.

King Philip of Spain was determined to make the city bow to his power, and the Protestants within acknowledge the authority of the Pope. But the people had tasted the liberty and enjoyed the light which an open Bible gives, and they were determined to resist the Spaniards, choosing rather to die than submit to Rome.

As the days passed into weeks and the weeks into months the distress in Leyden became terrible, for so completely was the city invested by the Spanish army that it was impossible to get provisions into the town. In consequence of this, famine stalked abroad in the streets, and men and women died on every hand.

The Duke of Alva, who commanded the Spaniards, sought by threats to make them yield, but they bravely replied, "when all our cats and dogs are eaten we will devour our left arms while we fight with our right, before we will yield."

He then tried flattery, making great promises if they would but surrender; but they had proved his treachery before and were not to be deceived, their only reply to his flatteries was, "The fowler plays sweet notes on his pipe while he spreads his nets for the bird." Ah! these Hollanders were not only brave but very wise, and Alva's threatenings and seductions alike failed.

How often the devil acts as did this Spanish commander, he often sends flattery and offers great benefits to people, but his end is always to destroy. He promised great things to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, and they listened to his promises and were caught by his flatteries, and sorrow, sin and death were the result.

He is still the same old deceiver blinding men's eyes, transforming himself oftentimes into an angel of light, but with always the same object in view — to hinder them from obtaining God's salvation and to destroy them for ever.

Beware young reader, sin may charm and appear fascinating and the world may display its attractions, but the devil is behind it. Look unto the end and remember the answer of the Hollanders to the Duke of Alva's flatteries. The fowler plays sweet notes on his pipe while he lays the net for the bird.

Meanwhile matters were only growing worse within the city, and though William Prince of Orange, with the famous "Beggars of the Sea" Fleet, laden with provisions for the starving inhabitants, was but fifteen miles from the town he could not help them, for the ships could not sail over the land, and the Spaniards were well able to resist any attempt to land provisions.

At length William fixed upon a seemingly desperate plan. It is well known that a large part of Holland lies beneath the sea level and that the waters are kept out by huge dykes. His plan was to pierce the dykes and allow the sea to overflow the land, in the hope that his ships might sail quite up to the distressed city.

The inhabitants were informed of his intentions by carrier pigeon, and eagerly did they wait, and earnestly did they pray that he might be successful.

They had looked upon the sea hitherto as their greatest foe, and untold wealth had been expended to keep it at a distance, now they realised that deliverance could only come to them by that which they had always dreaded — the inflowing of the sea.

How like our case is this. Death is looked upon as the greatest foe of men, and what will not men give to keep death at a distance; but it is the only means by which salvation can come to us. If we are to be saved from Satan's power, and have our souls satisfied with living bread, we must look to death. But whose death? Not our own, or that of any other mere man — but the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Don't forget this. It is because Jesus died for us that deliverance comes within our reach.

The dykes were cut, but the ships were long in reaching the city, for a strong east wind was blowing which kept them out at sea. This made the Christians in Leyden pray the more earnestly, and one night, in the midst of their pleadings with God, the wind suddenly changed, and blew quite a gale from the sea.

On came the flowing waters, not only bearing the ships laden with food to the starving citizens of Leyden, but also sweeping away from before the city the foes that had harassed them so long.

In the midst of the night a terrible crash was heard, and it was feared that the Spaniards had stormed the city's walls; instead, it was the now friendly sea which had broken down the wall and brought the ships right into their midst. "Leyden is relieved" rang through the streets as loudly as the feeble folk could shout. And this was true. The Spaniards had all fled before the advancing sea, leaving behind their ammunition and baggage, and the people of Leyden never saw them again. Nor did they forget to return thanks to God, who made the sea as well as the dry land.

And is there real deliverance for reader and and writer alike? Thank God there is. His wisdom is shown out in the death of Jesus, for He has taken that which was indeed our foe, and made it to be our way of escape. Satan's power is destroyed in the death of Jesus, for by dying he destroyed him that had the power of death, which is the devil, that he might deliver those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. (Hebrews 2: 14-15.)

We know now that He is raised from the dead and imparts to all His own people a new life, and instead of being miserable and unsatisfied they can feed upon Himself, the new food, which can fill the heart with joy and satisfaction. Those who feed upon Him can say, like a little Scotch boy said when dying, "Oh! Jesus is sweet, sweet."

Salvation Neglected or, The Wreck of the "Royal Charter."

Who, having seen a shipwreck, can ever forget the awfully terrible and soul-thrilling sight. To stand upon some storm-lashed shore and see out on the grey sea a helpless vessel struggling in the grip of the tempest; to see that ship go shivering helplessly onward to its doom, almost hidden at times by huge waves, then at length lifted high upon their crest and dashed upon the relentless rocks to disappear with broken back in the swirling waters. This is indeed a terrible sight — one that leaves an impression upon the mind which time cannot erase.

But more terrible by far is the shipwreck of a soul. To see those who have been created for the glory of God choosing the ways of sin, neglecting and rejecting God's offered salvation, this is truly saddening; for to choose the ways of darkness and sin is to reach destruction at last.

And yet this is the sad end of many, and there is a possibility that it may be the end of some who read these pages. Because of this awful possibility we continue to warn and to press upon you the great necessity of accepting God's salvation.

Salvation is needed by all. This is proved by the fact that God offers it to everybody, but all are not saved, for many wilfully reject or neglect the salvation which God offers. "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" (Heb. 2: 3) is a solemn question. Ah! there could not possibly be any escape, for none but God could provide salvation for sinners, and if His way is rejected there is none other.

The wreck of the Royal Charter on the night of October 26th, 1859, shall serve as an illustration of salvation neglected. She was one of the finest and fastest vessels afloat at the time, and was returning from Australia with a full complement of passengers. Many of these had made themselves rich at the newly-discovered goldfields, and were doubtless looking forward to enjoying their wealth at home in England.

All went well until the shores of Wales were sighted on the evening of October 25th, when a terrible hurricane began to blow, and the engines of the Royal Charter became powerless, with the result that she began to drift before the gale.

To be so near an ugly lee shore and in such a gale thoroughly alarmed the captain, and he hoisted signals of distress. A ship carrying troops to Ireland hove to, and through the trumpet the captain of the Royal Charter cried: "Our engines are broken down; for what will you tow us into port?" The price was named. "Too much" was the answer. On being urged to accept the offered help, the captain replied, "I'll run my chance."

Within twenty-four hours the appalling news was flashed all over the country, that the Royal Charter had gone down off the coast of Wales, and with her 490 souls had been swallowed up by the insatiable sea.

They went down in sight of home, overwhelmed and destroyed when, humanly speaking, they might have been saved.

I had the story from the lips of a Christian soldier who was on the troopship that offered the help, and when I heard it my thoughts turned to many who, like the ill-starred captain of the Royal Charter are turning their backs upon salvation, and saying, "I'll run my chance."

If such should read these lines, I urge you to be warned. You have absolutely no chance of salvation and heaven apart from Jesus. Your danger is great to-day, and the longer you stay away from the Lord Jesus Christ the more imminent it becomes.

Do you say you cannot see any danger ahead? You have heard how that in the midst of the battle of Copenhagen, Sir Hyde Parker commanding the British fleet, signalled to Nelson, his second in command, to cease action and retire. When Nelson's attention was called to this, he put his telescope to his blind eye, and said, "I really do not see the signal." And many do not see the danger because they will not. They are wilfully blind. They have allowed Satan to put the scales upon their eyes. Nelson was wise, for he had his other eye wide open and knew that victory was in sight but for the sinner who closes his eyes to the truth there is absolutely no hope. This is Satan's work, but he not only closes men's eyes, but he has closed their ears too; they will neither see the danger nor hear the warnings. Thus Satan wrongs them now that he may destroy them eventually, and, they seem to love to have it so. As long as the present seems bright they care not though they be but a league from some dreaded reef.

But there is a Saviour nigh at hand ready and able to save all who desire His salvation. He can save the vilest: He can save to the uttermost. Past rock and shoal, through fog and storm, He will safely steer all who trust in Him and safely to the heavenly haven they shall at length be brought.

Not one of "His own" shall be lost. The famous "Cunard" line can boast that they have never lost a single passenger's life since the foundation of their company, and a wonderful record this is when one thinks of the fierce storms that rage upon the Atlantic and of the thousands of souls that they have carried; but the Cunard line is not infallible, and, though we earnestly hope that its proud record will be maintained until the end, one cannot say what may happen at sea.

But with Jesus we can speak with all confidence. The salvation which He procured at the cost of His own precious blood is a perfect salvation. In His right hand, as the living risen Saviour, there is omnipotence, and He can say with triumph of His own, "They shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." (John 10: 28.)

He hath said, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee."

So that we may boldly say "The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what men shall do unto me." (Heb. 13: 5-6.)

All saved! God be praised.

Huge cliffs of green sea roar down upon the lifeboat, burying her completely from the eyes of the watchers on the shore, and making their hearts stand still with fear; but again she rises bravely, shaking herself free from the embrace of the waves like a thing of life.

Onward she bounds shore-ward, and now the British ensign is seen flying from her peak, proclaiming the joyous tidings that "All are saved," and a ringing cheer breaks from the throats of the hundreds on the shore.

The cheering from the land warms the hearts of the brave lifeboat men and nerves their arms to renewed effort, and at length they reach the shore. Scores of ready and capable hands haul up the boat clear of the baffled sea. Cheer after cheer greets the saviours of the shipwrecked crew, and loving and sympathetic help awaits those who need it. All saved! All saved! God be praised.

"All saved!" Many will read these pages; shall it be said presently "All saved"? Certainly all who trust in Jesus will be saved. Will you be amongst them?

"Will your eyes behold through the morning light,

The city of gold and the harbour bright?

Will you anchor safe by the heavenly shore,

When life's storms are past for evermore?

Suffer this one final appeal. To be lost for ever will be terrible, and you are in danger of it if unsaved. To be saved will be glory for ever, and this is God's desire for you. If to be saved is your desire, remember: —

"Christ is the only Saviour mighty to save,

He Who suffered once for sin and sank 'neath the wave.

He is the lifeboat, sinner, will bring you safe to shore;

All who trust in Jesus Christ are saved evermore."

"Waiting for the Coming"

"Waiting for the Coming"

J. T. Mawson.

Explanation

In these pages I have endeavoured to show that the coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ will be in two stages — the coming FOR His saints and WITH them, and in doing this I have used words that are current amongst Christians, namely, the RAPTURE and the APPEARING. The latter is a Biblical word, the former is not, and it may not be a familiar word in this connection to many; for these reasons I had some hesitation in using it. But it is a convenient and effective word, and if the reader will bear in mind that wherever I have used it, it stands, not for a rapture of the mind or spirit, but for the actual catching away bodily of the saints of God to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thess. 4: 1), what otherwise might be a difficulty will become simple.

May every reader be amongst those who are waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. To whom be glory, both now and for ever. J. T. M

Will He really Come Again?

The scoffers are saying, "Where is the promise of His coming?" But Simon Peter prophesied of this in the year A. D. 66, and warned us that when they mocked our hope in this way we might know that we were in the last days.

Three reasons why He must come.

His first words as to it.

—

Will He really come again? Long has He been expected; will He fulfil that expectation? May it not be a vain hope? "Behold the Bridegroom cometh" (Matt. 25), was a great text with earnest men nigh upon a century ago, and the hope of His coming spread amongst those who loved His name, until many were saying: "Even so, come Lord Jesus." It became a theme of ordinary conversation. I heard of it as a child. It was talked about in our home, and I remember that one of the first teachers I ever had, asked me: "What do they preach in the meetings you go to?" I answered: "They preach that the Lord Jesus is coming again." "What!" she exclaimed, evidently startled. "Yes," I said, "and we believe it, because the Bible says so." It was a child's answer, but it shows that whether true or false this teaching had made a deep impression on my mind.

But that was many years ago, and He has not come yet, and those who looked for Him so earnestly in those years that are past have fallen asleep without realising their hope. Were they deceived in their belief? And are we? Will He really come? The scoffers are saying: "Where is the promise of His coming?" and we must answer their challenge. What shall the answer be?

First Reason

Our answer is: "Yes, He will surely come," and the basis of our confidence is that He has said so. We do not build our hope on signs and portents, they may easily and often deceive us, but we rest in His own Word, for that cannot fail. He must come because He has said, "I will come again."

Other prophecies have been fulfilled, and so shall this be. God declared in the Garden of Eden that the woman's Seed should bruise the Serpent's head. It was the first word that was ever uttered as to the coming of the great Deliverer, and that word was fulfilled when the due time came. Four thousand years passed between the prediction and its fulfilment, and throughout those long long years men of faith waited and watched. They carried the torch of faith and hope in the darkness for a while, each in his own day, and then handed it on to their successors, until at last He for whom they looked appeared; the Daystar from on high visited them, and faith and hope gave place to sight as they gave thanks to God and cried, "Our eyes have seen Thy salvation."

God's prophets had spoken of the sufferings of Christ and of the glory that should follow. When He did appear His disciples thought only of the glory. But the glory was not yet to be, it awaited His Second Coming. It behoved Him first to suffer "that the Scriptures might be fulfilled." His first coming was for shame and spitting, for suffering and death; His second coming will be for honour and glory, for the crown and the throne. He told His disciples in the plainest language that He had come to suffer, that He would be delivered to the Gentiles and be mocked and crucified. It seemed much more likely that He would be stoned, indeed the Jews in their frenzied hatred of Him attempted this more than once, but they could not do it, a power they did not understand restrained them, "that the Scripture might be fulfilled." But why should He be crucified? This was a Roman mode of execution, and He did not come into conflict with Rome. He offered no resistance to Caesar's authority, but on the contrary He taught that what was due to him must be rendered to him, and for that saying the Jews hated Him the more, but the Romans had no cause to condemn Him for such teaching, He was no criminal according to their laws. Yet they crucified Him. Why? Because the Scriptures had said that thus He would die, and they cannot fail. More than one thousand years before it happened it was all foretold in the most graphic detail (Ps. 22). Long before the Roman power had any existence the very way they would treat Him was revealed, and the ancient word was fulfilled to the last letter of it. And by His own words He confirmed what was written of Him. He said He would die, and He did, HE SAID HE WOULD RISE THE THIRD DAY, AND HE DID, HE SAID HE WOULD COME AGAIN IN GLORY, AND HE WILL.

Every word of Scripture that foretold His first coming and His sufferings when He came has been fulfilled, and just as surely shall every word that has been spoken about His second coming in glory be fulfilled. If He does not come again His own Word and the Scripture will be broken, and this cannot be: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one jot or tittle of His Word can fail. Our first and greatest reason then for holding the coming again of our Lord as a sure and blessed hope is His own Word, and the Word of Holy Scripture.

Second Reason

The Divine plan and purpose will be incomplete if He does not come. If Sir Christopher Wren had built St. Paul's cathedral without its dome, we should have said that it was not finished, that the crown of it was wanting. And if the Lord Jesus does not come again there will be a great want in the ways of God. To come first in humiliation and not come again in power, to suffer and die for sin and not come again in glory to establish righteousness in the world where wickedness has so long held sway, to bear the Cross and not wear the Crown, would be to leave unfinished God's great scheme of blessing for men and glory for His Son. The crown of His purpose would be lacking, and the universe would say that God was not wise, or He had not the power to make His wisdom effectual. Yes, the once suffering Saviour must come in glory; where He was dishonoured He must be exalted; He loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore His throne must be established for ever. He must come again to bring to its consummation the whole will and purpose of God.

Third Reason

His love demands it. He cannot leave even the bodies of His blood-redeemed saints under the power of death. He must raise them up again, and He will do this at His coming again: then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory" (1 Cor. 15). And then will He present to Himself His Church, His Bride, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. The patriarch Jacob would not have been satisfied to have laboured and waited for Rachel, and not have possessed her, yet love's labour might have been lost in his case, but the Lord's great sacrifice and labour of love cannot be lost. He must see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied, and this can only be when He receives to Himself His Church, all glorious, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, and this cannot be apart from His coming again. Because His love demands it, we read: "The Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord" (1 Thess. 4: 16, 17). "And then shall be heard as it were the voice of a great multitude and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to Him; for the marriage of the Lamb is come" (Rev. 19. 6, 7). He must come again for His church. His love demands it.

The first message that the ascended Lord sent from the glory to His disciples upon earth was that He would come back again (Acts 1), and His last message from the glory to His church on earth is, "Surely I come quickly" (Rev. 22). Truly His coming again lies very near to His heart.

The First Mention of His Coming for His Saints (John 14)

I do want to stress the fact that the Lord's love for His own makes it imperative that He should come for them. He has told us that in His Father's house there are many mansions. He does not leave us in the world because there is only room for Him and none for us in the Father 's house. There is room there for us all, had there not been He would have told us long ago, and not have drawn us after Him as He has done. He has won our hearts, because He wants us THERE. His disciples, to whom these words were first spoken, had looked for a place here in an earthly kingdom, He was going to prepare a place for them there, in the Father's House. They had looked for honour and power on earth, He had something better for them in Heaven. He had a Home for them there — home and love; His own home, His Father's love. This they were to share with Him, for nothing would satisfy His love but sharing it with them. And this is our prospect. The light of it shines with a soft and comforting radiance into our hearts, it fills us with longing for its realisation, for the longing to have us there is in His heart.

And He is coming for us. He will not send for us. We are too precious to Him, too dearly loved for that. He will come Himself. "I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am there ye may be also." Had we known Him only as a great potentate, splendid in His glory and supreme in dignity, then it would have been fitting that some noble servant should have been sent forth to lead us into His presence chamber to touch the sceptre that He might condescendingly extend to us. But it is not glory, or dignity, or splendour of that sort that is revealed to us here, but love; yearning, tender love that can neither wait until we are brought, nor send another for us, but must come itself. The first face that our eyes shall gaze upon at His Coming will be His own face. Countless hosts will attend Him, but they are not mentioned here, nor will they fill our vision then. It will be Himself, and Himself alone. And to Himself He will receive us, that where He is there we may be also.

It is the voice of our great Lover that speaks to us here in words so tender and true and wise, and His voice thrills our hearts, and to us it is enough that where He is there we shall be. Scant is our knowledge of the place; we do not know its glories, its extent, its location, nor are we concerned to know; it suffices us to know that it is the Father's house, and Christ is there, and He wants us to be there to share it with Himself, and we want to be there because He wants to have us there. These are the longings that His love has begotten in our hearts, and so we say, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus."

"Behold the Bridegroom"

Early in the history of the church on earth the fact of the return of the Lord was lost.

Evil servants began to say, "My Lord delayeth His coming."

And the Church slumbered and slept.

But the midnight cry has gone forth, and many are now going forth to meet Him.

The truth misunderstood.

In this chapter we show how the hope was lost and regained.

Who can deny that the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is one of the chief themes of the Bible? Certainly not those who study its pages. However much they may differ as to the manner and the meaning of it, they must all agree that it is kept continually in the forefront of God's communications to men. The first of all the prophets cried, "The Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints." And as prophets, priests and kings strayed from the right ways of God, and the world's problems became more involved, and its miseries increased, the coming of the Lord, as Deliverer and Judge, became more and more the burden of the men who spoke for God, and the hope of those who believed.

If we had only the Old Testament and not the New, we should find it difficult to understand why in one place His coming is said to be for suffering and humiliation, and in another for glory and power and world-wide dominion; how and why His visage would be more marred than any man's, and yet He be exalted and lifted up and made very high and astonish nations by the splendour of His majesty. The New Testament is the key to the Old, and by it the whole subject of the coming of the Lord is opened up for us, and we learn that two comings were in view, at the first of which the sufferings of Christ would be fulfilled, and at the second, the glories that should follow. Our position lies between the two.

He Came Once

He came once, not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many.

Then He was wounded for our transgressions; then He died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and was buried, and rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures. After that He showed Himself by many infallible proofs to His disciples, and ascended to Heaven in their sight. With hearts aglow with devotion to Him they gazed with wonder after Him as the cloud of glory received Him, and immediately two heavenly messengers stood at their sides and announced to them the fact that He — THIS SAME JESUS, AND NOT ANOTHER — would so come, as they had seen Him go. It was the first message from the glory after His entrance into it, and it became an integral part of the apostles' preaching — the testimony of the Lord. He had been here, and He had returned to Heaven from whence He came, but He would come back again. He would come in glory to judge the world in righteousness, and rule the nations with a rod of iron, and banish sorrow and crying from the earth, and bring in lasting gladness and wonderful peace.

Those that hearkened to the preaching and believed, "turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven." The coming again of the Lord Jesus was a living hope and not a doctrine only to those early Christians; it affected them mightily and they went forth to meet the Bridegroom.

The world was well lost for them as they rejoiced in the hope of the coming glory of the Son of God, even Jesus, who had delivered them from the wrath to come.

A Slumbering Church

But while He tarried, the deep slumber, against which they were warned again and again in the epistles of Paul, overcame them, and the prophetic parable of our Lord was fulfilled, "they all slumbered and slept." The church became totally indifferent to the truth of the Lord's return, and all were alike in this, wise and foolish, true possessors and mere professors settled down in the world that He will judge at His coming, as though there were no difference between them and it. Their lamps burned but dimly, and the darkness steadily deepened, until was reached that period known as the Dark Ages. This was the midnight hour indeed, when the church that professed the Name of Christ, and which should have shone with a great light in the darkness to guide the feet of the people in the way of truth, robbed them of any light they might have had by its gross sensuality and apostasy from the truth.

The Dark Ages

The history of the church on earth was faithfully forecast in those solemn messages from the Lord to the seven churches in Asia (Rev. 2 and 3), and the period of this dense darkness is described in the central message of the seven, that to the church at Thyatira. In it the depths of Satan were known as nowhere else on earth. At that time popes, cardinals, priests and monks lived openly wicked lives, they turned the most sacred things into subjects for their obscene jests, they were profligate in conduct and profane in their conversation. It was a common saying: "If there is a hell, Rome is built over it: it is an abyss whence issues every kind of sin." But worse than all, the people were corrupted by these ministers of Satan, and to them were sold indulgences which granted them pardon and secured them from the punishment beforehand of any crime that they wished to commit. And as the great dignitaries of the church required money in order to pursue their rascalities, the people were urged and forced to buy these indulgences or lose their immortal souls. Standards of right and wrong were obliterated, for the people could do what they pleased as long as they paid, and this was called the "richly offered grace of God." "We Italians," said a historian of that period, "are principally indebted to the church for having become impious and immoral."

The Midnight Cry

It is in the message to the church of Thyatira, which describes this midnight period, that the Lord brings out afresh the fact of His coming. There were those in the midst of all its corruptions and darkness who were faithful to Him. A small remnant they probably were, but they were precious to the Lord, as were those who feared Him and talked together about Him in the days when Malachi prophesied. To these the Lord said, "I will put upon you none other burden, but that which ye have already, hold fast till I come." And wonderful words must those have been for those who had ears to hear during that dark period: "I will give him the morning star." In the records that have come down to us from those days we find that there were some who "trimmed their lamps," many more no doubt than we could know of, for the Lord has always had His thousands who did not bow the knee to Baal.

But were they many or few that heard the cry, "Behold, the Bridegroom," in this midnight hour, it is certain that the Lord then commenced in a special way to prepare a people to meet Him at His coming. He formed and fitted Luther for this purpose, and the most blessed truth of justification by faith instead of works was proclaimed and believed by many.

The consequence of being justified by faith is the sealing by the Holy Spirit. We are taught in Romans 5 that when justified by faith the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit that is given unto us; and this is confirmed by Ephesians 1: 13: "In whom (Christ) ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise." Only those in whom the Spirit of God dwells are ready to meet the Bridegroom when He shall come, for the oil that the wise virgins took in their vessels is unquestionably a symbol of the Holy Spirit. He only can keep the lamps of our testimony burning during the absence of the Lord.

The Truth Misunderstood

From that time the coming of the Lord began to have, more or less, a place in the preaching of the Word. But it was not understood by the preachers, nor clearly preached, for the distinction between the church and the world was not discerned, and this great truth, along with all prophetic truth, must be obscure to all who do not see and maintain this distinction. It was thought and preached that the world would first be converted by the preaching of the Gospel, and that then the Lord would come and establish His kingdom of righteousness; and this by pious men who no doubt read and studied their Bibles. It is still a popular notion, but as false as it is popular. How it could have gained currency is difficult to understand with such a solemn passage in the Bible as that in Revelation 1: 7: "Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. Even so, Amen." A converted world would surely receive Him with acclamation and not wailing. There are many other passages which are equally emphatic, such as 2 Thess. 1: 7-9; Rev. 6: 15-17; Rev. 19: 11-16. But men believe what pleases them, and the thought of the intervention of the Lord in judgment is not pleasant to those who love the world or are involved in its many schemes for its own greatness. And those who were true to their Lord misread the Word of truth because they did not rightly divide it.

After the Reformation the church soon settled down again in the world. It has been said that the ambition of the Romish church is to dominate the world; it did in former days, and will do so again, but in Protestantism the world rules the church; it certainly does in the state churches where its very doctrines are secured and fixed by act of Parliament. Hence in the message to Sardis which describes this condition of things, the Lord says, "Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead." And, "I will come on thee as a thief," which is the character in which He will come to the world, which cares nothing about His coming, except to scoff at it, or hate the thought of it; thus will He come to the unwatchful and indifferent church.

The Renewed Cry

But the cry which went forth first at the midnight of the church's history is sounding louder now, for in the message to the church at Philadelphia the Lord says, "Behold, I come quickly: hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown." And this word has awakened a response in many hearts, and these bear in some degree Philadelphian characteristics, which are, loyalty to the Word of the Lord, devotion to His name and love to all the brethren. May they greatly increase and grow for His Name's sake.

Numbers have been recovered to the truth of the Lord's coming. It has become again a real and living hope, but it is only real and living to those who have trimmed their lamps, for two things are infallibly united, devotion to Christ and witness to the world. Those who are really looking for Christ, who are truly saying, "Come, Lord Jesus," will by their very lives bear a witness to the world, they will shine as lights as they pass through it, for they will not settle down in it.

Their testimony will be that the Lord is coming, and that they are going forth to meet Him. The world's fashions and ways, and schemes and ambitions will not engage and entangle them, for they know that it lies under judgment, along with Satan, its god and prince, and that its time is short and its doom is sealed. Yet they will not be indifferent to the needs of men, they will mingle with their testimony the evangelistic cry: "Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."

This cry, "Behold, the Bridegroom," is a great test. It finds us out. It tested these awakened virgins in the prophetic parable, and we learn from it that the test is intensely individual. To what community you belong is not the test, nor what profession you make, everything depends upon whether you have the oil in your vessel — Have you received the Holy Spirit? And none can receive Him for another, or having received Him, impart Him to another. Each must receive Him for himself.

The Time is Short

The time is short. Fleeter than these foolish virgins imagined were the feet of the Bridegroom, for while they went to secure the oil for their vessels, He came, and they that were ready went in with Him to the marriage, and THE DOOR WAS SHUT. It was too late then for them to buy the oil or enter the door, and their knocking was in vain. The Bridegroom only knew those who possessed the oil, and only those whom He knew passed with Him in to the marriage feast.

Are any who read in doubt as to this vital and indispensable possession? and do they ask, Where can we buy the oil? To buy indicates a personal transaction. You must have personal dealings with God, first as to your own sinfulness and need of a Saviour, and then as to the Saviour that He has provided. Paul preached, "repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ," and Peter declared, "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye (Jews) slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted with His right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. And we are His witnesses of these things; and so is also THE HOLY GHOST, WHOM GOD HATH GIVEN TO THEM THAT OBEY HIM" (Acts 5: 30-32).

The Rapture and the Appearing

The Lord's Second Coming will be in two parts.

In this chapter we endeavour to show the difference between the two.

The law of gravitation.

Types of the Rapture.

The spiritual body.

—

It would not be right to say that the Coming Again of the Lord Jesus will be two comings, yet it is clear from Scripture that it will be in two stages. The first will be His coming FOR His saints: they are to be "caught up" to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thess. 4: 16, 17). This is spoken of as the Rapture. The second, His coming WITH them, is called the Appearing, i.e., His manifestation to the world. A good text for this is, "When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory" (Col. 3: 4).

QUES.: Which of these two stages of the coming ought we to preach to the world?

The Appearing is our testimony to the world; the truth of the "catching up" does not seem to have been given for public preaching to the world, but for the comfort of the hearts of the Lord's own in the world, as we shall see; but the appearing of the Lord in glory has been the testimony of His witnesses from the beginning. Enoch, the seventh from Adam, the first of all the prophets prophesied saying "Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints to execute judgment upon all" (Jude 14, 15). From his day to the first coming of the Lord all the prophets bore witness to the certainty of this same appearance in glory, and He Himself took it up, for all His words as to His coming in the Synoptic Gospels have His coming in glory in view. In John's Gospel only is the coming FOR His saints alluded to and that was to comfort their hearts. When they sorrowed at the thought of His departure, He said, "I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there ye may be also" (John 14). The Acts of the Apostles presents the Appearing and not the Rapture. It is the burden of the angelic message in Acts 1, which was the first message sent to earth from the Glory after the Lord had entered there. "This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into Heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into Heaven." Peter takes up the same witness in speaking to the Jews in Acts 3, and very specially in speaking to Gentiles in chap. 10. "He commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is He which was ordained of God to be the Judge of the quick and dead" ( Acts 10: 42). And Paul also addressing Gentiles in Acts 17, says, "God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent: because He hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained: whereof He hath given assurance to all men, in that He raised Him from the dead." It is extremely interesting and instructive that in these two great sermons to Gentiles recorded for us in the Acts, the coming of the Lord as the Judge is so prominent. Gospel preachers should make a note of that.

Ques.: Do you think that the angel's message in ch. 1 has in view the appearing of the Lord in glory?

I do not think there can be any doubt about that. It will be the fulfilment of Zech. 14: 4: "His feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives," for it was from thence that He went up; and if we link up these two Scriptures with Matt. 24: 16: "Then let him that is in Judea flee into the mountains," we shall see the reason for that instruction, and be impressed with the way that Scripture interprets itself. To this I must refer again.

The Truth of the Rapture.

Ques.: What place then has the Rapture?

When the Lord appears in His glory, we are to appear with Him (Col. 3: 4), and it is by the Rapture that we shall be with Him first, in order to come with Him when He appears. To instruct the saints at Thessalonica as to this was the object of the Apostle in writing his first Epistle to them. They had turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to WAIT FOR HIS SON FROM HEAVEN, i.e., they were looking for the Appearing of the Lord in glory, and knew nothing as yet of the Rapture. Meanwhile their friends were dying, some of them suffering martyrdom for their faith, and they were sorrowing for them, for they evidently thought that being dead they would miss the glory of the coming of the Lord. To comfort them in this sorrow and to remove it, the Apostle wrote, "I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that are asleep, that ye sorrow not as others that have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him," i.e., when God brings in Jesus in all His glory as the King of kings, and the Judge of quick and dead, those who have fallen asleep through Jesus are to come also, and appear with Him. God will bring them with Him; His word is pledged here as to that. But how will it come about? How glorious is the answer to that question! "For this we say unto you by THE WORD OF THE LORD, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent (shall not have any precedence of) them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

Ques.: That is a very wonderful word if we are to take it literally. Must we do that?

How else can we take it? It is the Word of the Lord. It is such an astounding thing that in making it known the Lord has met the incredulity that would naturally arise in our minds as to it, by giving a special revelation from Himself as to it; so that, in the passage we have more than inspiration by the Holy Ghost, we have that certainly, but what Paul was here inspired by the Holy Ghost to write, he had first of all received from the Lord, and it is the Lord's own word that has been passed on to us, to be received by us in simple faith.

The Law of Gravitation

Ques.: But it is said that such a thing is both unreasonable and impossible, and some who would not deny the resurrection from the dead, cannot accept the catching up of the living. It is said that the law of gravitation would prevent such an event. How would you meet that?

I should say first of all that even though we could not explain this word at all, yet since the Lord has spoken it we should believe it, for what is impossible with man is possible with God, and the Word of the Lord is greater than the law of gravitation. But the law of gravitation presents no difficulty to faith or to the one who humbly reads and studies the Word of God. It is a natural law, and operates according to the design and decree of the great Creator, but it operates in the physical world and controls natural bodies. It is a natural law for natural bodies, but the Word of God tells us that our natural bodies are to be changed into spiritual bodies. Let us look at the passages that speak of this. Phil. 3: 20, 21: "For our conversation (citizenship) is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body (body of humiliation), that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself." And again in 1 Cor. 15: 51-58: "Behold I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." These Scriptures have to do with this great event, the changing and catching up of the saints of God to Heaven, and at this point in our study the change is the important consideration. Natural laws control natural bodies, but our bodies are to be changed into bodies of glory like Christ's own body: the natural is to give place to the spiritual, and mortality is to be swallowed up of life (2 Cor. 5: 4), and what sort of laws will control glorified and spiritual bodies, think you? Not natural laws surely, but spiritual laws, the laws of the glory of God, and the greatest of all spiritual laws is that Christ is the centre of God's universe, and He will draw us to Himself and hold us there for ever. So that the law of gravitation need not stumble our faith in the Word of the Lord. It will continue to operate, when we have clean gone from under its power.

Ques.: Are there any events recorded in the Bible that would help us as to this?

Yes. "By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him" (Heb. 11: 5). And Elijah was rapt up into heaven in a whirlwind, accompanied by a chariot and horses of fire (2 Kings 2: 11). And our Lord Himself was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of the sight of His disciples. The law of gravitation did not hinder these three great witnesses to the power of God, that subdues death and every other force to His own will. And here the fact of His power should be emphasised. This change in our living bodies is to be effected by His power, the power of our risen, glorified Lord, and it is that power whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself, as Phil. 3: 21 tells us. No force, natural or physical, in the heavens, the earth, or nether regions can withstand that power.

Ques.: When the Scripture speaks of the spiritual body in contrast to the natural (1 Cor. 15: 44), does it mean that we shall be simply spirits?

No, a spiritual body, or a body of glory, is a body, and a body is substance, and spirit is not substance. It means that we shall have bodies suited to the Glory in contrast to our present bodies which are suited to the earth, or natural life. We are to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven (2 Cor. 5); the character, power, glory, and beauty of the changed bodies will be heavenly; it will be the beauty of the Lord. The flesh and blood life will give way to the spiritual and heavenly life, and our bodies will be in every way suited to that life, but they will be bodies. The contrast is not between what is material and what is unsubstantial, but between what is natural and what is spiritual.

Will all Who are Christ's be Caught up at His Coming for His Saints?

What the Scriptures state.

What about "them that look for Him"?

There are no contradictions in the Scriptures.

His coming is for all that are Christ's.

If it is taught that all saints will be caught up, will it not make Christians indifferent as to their conduct?

Ques.: We are to discuss the appearing of the Lord, but so many questions arise in regard to the Rapture side of His coming, that we ought not to leave it until they are answered. Will all the saints be caught up at the Rapture?

Most certainly. I know that many devoted Christians deny it, but I am persuaded that they do not rightly divide the Word of Truth, and they have not perceived the greatness and the glory and the indivisible unity of the Church — Christ's own Assembly. They do not distinguish between the Rapture and the Appearing. Let us see what are the actual words of Scripture. 1 Cor. 15 does not speak of the Rapture of the saints to Heaven, but of the resurrection of the dead in Christ, and of the changing of the living, which precede the Rapture, verse 23 says: "Every man in his own order, Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at His coming" — not a few of these only, or a selected company from among them, but "they that are Christ's." Again addressing the living saints, who shall be alive and remaining here at the coming of the Lord, he says, "We shall not all sleep, but we shall ALL be changed" (verse 51). 1 Thess. 4: 15, 16 divides the saints into two classes only, those that are "the dead in Christ," and "we which are alive and remain." There are no saints outside those two classes, and they are to be "CAUGHT UP TOGETHER." None are to be left behind. One glorious eternally united company will be caught up to be for ever with the Lord, not because they have been faithful, but because, on the sure basis of His all-atoning blood, they have been made meet for that destiny by the sovereign grace of the Father (Col. 1: 12-14).

The saints of this great period of grace are indwelt by the Spirit of God, and baptised into one body. They are the church, or assembly — which word more truly expresses the truth — and when viewed from this side the thought that only a certain selected, faithful few will be caught up, becomes most repugnant. "Christ loved the church, and gave Himself for it" — not that it might be a mutilated church, part of it in Heaven, and part of it on earth passing through the tribulation in that day of His glory — but that "He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing" (Eph. 5: 25-27). Between the Rapture and the Appearing the marriage of the Lamb will take place in the Glory, and the Lamb's wife, which the church is to be, must be in the Glory before the marriage can take place (Rev. 19).

"Unto Them that Look for Him"

Ques.: But what about such a passage as Heb. 9: 28, "Unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation"? Does not that seem to teach that He will only appear to the faithful watchers?

It most certainly does so teach, but it has in view just as certainly the Appearing and not the Rapture, as it clearly states. While the Hebrew epistle sets forth Christian doctrine, room is left here and there for the blessing of Israel as a people on earth. Several instances of this could be cited, but ch. 8 is a very clear and definite one. The Covenant there is certainly not made with Christians; it is the new covenant that is still to be made with the house of Israel. And I believe that the statement in ch. 9: 28 has Israel in view also. The Lord appeared once in their midst, not to deliver them from their enemies, but to be offered to bear the sins of many. The expression, "The sins of many" reminds us of the Matthew aspect of the Lord's Supper, which is distinctly Jewish in its bearing and different from the way it is presented by Luke; it carries us back to Isaiah 53, where the Lord is said to "bare the sins of many," and to "justify many," the "many" referring definitely to the saved remnant of Israel. He is to appear the second time, apart altogether from the question of sin, for their salvation.

The thought is that of the appearing of the High Priest, after he had taken the blood of the sin offering into the Holiest. The people stood without earnestly looking for him to appear, for they could have no assurance that propitiation for their sins had been made and accepted until he did appear to bless them.

When the remnant of Israel is awakened to their sin and need, after the Rapture of the church to Heaven, they will look for the appearing of their Messiah-priest, and they will not know that He has made propitiation for their sins until He does appear. He has passed into the heavens — into the Holiest, and the Christian does not wait outside that place of high privilege until He appears, but he has the title to go in now, as Heb. 10: 19-22 tells us. Israel will never have this great privilege. But full of sorrow for their sins (see Zech. 12: 10-14), they will wait amidst the miseries of the Tribulation for the appearing of their great Saviour, and their repentance and faith will not be in vain, for as they look for Him He will appear unto their salvation. He will not appear to take up the question of their sins, but to show them by His wounds that "He was wounded for their transgressions" at His first coming, and that He has made a full propitiation for them and to deliver them from their oppressors. Consider that interpretation of this passage and I believe it will commend itself to you.

Ques.: But it is argued that if all Christians are to be caught up at the coming of the Lord, irrespective of their faithfulness, they maybe quite easy and indifferent as to their lives and service. What about that side of the question?

It runs on the same line as the slander which was flung at Paul when he taught the sovereign, unmerited grace of God. He was charged with teaching, "Let us do evil that good may come," and again when he showed that where sin abounded grace did much more abound, the question arose: "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" But grace works in the exact opposite way to that, and the Rapture will be the outcome of sovereign grace and divine love. Our responsibility is not overlooked, but that is taken up in relation to the Appearing, as we have yet to see, but the thought of the Lord's scrutiny of our lives, solemn and sobering as it is, is not the greatest incentive to holy living, and to devotion to Himself. "The love of Christ constraineth us," Paul said, and it is His love to His own church that will be wonderfully expressed when He catches it up to Himself in the Glory.

The truth of the Rapture is more for the heart than the head. It is as a wonderful secret that we who love the Lord are to cherish, a secret that will keep us from conformity with the world and compromise with sin if we truly keep it. Take the words that are used to convey it to us: "I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there YE may be also" (John 14: 3). "So shall we ever be with the Lord" (1 Thess. 4: 17). Truly he that hath this hope in Him will purify himself even as He is pure. At the Rapture the Lord will come as the Bridegroom, and what could appeal to the heart of the Bride more strongly than that? It is as the Bridegroom that He says, "Surely, I come quickly. Amen." His last word to His church in Holy Scripture. There can be only one response to that, and it is, "Even so, Come, Lord Jesus."

"Surely, I Come Quickly"

What did the Lord mean by "coming quickly"?

The shout of the Lord, and the Archangel's voice, and the trump of God.

Why the Lord will meet His church in the air.

The last Trump.

Ques.: Regarding the Coming of the Lord Jesus for His church which we have been considering: four times in the Revelation we read, "I come quickly." Some of us can't understand this, for nearly 2000 years is not quickly. How do you explain that?

First, let us be impressed with the fact that it is the Lord Himself who is speaking, it is not even an apostle delivering a message from Him; the words are His own. "I will come again," He says in John 14. "I come quickly," He says in the Revelation; they are His last words to us. If we grasp the fact that they are His own words to those He loves we shall begin to understand them with the heart. Let me illustrate: A mother must leave her children for a while; as she bids them farewell she says, "I'll be back soon," and if she has the opportunity of sending them a message the burden of it is, "I'll see you soon." If she writes a letter to them, instructing them as to what to do during her absence, she closes it with the words, "I'm coming quickly." Why? Because she knows that there is a great yearning in those young hearts; they won't be fully happy and satisfied until they see their mother again, and she knows that no word that she could send them will be more prized by them. But there is another and a deeper reason. Her children are in her heart; she yearns for them; nothing will satisfy her but having them with her again, and nothing will hinder her when her business is done from hastening to them; she will not tarry then. It is thus, we believe, with the Lord. The "quickly" is in His heart; He will not tarry a moment longer than is necessary. "For yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry" (Heb. 10: 57). Do we understand that? Unless we have left our first love we shall understand it and we shall cherish these last words of His to us, and continually in our hearts there will be this response, "Even so, Come, Lord Jesus."

The Shout of the Lord, the Archangel's Voice and the Trump of God.

Ques.: 1 Thess. 4: 16 speaks of the shout of the Lord, the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God. What are we to understand by these three things?

We shall have no difficulty as to the shout of the Lord. It is the Lord's own shout. As a captain commands his army, so the Lord will command and assemble the countless number of His saints, dead and living, to meet Him in the air, and there will be "our gathering together unto Him" (2 Thess. 2: 1). There will be authority and triumph in that shout, but more. I listened with great pleasure to a servant of the Lord, insisting that it would be a shout of joy. For nearly 2, 000 years the Lord has waited for this moment, for the moment when He shall receive and present to Himself His blood-bought church — this is the hour of His patience — but the waiting time will be over when He rises up in His power; and the shout will be a shout of joy, of long pent-up desire, if we may speak thus in deepest reverence. The shout of the Lord will have His saints solely in view, and that shout will have an instant answer; in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye we shall be with Him.

The archangel is Michael (Jude 9), and he is Israel's prince (Daniel 10: 21): the great spiritual power that stands for Israel. Whenever he is mentioned by name it is in relation to events in the career of that nation (see Jude 9 and Rev. 12). I suggest then that the voice of the archangel will have to do with the gathering of Israel. The trump of God seems to be more universal, it will affect all mankind. If this is the interpretation, we have here three widening circles. (1) The Church, (2) Israel, (3) All men. All will be affected by this great event. The effect will not be simultaneous in these circles, the wheels will move slower in regard to Israel and mankind, but they will begin to move then. There will be as I have said, an instant response from the church; the work will be slower in regard to Israel, but from that moment the nation will begin to move towards the land of Canaan and their preparation for the return of the Messiah will begin; and every nation will be affected also. It will not be until the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, that all nations will be gathered before Him, but the trump of God, which sounds forth at the coming of the Lord, will secure that.

What I should like all to see is, that everything awaits the catching up of the church out of this world; until that takes place all the promises of God in regard to Israel and the nations of men are held up, they cannot be fulfilled, but when that does take place, events will move swiftly to the great and glorious appearing of the Lord, and the voice of the archangel and the trump of God will have accomplished their great work. We need a fuller conception of the importance of the church in God's ways. It is the brightest and most cherished prize that Christ will secure from among men, and until He has secured it — complete, perfect, glorious, without spot or blemish none of God's plans proceed to their appointed end; but when it has been secured, to share with the coming King all His glory, then God will make no more delay, and Israel and the nations will bow the knee to Christ; God's kingdom will come.

Why the Lord will meet His Church in the Air.

Ques.: Why are the saints not caught right up into the Father's house? Why should the Lord come to meet them in the air?

They will be caught right up into the Father's house, of course. John 14 assures us of that, but the Lord will come forth to meet them to conduct them into that place that He has prepared for them. His coming forth to meet them shows the love He has for them, and the honour that He puts upon them. As a king goes forth to meet his royal bride when the news reaches him that she has left her own land for his, so will the Lord come forth to meet His bride.

But that He should meet her in the air is full of significance. The air is the seat of Satan's power; he is the prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2: 2). It is from the air — the heavenlies — that the principalities and powers and rulers of the darkness of this world and the spiritual wickedness operate (Eph. 6: 12), and it is there that the Lord will meet His own. Suppose a great king at war with another were to send a message to his army in a distant field of operations, saying that he would meet them in the capital of the enemy's country. Well, we should say, he will need to crush the enemy's power before he can do that, and if he does it, it will be the most conclusive evidence of his complete victory. It is just so in this matter. The enemy is a defeated foe; the power of the devil has been annulled. Would he not, were he able, prevent the Lord from receiving His own into glory? He certainly would; but it is in the very capital of his dark dominion, in the region from which he now operates against the church, and holds men in darkness, that the Lord will meet His saints, and they, sharing His triumph and joy, will pass through the air and into the Father's house to be for ever with the Lord.

Consequent upon this manifest triumph of the Lord over him, the devil is to be cast out of his present seat of power in the heavenlies. Revelation 12 tells us of this, and that he will come down to earth "having great wrath." We can understand that; since Pentecost his power and subtlety have been concentrated on the church. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ," and this is true of the whole church, but, he added, "I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." This has been Satan's endeavour; with this end in view he has changed himself into an angel of light, and when this has failed, he has gone about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. His counsels and determination and efforts have been to rob Christ of His church, but the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, said the Lord, and here we see that word fulfilled, and in spite of the utmost that Satan can do, the church passes clean through His domain, holy and without blame, having neither spot nor wrinkle nor any such thing, to be for ever for Christ, as a bride adorned for her husband. When the devil sees that and realises the fulness of Christ's victory, he may well have great wrath.

The Last Trump.

Ques.: In 1 Cor. 15: 52 we read of "the last trump". Is this the same as "the trump of God"? If not, what are we to understand by it?

I do not think these two are the same. The last trump has been explained to be a military allusion. In the Roman armies three trumpet blasts were given when they had to move. The first blast meant "pack your baggage"; the second, "fall in"; and the third, "March." If this is the true explanation of the expression, and I believe it is, how significant it is. The Christian is to be standing ready for the final trumpet call. Already he has heard the call of the Gospel, and if he has given a true answer to it he has separated himself from the world, has packed his baggage, and is looking for the Saviour. He is waiting, eagerly, expectantly for the last trump, when in a moment in the twinkling of an eye, the whole triumphant and blood-washed company shall be changed into the glorious likeness to their Lord, and death shall be swallowed up in victory.

Signs of His Coming

The folly of fixing dates.

Will the world be converted by the Gospel?

The calling out of the Church.

Signs of His Coming. What about the Old Testament saints? Will they have a part in the coming of the Lord?

Texts that show the difference between the Rapture and the Appearing.

What do you say as to fixing dates as to the coming of the Lord?

The fixing of dates as to the coming of the Lord is a pernicious thing, and those who do it are presumptuous people. The Lord Himself said, "But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, nor the angels which are in Heaven, neither the Son, but the Father" (Mark 13: 32). Yes, says some one, but we know the year. Indeed? Then why did the Lord add, "Watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is" (verse 33), and again, "for ye know not when the Master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at cock-crowing, or in the morning" (verse 35)? To the apostles who have given us the Word of God by the Holy Spirit's inspiration, the Lord said, "It is not for you to know the times and the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power" (Acts 1). If this knowledge was withheld from them in the Father's wisdom, where is there any indication in the Word that it would be revealed to us? These sayings of the Lord have to do with His coming in glory, and they surely abide true in regard to it. The church period has intervened, it will close with the Rapture, but not a word or a hint is given in relation to the Rapture that the time of it may be known. Days, months, years and numbers are given in the Scriptures, but they have their relation to Israel and the earth, and are all in abeyance until the heavenly company is secured and caught up, then the clock of prophecy will start again, and God's calendar will justify itself. Meanwhile we must accept the words of the Lord, and wait and watch and work.

Will the World be Converted by the Gospel?

Ques.: It is a popular notion that the world is to be converted by the preaching of the Gospel or by the spread of righteousness, and that then, and not till then, the Lord will come. How does that fit in with the Scriptures?

It does not fit in with the Scriptures at all; it has no foundation or support in them. To quote a few texts will be enough to show how false it is. "Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and they also that pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him" (Rev. 1: 7). If it is to a converted world that He comes, why should all kindreds of the earth wail because of Him? If they were all converted they would most surely rejoice at His coming, and receive Him with acclamation. But it is because He is COMING AS THE JUDGE that they will fear. "Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of this, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds . . ." (Jude 14, 15). He is coming to judge because the world has not been converted by the Gospel, and because the only way in which righteousness can be established on the earth is by judgment. This is made solemnly clear by another Scripture, "The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven, with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His power" (2 Thess. 1: 7, 8, 9). There are a host of confirmatory texts, but one other will be enough. "And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bond man, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from THE WRATH OF THE LAMB: for the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?" (Rev. 6: 15, 16, 17). Could the Lamb be wroth with a converted world? And would converted men cry out for a hiding place from Him? Yet here men in every station of life are reduced to the common level of abject terror at the very thought of His coming.

Ques.: Then what is the Gospel for if not to convert the world?

It has been sent into the world to gather a people out of the world for the Lord's Name. This comes out clearly in Acts 15: 14: "God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His Name." Those who believe the Gospel are delivered from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father (Galatians 1: 4). The distinction between the disciples of the Lord and the world is clearly given in the Lord's own words, "Because I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you" (John 15: 19), and throughout the chapters 14-17 of John's Gospel. Every true believer on the Lord Jesus is a "called out" one, sanctified in Christ Jesus, and belongs to His church that He is soon to catch away out of the world for ever; they look for mercy and salvation at His coming; while for the world there is judgment — "a certain looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries" (Heb. 10: 27).

It is of the utmost importance that we should understand that the Gospel has called us out of the world to Heaven; having believed it our names are written there; our citizenship is there, and it is from thence that "we look for the Saviour, who shall change our bodies of humiliation, and fashion them like unto His own body of glory, according to the working whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself" (Phil. 3: 21). At the first stage of His coming again, when He will catch away from the world His blood-bought saints, He will get something out of the world; at His Appearing in glory with His saints He will do something in the world.

Ques.: Why do you stress the fact of our being called out of the world so much?

Because the true character of the Church cannot be understood unless this is understood, and unless we understand the character of our calling, we cannot be true to it; and neither shall we understand the prophetic Scriptures, nor rightly divide the Word of truth, if we fail to see the unique character of the Church and its calling. We have been made partakers of "a heavenly calling" (Heb. 3: 1). Our blessings are in "the heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 1: 3). Our hope is laid up for us in heaven (Col. 1: 5), and we are to set our affections upon the things that are there (ch. 3: 1-4). And finally the Lord said in His prayer to His Father, "They are not of the world even as I am not of the world" (John 17). If the Church had held fast to this great fact it would not have settled down in the world, and it would have kept free from those entanglements that have bound it a captive to the world's schemes and ways, and made it grind at its mills, like blinded Samson at the mills of the Philistines. Thousands of earnest Christians are wasting their energies and time in efforts to improve the world that cannot be improved, because they do not see and realise their heavenly calling, when they might be building for eternity — building in relation to the chief corner Stone, which has been rejected by the world (Acts 4: 11, 12; 1 Peter 2: 6-8). That building, which groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord (Eph. 2: 19-22), is most surely nearing its completion; when it is completed it will be caught up to Heaven. The door will be closed, and all those who have had nothing but an empty profession, will be shut out, and will knock without success at the closed door (Luke 13. 25-30).

Signs of His Coming

Ques.: We have heard much talk about signs of the Lord's coming again, especially during the war and since. Ought we to be looking for such?

There are certainly sure signs that we are in the last days, but these are not "wars and rumours of wars, earthquakes in divers places and famines and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs" (Luke 21). All these are to take place before the Appearing of the Lord in His glory and have nothing to do with the coming of the Lord for His Church. Some have allowed their imagination to run riot as to such things and as to sensational events in the political world. So, in the rise of Mussolini, and the efforts of the League of Nations, they have seen the Beast of Revelation 13 and the ten kingdoms. It is a superficial knowledge of Scripture that leads them into these errors, and the inability to rightly divide the word of truth. The Beast is to rise up out of the anarchy and confusion that will follow the catching up of the Church to Heaven. 2 Thess. 2 clearly shows us that neither he nor Anti-Christ can be manifested until that event has taken place, and the kings will have their power given to them at the same time for one hour — a brief period (Rev. 17: 12). The presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church on earth holds back the full development of these evil forces, and He will continue to hold them back until He be taken out of the way. Signs of this sort and such as are given by the Lord in Matt. 24 and Luke 21, will be a help to the godly Jewish remnant awaiting the coming of their Messiah.

But the Scriptures do instruct us as to the character of the last days — "Men shall be lovers of their own selves . . . lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof" (2 Timothy 1: 5). "Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming?" (2 Peter 3: 3, 4). And this state of things is in the professing Church. Leaders in the "Christian world" lead great campaigns for Sunday pleasures and scoff at the teaching of the coming again of the Lord; these turn away from truth, having itching ears (2 Tim. 4: 4); and their presence in the professing Church and their activities are a sure sign that we are in the last times. Sad signs indeed they are. But there is another and a brighter one; it is the awakening of desire in the hearts of multitudes of the saints of God to see the Lord; they are being recovered to the truth of His Corning Again. The Spirit and the bride say, Come. Whenever there is recovery to first love to the Lord, there will be this longing for His return, and it is for this recovery, this true revival, that we should be praying and labouring, for this is the surest of all signs that His coming is near. The more definitely we are recovered to this true, normal Christian state, the more we shall talk of the Lord, and it will not be signs that will occupy our thoughts but Himself — the bright and morning Star.

Those who have this hope in Christ will purify themselves, even as He is pure; they will separate themselves from those evil men whose presence in the professing Church are a sign of the last days, and they will draw together as those did at the close of Old Testament history: "Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another; and the Lord hearkened, and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon His Name. And they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels" (Malachi 3: 16, 17).

But notice, in this connection, "Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not." Nothing will promote holiness of walk and separation from evil men like this great hope of the coming of our Saviour. It will make us like unto men that wait for their lord.

The Difference Between the Rapture and the Appearing.

Ques.: Will you cite texts to show that there is this distinction between the Rapture and the Appearing, and that when the Lord does appear His church will not be on the earth? In 1 Tim. 6: 13, 14 Paul exhorts Timothy to "keep this commandment . . . until the Appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ," which seems to support the idea that the church will be here until the Appearing.

There are many passages of Scripture which show that when the Lord appears in glory His saints will appear with Him. Some of these are: "When Christ, Who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory" (Col. 3: 4), "The coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints" (1 Thess. 3: 13), "Them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him" (1 Thess. 4: 14), "The Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints" (Jude 14). "They that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful" (Rev. 17: 14), "The armies which were in heaven followed Him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean" (Rev. 19: 14). It is clear from these Scriptures that He does not find His Church on earth at His Appearing, but that it comes with Him; how this is possible is unfolded, as we have seen, in 1 Thess. 4: 16, 17.

The charge to Timothy in the passage quoted, emphasizes the responsibility of the Lord's servants to hold the fort for the Lord until He returns, to establish His kingdom and authority. This is one side of our witness and service; we represent Him while He is absent from the world because we know that He is coming back to it. This is a most important part of our testimony to the world. Our testimony is really threefold: He has been here in grace, He is not here for He was rejected, He is coming back again in power and glory to judge and to rule in righteousness. Meanwhile His servants, of whom Timothy was a pattern, must hold the truth in its spotless purity, without compromise, in subjection to the Lord. When the Church has been taken out of the world, God will bring to light others who will hold the standard aloft and keep the light burning until the Appearing of the Lord.

Ques.: You think then that the Lord will find faithful servants on the earth when He appears. If these are not of the Church, who will they be?

He will, but they will be saints of the Jewish people, a remnant in whose hearts the Spirit will work after the Rapture of the Church. He will appear for their salvation. With the Rapture of the Church, the Spirit who dwells in it will also be taken out of the way. Then the man of sin and Antichrist will be revealed (2 Thess. 2; Rev. 13), and the great tribulation will begin. All the world will be tried by it, but the Jewish nation, because they rejected their Messiah, will suffer most, and in this nation, a faithful remnant will appear, who shall turn to God and suffer more than all, and that even from their compatriots. The Lord will appear for their salvation, as many scriptures tell. "Hear the Word of the Lord, ye that tremble at His Word; your brethren that hated you, that cast you out for My Name's sake, said, Let the Lord be glorified. But He shall appear to your joy, and they shall be ashamed" (Isa. 66: 5). "Unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation" (Heb. 9: 28). "Then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other" (Matt. 24: 30, 31).

Waiting, Watching, Working

What bearing has Luke 12 on those who are expecting the coming of the Lord?

Does watching indicate something greater than waiting?

The Rewards.

What about the unfaithful servant?

Ques.: What bearing has Luke 12: 34-48 upon us, who are looking for the Rapture of the church at the first stage of the Lord's coming?

It sets before us in the Lord's own words, our responsibility during His absence from this world, and the rewards for faithfulness. Three things are to mark us: readiness, expectancy and activity; we are to be waiting, watching, and working.

Ques.: What is the meaning of the figures used: loins girded and lights burning?

The lights burning show that it is night, the night of the Lord's absence, and the tendency is to ungird and go to sleep at night, but in a spiritual sense we must not do that; for while we are in the night we are not of it, but "we are children of the day . . . therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober" (1 Thess. 5: 5, 6). The loins girded and the light burning indicate readiness to move at the word of the Lord; there must be no scrambling and scurrying when He comes; we are to be like unto men that wait for their Lord.

Ques.: Does the watching of verse 37, to which a special blessedness is attached, indicate something better than simply waiting?

Both have their place, but watching means expectancy, the heart is engaged. A servant might be quite ready for his master's return, as simply obeying a command, but if he is watching, it shows that his master's return is absorbing his thoughts. But with the Christian the two must go together; if the heart is not right towards the Lord, the loins will become ungirded and the light will grow dim.

Ques.: What of the next section, where the faithful servant feeds the household, and is also called "blessed": is that evidence of greater devotion?

It shows us the servant in his activities and runs on with the waiting and watching; the three things give a complete description of a servant altogether pleasing to the Lord. I might illustrate these three things. The mother of a family has been compelled to leave her home for a while, and it and the younger children are left in charge of Mary, her mother's trusted daughter. She has told them that she will not tarry when her business is finished, and they are expecting her daily. With this expectation bright in her heart Mary keeps the home clean and tidy, so that when the mother does return she may find everything ready, the home clean, the children dressed and waiting. But they are not only ready but expectant; often they run to the door or peer out of the window for the first sight of the returning mother, and as the days go by Mary becomes more eager than them all. Yet she does not forget her mother's wishes; she sees that the children are fed and she does not allow them to forget that mother is coming; she actively cares for her mother's interests, idling not for a moment. Between her journeys to the door and window, she slips first into this room and then into that, to see that nothing is out of place, and she keeps her eye on her brothers and sisters, for she does not want to be ashamed of them before her mother when she returns; she waits and watches like them all, but she diligently works as well. She does everything as she feels her mother would if she were there. She is faithful to her trust. Blessed is Mary when her mother returns. She has a twofold joy; her mother is back again, and smiles her approval on her little daughter.

The Rewards.

Ques.: Do the rewards of which the Lord speaks show the measure of His appreciation of the faithfulness of His servants?

Yes. I will continue my parable to illustrate this. Mary has the joy of her mother's presence and the satisfaction of her mother's approbation. But now the mother's turn has come. She makes Mary sit down at the table, and all the children, for they were all alike longing and watching for her return, and she brings out the good things she has brought for them; they feast together, but the mother serves. Her delight in being with her children, and the pleasure in their love that made them long and watch for her return, makes her their servant now. But what a reward that feast is to Mary; she has it as a secret understanding between her mother and herself, and a special mark of her mother's approval. This is the way the Lord proposes to recompense His watching servants in verse 37. "Verily I say unto you, that He shall gird Himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them."

Ques.: What is the difference between that, and "He will make him ruler over all that he hath" (verse 44)?

The service of love rendered to His watching servants, seems to be inside the house. It is a private festival that the world won't see. It is love answering to love. It is love in the hearts of His servants that leads to this expectancy and watching, and love in the heart of the faithful Lord will lead Him to show His appreciation of that love that did not forget Him during His absence. But the making him ruler of all that he hath is a public honour for public service; the servant is rewarded openly for his faithful service by a place of trust in the kingdom. Both are blessed, but the latter would not be greatly valued without the former.

Ques.: Before leaving this Scripture, please explain what the Lord says about the unfaithful servants in verses 45-48.

The servant evinces his reality by his conduct and vice versa. Many are servants by profession who are not so in reality and in heart, but a man's conduct shows what is in his heart. This servant says in his heart, "My Lord delayeth his coming." He does not openly deny that He will come, but he defers the coming and casts off the true servant character, and lords it over God's heritage, as though the day of reckoning would never come. To such a servant the Lord's coming will be sudden, unexpected; He will come as a thief in the night to him, as He will to the world. He is an evil servant (Matt. 24), and shall have his portion with the unbelievers, because he is an unbeliever. The solemn words stand as a warning to each and all, yet how clearly there is foretold in them the unfaithfulness of the professing church; how soon in its history it lost the hope and desire for the Lord's return; and left its first love, and settled down in the world to eat and drink with the drunken, as though it belonged to the world and the night (1 Thess. 5: 7), and then to lord it over kings and princes, and to persecute the faithful servants of the Lord. It is the spirit of the world in the professing church and must be a grief to the Lord and all who are faithful to Him, and it will meet with His unsparing judgment at His appearing.

The words as to the faithful and wise steward are an encouragement, for they show that until the Lord does come there will be such, who shall care for His interests and feed His household with wisdom and love. He cares for His household, and has provided abundant food for their spiritual health and strength, and this food has been committed to His stewards. There could be no greater sin on the part of any of His servants than the withholding of this food from those who need it, and no greater service to the Lord than the diligent dispensing of it. Blessed are those servants, whom their Lord when He cometh shall find so doing. Awake ye stewards of the Lord; the time is short; the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.

The Judgment Seat of Christ

When will the faithful servants of the Lord be rewarded?

John 5: 24 says that those who believe "shall not come into judgment." What of that?

What will the judgment seat mean for us?

What it means to suffer loss. Wasted lives; works burnt up.

The unprofitable servant and his doom.

You think that the Scriptures teach that the manifestation of the servants of the Lord as to their faithfulness will take place at the Appearing of Christ and not at the Rapture?

The rewards for faithful service will be enjoyed then; and each one will have his place in kingdom glory according to his faithfulness, but the actual manifestation will be at the judgment seat of Christ. Then and there the Lord will scrutinize the works that we have done. The text that speaks definitely of this is 2 Cor. 5: 10, and I give it as it appears in the New Translation (J. N. D.): "For we must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to those he has done, whether it be good or evil." And a passage that naturally links up with this is 1 Cor. 3: 12-15: "Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide, which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned up, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire."

How do you reconcile these statements with the Lord's own words in John 5: 24, that those that believe "shall not come into judgment," as I think the word should be?

There is really no difficulty in John 5. It is the person that is in question; at the judgment seat of Christ it is the deeds or works. The person of the believer can never come into judgment, for his Saviour who will sit on the judgment seat, suffered in his stead upon the Cross; the judgment is past and the condemnation endured, and the penalty paid, and the believer having passed out of death into life has passed beyond the reach of judgment, being in Christ where there is no condemnation for him (Rom. 8: 1). Yet his works will be scrutinized, and he will learn what the Lord thinks about his life and ways. Many questions and problems that have arisen in this life, for which we have found no answer will be answered then, and the full value of all our deeds, according to the Lord's own estimate, will then be shown to us, and we shall be rewarded or suffer loss accordingly. But we shall be then, as I think 2 Cor. 5 indicates, in our glorified bodies. Nothing can rob us of this and our place in the glory, which is all according to sovereign grace.

What it Means to Suffer Loss.

If we are sure of being in Heaven through the atoning Blood of Christ, how can we be said to suffer loss?

Suppose two workmen employed by the same master. They both receive full instructions from the master on Monday morning as to their work for the week, instructions so clear that nobody could possibly mistake them. One works consistently and conscientiously to the master's plan, and finishes the work to the master's satisfaction. The other spends one half of the week in pleasing himself, and when he does settle down to work, he pays very scant heed to his master's wishes and does the work as he thinks it ought to be done. It is not difficult to see how different the lot of these two men will be at the end of the week, one will receive a full reward for his labour, the other will suffer loss, for half his week was wasted, and the work of the other half badly done. He would have very little to show for it, and would gain his master's disapproval. So with the Christian, according to his faithfulness or otherwise he will be rewarded, he will receive the things done in the body whether they be good or bad.

Do you think that there will be Christians in Heaven who will have no works to show at all, whose works will all be burnt up, though they themselves will be saved; yet so as by fire?

It does not seem possible that any true Christian's life will be entirely barren of fruit, or that all his works will be destroyed. I remember being at a Bible Study, and our subject was 1 Cor. 3. One brother remarked, "You see it is possible that when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, all our works may be burnt up, and we ourselves saved, but with nothing to show as a result of our salvation." A brother who had been saved from a life of infamy, and who was a bright example of the saving grace of God, quietly remarked, "And what sort of a salvation would you call that?" He was right if there is no fruit in the life, no good works by which God is glorified, we may well conclude that the grace is not there, for "by their fruits shall ye know them."

Yet some lives seem sadly wasted, what about them?

Yes. I knew a young man who as a lad had professed the name of the Lord Jesus, but as he grew up he threw his whole energies into pleasure and sport, and at 29 lay dying. He seemed impervious to anything that was said to him, but one night he had a dream. He was in a room in which were exhibited some beautiful specimens of the wood carvers art, many of his own being among them. Suddenly, as he examined these works of art, the building burst into flames, and he with great difficulty, just managed to escape from the building, as it collapsed in ruins. He was saved by the skin of his teeth. He knew the Scriptures, and two of them flashed into his agitated mind when he awoke. "If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire," and "the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up" (2 Peter 3: 12). It was God's voice to his soul; he saw that he had lived for himself and the world, and his life was a lost life, but, thank God, he made good use of the little while that was left him, and in witnessing to the saving power, and pardoning grace of the Lord he built gold, silver, and precious stones.

What Scriptures would you quote to prove that the Christian's faithfulness here will be rewarded by a place in the kingdom of the Lord at His Appearing?

The parables of Matthew 25: 14-30, and Luke 19: 11-27, and the Lord's words in Luke 12: 35-48, and such passages as 2 Tim. 2: 12, "If we suffer we shall also reign with Him," and Romans 8: 17, "If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together."

The Unfaithful Servant.

Before leaving this subject how would you prove that the unfaithful servant in the parables of Matt. 25 and Luke 19 is an unbeliever and not a true Christian who is shut out of the kingdom for his unfaithfulness?

Is it conceivable that the Lord would condemn anyone whom He had redeemed by His blood to outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth? But out of the man's own mouth shall he be judged. "I feared thee," he said, "because thou art an austere man." Most surely he did not know his Lord at all; would anyone who knows Him speak thus of Him? Those who know Him, while they deplore their unfaithfulness, bear witness to His patience and tenderness of heart, and readiness to forgive, and it is this knowledge of Him that constrains them to faithful service. The man was a servant in name and by profession only; he had no vital knowledge of the Lord. Alas, there are many such.

The Judgment of the Living and the Dead

A comparison between Matthew 25: 31-46 and Revelation 20: 11-15.

The Judge of the quick and dead.

The Son of Man on the Throne of His Glory.

The sheep and the goats.

The Great White Throne.

Please explain Matthew 25: 31-56. It is a puzzling passage, and has been interpreted as teaching that there will be one general judgment at which the great division between men will be made, and some have even said that no one can know before then where they will stand, whether on the right hand as sheep, or on the left hand as goats. It seems to be confounded with the judgment of the great white Throne of Revelation 20: 11-15.

A comparison of the two Scriptures in question will show the difference between them.

(1) We must notice that in the great drama of Matthew 25, there will be three companies, and not two, the sheep, the goats, and those whom the Son of Man calls "My brethren;" in the judgment of Revelation 20, there is but one.

(2) It is nations that will be judged, as such, and that certainly means that they will be living at the time, for nationalities and all class distinctions cease at death, while in Revelation 20, we learn that it is the dead that will stand before the great white Throne.

(3) Matthew 25 contemplates entrance into or exclusion from a kingdom prepared from the foundation of the earth, an earthly kingdom; while the great white Throne will appear when the earth has fled away from the face of Him that sits upon it.

(4) The Judgment of Matthew 25 will be at the beginning of the Lord's earthly kingdom; that of Revelation 20, after those thousand years of peace and prosperity have closed (verse 7).

(5) And finally, it is as Son of Man come in His glory that the Lord will judge according to Matthew 25 but it is as God that He will sit upon the great white Throne to dispose of the wicked dead.

The first time that ever a company of Gentiles heard the Gospel was when Simon Peter preached it in the house of Cornelius of Caesarea, and he told them that the Lord had commanded His servants to preach and to testify that "it was He which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead" (Acts 10: 42). He will judge both, but at different times. Matthew 25 undoubtedly gives us the judgment of at least a considerable number of the quick. As King of kings and Lord of lords, who is called the Faithful and True, and whose Name is the Word of God, He will destroy the whole military power of men (Revelation 19: 11-16). All that are found in arms against Him will be instantly smitten at that time and without any trial. Then will follow this judgment of the living nations, and He will carry it out according to His rights as the Son of Man. As Son of David He has supreme rights over Israel. But as Son of Man He will exercise universal dominion, and the first act of His rule will be this great Assize. He will sit on the throne of His glory and award blessing or condemnation according to the desserts of those who stand before Him.

The test and ground of the judgment will be the way "His brethren" have been treated by these nations. I do not think that it can be questioned that these brethren are the Jewish missionaries that will proclaim His coming as King. They will go forth and preach "this Gospel of the kingdom in all the world for a witness to all nations" (Matthew 24: 14). Their labours will be a fulfilment of the word in Ps. 68: 11: "The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it." These servants of the Lord, whom He will raise up and empower from among the Jews, after the Rapture of the church to heaven, will be "hated of all nations for My Name's sake," as the Lord has foretold (Matt. 24: 9); for under the influence of the Beast and the False Prophet men will be set against every thing of God. But the hearts of some will be opened by the grace of God to receive their message and to pity and succour them. These will be those whom the Lord addresses as blessed of His Father, and they will be introduced by Him into the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. For inasmuch as they did it unto one of the least of His brethren they did it to Him. We may be sure that these nations will be the subjects of God's work of grace, and will be born again, otherwise they could not be the sheep of Christ, nor would they have cared for His servants. The remainder, who will manifest their nature, as enemies of Christ and God, by their indifference to these persecuted missionaries, will be judged as such, and shall go away into everlasting punishment.

The great white Throne judgment will be the last judgment of all, when the dead who have died without mercy from the days of Cain to the last of his kind, shall appear before God. The judgment will be according to eternal, inexorable justice, for the books will be opened. The book of God's most accurate record, and the book of every man's conscience and memory, corroborating all that God has written. Another book also, the book of life, will be opened, and it will be the final test of all. And while every man will be judged there according to their works, that which will irrevocably seal their doom will be that they have no part in the book of life; they are indeed the dead, and this is the second death; for whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

We may well send up a hymn of heartfelt praise to God that we whose names are written in that book of life can never come into that judgment. And rejoice in these good words of the Lord: "He that heareth My Word and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation (judgment), but is passed from death unto life" (John 5: 24).

The Herald of His Coming

"THAT the Word of the Lord may run."

The judgment and the blessing at His Appearing: the showers on the new-mown grass.

No judgment as long as the church is on earth.

"The man of sin" and "that wicked one."

The Lord Jesus revealed in flaming fire.

There is an illuminating word in 2 Thess. 3: 1. The great Apostle Paul begs the young Christians at Thessalonica to pray that the Word of the Lord may have free course — or that it may run. If we remember that the subject of the two Epistles to the Thessalonians is the coming again of the Lord Jesus, we shall realise how striking and appropriate is this figure of speech. The King is coming, and His herald runs before Him announcing the fact. The Word of the Lord is the herald. It is the Gospel, of course, but not the Gospel as it is so poorly understood and preached by many preachers in these slack days. The Gospel of God is concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is raised up from the dead and set in the place of supremacy at God's right hand, to administer the grace of God from that place of power to all who will receive the Word, until the hour arrives when He shall appear in glory and God shall set Him on His throne in Zion. This was the word that the apostles preached, with the result that those who believed it "turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from Heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, our Deliverer from the wrath to come" (1 Thess. 1).

This Word of the Lord, the herald going before the Lord to announce His coming, is indeed a word of grace, the Gospel of our salvation, giving all who believe it a heavenly hope, but it is also an imperative word, it claims and commands obedience. It is like the herald that went before Joseph in Egypt, crying, "Bow the knee" (Gen. 41: 43), and those that refuse to obey it, "that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ" are to be "punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power" at His appearing (2 Thess. 1: 8-9).

Ques.: You want us to understand that the Word of the Lord proclaims the coming of the Lord in glory — His appearing, can you give Scripture for it?

Yes. I will give three from the Apostolic preaching in the Acts of the Apostles. Peter said, "Repent. . . . And He (God) shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began" (Acts 3: 20, 21). Again, "And He commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is He which is ordained of God to be the Judge of the quick and dead" (ch. 10: 42). Paul said, "God . . . now commandeth all men everywhere to repent: because He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead" (ch. 17: 30, 31).

The Judgment and the Blessing at His Coming.

Ques.: One of those Scriptures speaks of blessing, and the others of judgment, which is it that the appearing of the Lord will bring?

God's purpose is the blessing of men, and Christ is coming for blessing and to fulfil the Scripture, "I have set Thee to be a light to the Gentiles, that Thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth" (Isa. 49: 6; Acts 13: 47), but judgment must go before the blessing, because of what men are. It is the persistent rebellion of men against God, that makes judgment a necessity. Yet judgment is God's strange work; He does not delight in it, He delights in mercy. This comes out in the very language that Scripture uses. When it is a question of judgment, we read "a short work will the Lord make upon the earth" (Rom. 9: 28), but when it is a question of mercy, "He is long-suffering, not willing that any should perish" (2 Peter 3: 9). When vengeance is in view it is "the day of vengeance, but when mercy, it is the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4). It is because God's terms of grace are rejected, and because the world will not obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and because men will not receive the knowledge of God when they may, that judgment must come, and it surely will come, though long delayed. The blessing will also come, "He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass" (Ps. 72: 6). THE RAIN SPEAKS OF THE BLESSING, BUT "THE MOWN GRASS" MEANS THAT THE SCYTHE OF JUDGMENT WILL HAVE SWEPT THE FIELD BEFORE THE BLESSING DESCENDS.

Ques.: But the Lord will not come in judgment as long as His Church is on the earth?

No, because evil will not come into its full manifestation as long as the church is here, and God withholds His judgment until evil reaches its climax, that none may charge Him with unrighteousness. That is plain from 2 Thess. 2. The mystery of iniquity is already working, and those who are taught of God can discern it; indeed it is obtruding itself everywhere, in the increasing lawlessness, the impatience at authority, the disdain of God's claims and the diminishing of His fear in the world, the rejection of the great truths of the Word, the spread of ritualism and modernism, and the substitution of "Science falsely so called" for the Gospel in professed Christian circles; yet there is a restraining power here. There is that which withholdeth, or restraineth, and "He who now letteth (or hindereth), will let, until He be taken out of the way" (ch. 2: 6, 7). He that hindereth is the Holy Spirit of God who dwells in the church. As long as He is here it will be said to all the pride and purposes of men, "Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and here shall all thy proud waves be stayed."

"The Man of Sin" and "That Wicked One"

We have often seen it, especially during the last quarter of a century, when evil forces have seemed to be rising up in irresistible waves, threatening to overwhelm all law and order, they have been checked and have subsided, and Christians have still been able to "pray for kings and for all that be in authority, that we may lead quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty." But when the church is completed and taken up to Heaven, the Holy Spirit will go with it, and God will allow men to have their own way. Then "that man of sin," "the son of perdition" (verse 3) and "that wicked one" (verse 8) will be revealed. In these two men — the Beast and the false prophet, who is also called Antichrist, and of whom we read in Revelation chs. 13, 17, 19, — Satan will find vessels of wrath, through whom he will work his will, and by them he will make his most desperate attempt to hold the world against God and Christ (see Rev. 16: 13, 14; Rev. 17: 14). It is against these and their deluded followers, that the Lord will appear in judgment. Revelation 19: 11-21 describes this appearing. Every name and character that He bears in that vivid description of His appearing is consistent with the event. He is the Faithful and the True, in contrast to the false pretensions of men and the lie with which the devil has deceived them (see 2 Thess. 2: 9-11). "In righteousness He will judge and make war," against all "the deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish." He is called "the Word of God," for He will reveal God's holy wrath against sin in its completeness, as once He revealed His love to sinners. He is King of kings and Lord of lords, and will assert and establish His rights by the sharp sword of His mouth and with the rod of iron. There will be no mercy for those who oppose Him, for He will tread the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

In Flaming Fire.

Ques.: Does 2 Thess. 1, where we read of the Lord being revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, refer to the same time as Rev. 19?

Yes, but in that passage the judgment takes a wider sweep, it has more than the armies of the Beast and false prophet in view. The flaming fire, which is figurative of judgment, is against all who know not God and obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Those who have not obeyed the Gospel, are those who have heard it, and would apply to Christendom, and those who know not God are those who have had the opportunity of knowing Him, but who have not availed themselves of it. The judgment will fit the crimes and the conditions in which men are found; it will be a discriminating judgment, executed in absolute righteousness. Another passage that fits in with those already cited is Rev. 1: 7, "Behold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. Even so, Amen." That word plainly describes the Lord's appearing, not to any section of mankind, but to the whole world, and it is a parallel word to Matthew 24: 30, where the Lord Himself says, "Then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in Heaven: and then shall the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of Heaven with power and great glory." He comes thus to judge the living at His appearing, the dead will not come before Him until the great white Throne (Rev. 20), which judgment will take place after the close of His Millennial Kingdom.

The Gospel of the Kingdom

Who will enter into the blessing of the Millennial Kingdom at the Lord's Appearing?

Will there be a second chance for those who reject the Gospel of the grace of God?

How will the Lord appear to the waiting remnant?

Ques.: There will be many who will enter into blessing under the reign of the Lord in the Millennium: if the judgment is to be world-wide, who will these be?

They will be a remnant of Israel, and a great company of Gentiles, and as God's dealings with these two will be different, it will be well to consider them separately. For this the Lord's words in Matt. 24 will help us. Under the godless, devil-inspired domination of the Beast and Antichrist there "shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be" (verse 21). These words are from the Lord's own lips, which fact gives them a special force. But in the midst of that tribulation which will beat more fiercely on the Jews than upon any other people, the Lord will have His elect, and for their sake the days will be shortened (verse 22). The elect of this verse will be found among the Jews, and in verse 31 there are others who are to be gathered together from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other; these are probably not only Jews, that is, men of the tribe of Judah, but also of the whole of Israel. They are elect, which means the sovereign mercy of God has chosen them. But how will they be distinguished from the rest of the rebellious people? God's way has always been to bring such to light by a testimony from Himself, and the testimony then will be the Gospel of the Kingdom. "This Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come" (verse 14).

This Gospel will not be the Gospel of the grace of God, which tells of full redemption in Christ, and the sealing of the Holy Spirit and of heavenly hopes, which we have heard and believed; though it will be a Gospel of grace surely, and Christ will be the theme of it, or it would be no Gospel at all, but it will tell of the coming of the Lord as King, of His kingdom to be established on the earth as John the Baptist and the Lord Himself and His disciples proclaimed when He was here. It will be the proclamation of His supremacy over all, and the test will be, whether this Word of God and testimony of Jesus is received or rejected.

Those who receive the mark of the Beast in their foreheads and hands and worship his image, will not receive it, but those who refuse that delusion of the devil will; and by this testimony, not only the nation of the Jews, but all nations will be sharply divided, And as those who will be for the Beast and Antichrist will at that time be in the ascendancy, those who are for Christ will suffer great persecution. Many will be martyred, and have a heavenly reward, for they will have part in "the first resurrection and shall live and reign with Christ a thousand years" (Rev. 20: 4). Others will be preserved and sustained by the Lord through the tribulation and will endure to the end, and they shall be saved for the Millennial Kingdom (Matt. 24: 13). We must bear in mind that Matthew 24 has this time of tribulation in view and does not apply to the present time.

Will there be another chance for those who reject the Gospel?

Ques.: Two questions arise in the mind from what you have said. 1st, Does it mean that there will be a second chance for those who reject the Gospel now and may be alive then? 2nd, Who will preach this Gospel of the Kingdom?

There will certainly be no second opportunity for those who have refused God's salvation as it is now preached; "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" The Gospel of the grace of God is God's best; if the best does not appeal to the heart of a man, nothing else will. But there are hundreds of millions in the world who have never heard the Gospel, and who know nothing of the Christian faith, except as some of them have seen it, so horribly corrupted as in Roman Catholic and Greek church lands. Pernicious books have been published in which it has been taught, that some who do not receive Christ as Saviour now, will refuse to yield to Antichrist and suffer martyrdom, but the Word says, "Because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thess. 2: 10-12). That surely is conclusive, as are many other Scriptures.

As to who will proclaim this gospel, we learn from Rev. 11 that a new testimony to God will be given in Jerusalem by two witnesses, raised up and empowered by God, and though the majority will rejoice when they are slain, we may be sure that their witness will not be in vain. The Spirit of God will use it and the remnant will be born again. They will be "an afflicted and poor people and they shall trust in the Name of the Lord" (Zeph. 3: 12). The Lord's words to His apostles in Matt. 10 and Luke 21 will have a special reference to them, and they will go forth to speak with "a mouth of wisdom" that He will give them. In Matt. 25: 40 the Lord speaks of them as "these My brethren." "The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it.

The Elect Remnant.

Ques.: How will the Lord appear to this elect remnant?

He will appear when the tribulation-persecution of the Jewish nation under the Antichrist will have reached its height, and His coming will bring it to an end. All nations will be gathered against Jerusalem and the city shall be taken, "then the Lord shall go forth and fight against those nations" (Zech. 14). His appearing will be the destruction of those foes, but it will be the deliverance of the Godly Jews who are looking for Him. "To them that look for Him shall He appear . . . unto salvation" (Heb. 9: 28). "His feet shall stand in that day on the Mount of Olives. . . . and the Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley . . . and ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains . . . and the Lord my God shall come and all the saints with Thee" (Zech. 14: 4-6). This passage throws light on the Lord's words in Matt. 24: 15, 16. "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth, let him understand). Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains." And it will be the fulfilment of Acts 1: 11. "This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into Heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into Heaven." He will return to the very spot from which He went up, His feet will stand again upon the mount of Olives.

As Joseph revealed himself to his guilty brethren of old (Gen. 45) and they confessed their sin of selling and persecuting him, so will the Lord reveal Himself to Israel who betrayed and sold Him into the hands of the Gentiles, and they will repent and mourn and confess. "The spirit of grace and supplications" shall be poured out upon them, and they shall look upon Him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son, and is in bitterness for his firstborn" (Zech. 12: 10). "And they shall ask what are these wounds in Thine hands? Then He shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of My friends" (Zech. 13: 6). It is thus that they will be brought to own the once crucified Jesus as their great Messiah. And it shall be said in that day of Him, "Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us; this is the Lord: we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation" (Isa. 25: 9).

The Word of God and the Coming of the Lord

Tampering with the Word.

The sign of the last days.

The Lord's last word to His church.

We do not believe in making much of what may appear to be signs of the coming again of our Lord, for we may be so easily mistaken in these and injure souls by turning them to sensational and passing events rather than to Christ. Our business is to minister the truth as to the One who is coming, to so speak of Him and occupy the hearts of His saints with Himself, that they will long to see Him, and will cry, "Come, Lord Jesus." But there are some signs we cannot evade; they force themselves on our notice continually and shout at us wherever we turn. One of these is the way the Word of God is treated by many who have professed to have heard it, and to have become His servants as a result of it. How presumptuously they treat the Holy Word!

It is JESUS, our Lord, who, in this last chapter of the Revelation, declares Himself to be the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, who testifies that every word of it is sacred, and not to be tampered with; and solemnly warns those that hear it of the terrible and eternal pains and penalties that those must suffer who dare either to add to it or take from it. But this solemn warning seems to have no weight, and the Lord Jesus Himself seems to have no authority with these men, who set their boasted learning above His Word, and think themselves competent to criticise it, and to say what of it is truth and what is error, what is the Word of God in it, and what the ecstatic dreams of a fallible man.

To those who are subject to the Lord and to His Word, and delighted to be so because of the joy and blessing that such subjection gives now, and the certainty and hope that it gives as to the future, "the words of the prophecy of this book" are infallible and sure, and so, indeed, are the words of all Scripture, and to them this profane and impious tampering with the words of Scripture is a sign of the last times, in which men are casting off the fear of God and despising His Word, and taking "counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us."

It is by His Word that God holds and exercises the consciences of men, but if they refuse to accept the Word as the Word, and arrogate to themselves the right to choose and refuse those parts of it that suit their moods and whims, what hold has God upon them? They have in this cast away His cords from them and broken His bands asunder, and they imagine that they are free.

This is a sign of the last days, and with it the Lord connects His coming again: "He who testifies these things saith, Surely, I come quickly." Shall we not then, as we see His Word so mishandled, expect Him? When men will not have the Word of God, which is a word of grace and warning, to enlighten and correct and restrain and bless them, but will go their own wilful ways in defiance of His Word and will, is it not then the time for Him to appear who will judge the world in righteousness? And when those who by solemn oath have pledged themselves to be the faithful custodians of His Word are faithlessly treating it as a conglomeration of truth and fable, is it not the time for the Faithful and True Witness to appear? And since the time has come when they will not endure sound doctrine but, having itching ears, heap to themselves teachers, who deny that judgment is coming, and scoff at the thought of God's intervention in the affairs of the world, and are both adding to and taking from — chiefly taking from — the words of the prophecy of this book, is it not the time for Him to fulfil His word, and come quickly?

The Last Word to His Church.

It is His last word, and is it not as sure as any other word that He has spoken? Shall we accept every other word in this book as the Word of God and have a doubt about this? It is His last word, and it is a word from His heart for the heart of His church, His bride, and it is the heart that will understand it and not the head. He had said unto John of the whole book, "These sayings are faithful and true; and the Lord God of the holy prophets sent His angel to show unto His servants the things that must shortly be done. Behold I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book"; and will not he be blessed who keeps this saying, and treasures it as the last word of the Heavenly Bridegroom, the bright Morning Star? And what will the response be from the heart that treasures this saying? There can be but one. "Amen, come, Lord Jesus."

It is His last word in this book in which we hear the thunders of heavenly praise; in which we see the pride and crimes of men challenge the very supremacy of God and call aloud for the wrath that is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness, and which shall crush them utterly; in which the Lamb girds on His victorious sword and triumphs over all His foes, for He is King of kings and Lord of lords; and in His last words in this book the voice of judgment changes to words of love; the voice that makes the earth tremble now speaks in tender tones to the hearts of His saints, that in them there might be awakened a response to His desire, and that that response might find expression in a cry that will be as sweetest music to Him, "Come, Lord Jesus." He has heard this cry from many lips.

"They tasted His love and their souls were on fire,

While they waited in patience His face to behold."

Is not this the time when He should hear it afresh? Nothing short of His coming, His presence, can satisfy the hearts of those who know that they are loved by Him. And His coming is drawing nigh. It ever was nigh to His heart; we shall show how near it is to ours by going forth to meet Him with this cry upon our lips.

Let all who love the Lord remember that He cannot come to put the world right and establish God's righteousness in the earth, until He has taken His church, His bride, out of it. We can hasten that glorious day for which all creation groans, by looking earnestly for Him and crying with hearts expectant and fervent, "Come, Lord Jesus."

Events to Take Place on Earth Between the Rapture and the Eternal State

The seven seals.

The seven trumpets.

Satan cast out of Heaven.

The Great Tribulation.

Armageddon.

The judgment of the living nations.

Peace and blessing.

End of the thousand years.

The Great White Throne.

Eternity.

The great event which forms the hope of every true believer on the Lord Jesus Christ is His coming into the air to raise the dead and change the living and translate them to His Father's house in heaven. No event is foretold with greater clearness and precision than this, as we have already seen from 1 Cor. 15: 52; 1 Thess. 4: 15-47; John 14: 1-3; Phil. 3: 20-21.

Though all who have died in faith since Abel's day will be raised in glory at this time, for they all belong to Christ, yet this event has the Church specially in view. It will include all who have believed in Him for the salvation of their souls from Pentecost. He has redeemed the church by His own blood, and He is coming for it and will present it to Himself, a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing (Eph. 5: 27). "Behold the Bridegroom."

The Church having been caught up to Heaven, the saints will pass in review before the judgment seat of Christ and the marriage of the Lamb will take place. And God begins to move specially with regard to the earth. This brings us to Rev. 4, where God appears as the eternal and self-existing One who has created all things for His own pleasure, and who is about to assert His rights which have been denied by men upon the earth, and to reconcile all things in heaven and on earth to Himself, that He might find His pleasure in them. In Rev. 5 the Lord appears as the Lion of the tribe of Juda, who, having been slain as the sacrificial Lamb, alone is worthy and able to establish God's will upon the earth in power. He takes the seven-sealed scroll of judgment from the hand of God to open the seals of it, and to execute the judgments therein written, for only by judgment can way be made for His kingdom to come.

The Opening of the Seals.

Anarchy, with the attendant sufferings, misery, slaughter, famine, and pestilence, follows the opening of the seals (chap. 6), in, we judge, the professedly Christian lands, for they speak of the Lamb (verse 16), a title by which the Lord is known only where the Gospel has been preached. This condition of things is not due to the direct judgment of God, but seems to be the outcome of the unrestrained development of the pretentious and promising schemes by men for their own betterment apart from God. Their wisdom turns out to be folly, and the way that seemeth right unto them ends in death (Prov. 16: 25). This condition of things will open the way for the rise of the Beast — the devil-inspired empire and its ruthless head (Rev. 13).

There first appears:

A rider on a white horse, with bow and crown, going forth conquering and to conquer. The victories gained are bloodless, and tell in striking symbol of some great policy or movement that will promise peace, prosperity, and goodwill, and fill the hearts of men with hope and self-congratulation. These hopes are speedily dashed to the ground, for the white horse and his rider are followed by

A rider on a red horse, who takes peace from the earth, so that they kill one another; and this seems to indicate internecine strife rather than war between nations; it will be a class warfare in which Communism will play its devilish part; for men, having given up God and His laws entirely, will each hate his neighbour as he loves himself.

A rider on a black horse follows, telling of grim famine, crushing with its miseries those who escape the sword, and making the way easy for

A rider on a pale horse, who will come forth killing with sword, with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. And this is not the end as some men fondly hope that death must be the end of all things for them, for

Hell follows with him to claim the souls of those whose bodies are slain by the overwhelming calamities that the prophet sees. How quick, how terrible is THIS DESCENT OF MAN from the promise of the rider on the white horse to the hopeless depths of hell. Such will be the descent of man when God's preserving mercy is withdrawn from him. Even now the swift steeds are bound to the chariot and are straining at the curb, and would take that steep gradient at a headlong gallop, but for the restraining hand of God. Meanwhile men, so blind are they, would fondly believe that they were speeding to the attainment of their most cherished ambitions. The ascent of man is a false dream, a delusion of the old serpent; the descent of man is a terrible fact. The only hope of deliverance from sin and Satan's power, and death and hell is in and through Christ. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.

The Seven Trumpets.

The Fall of a Great Maritime Power, and the destruction of that which seems prosperous on the earth, is indicated under the Trumpets, by the burning up of a third part of the trees and grass, and a great mountain being cast into the sea destroying a third part of the ships that are in it (Rev. 8) in the same sphere as that affected by the seals; but the awful calamities seem to spread to heathen lands in chap. 9, as indicated by the fact that idolatry comes into the catalogue of crimes in verse 29. We see in these visions a world that has refused God and His Christ at the mercy of men's passions and the malice of demons. Especially under the sounding of the trumpets men seem to be left to the miseries that the devil and his emissaries from hell can inflict upon them.

Palestine Peopled with Jews

At this time the Jews will be fully established in Palestine under the protection of a maritime nation (Isa. 18). Their temple will be restored to them in Jerusalem, but they will still refuse God's testimony and will rejoice when His witnesses are slain (Rev. 11).

Satan cast out of Heaven

The seat of spiritual authority that lies behind all great movements in the world is in the heavens. Satan occupies this position now (Eph. 2: 2; Eph. 6: 12), though God is above all and only permits evil to go so far. But he is to be cast out of this place by Michael the archangel (Rev. 12) to make way for the Church, which is the Lamb's bride, the holy Jerusalem, for it must eventually have that place for the blessing of the world (Rev. 21: 9-27), and to prepare the way also for the Lord's kingdom on earth which will have Jerusalem and Israel as its centre. Michael is the great spiritual prince that stands for Israel (Dan. 10: 21; Dan. 12: 1).

The Rise of the Beast.

Being cast out of heaven Satan exercises all his power and ingenuity in the reconstruction of the Roman Empire. It comes up out of the anarchy of Rev. 6, and to its head, the Beast-Satan, the Dragon, gives his power and his seat (Rev. 13), and his authority (verse 2). In this person military dictatorship, godless, blasphemous, diabolical, and ruthless will come to its full power; he will devour and break in pieces, and all those who dare to resist his political schemes — the residue — he will stamp beneath his feet (Dan. 7: 7).

The intention of Satan in this, his masterpiece, is to hold the kingdoms of the world against the Lord and His Christ, and the ten kingdoms that form the Roman Empire will join in this, and give their power to the Beast in order to make war with the Lamb who is Lord of lords and King of kings (Rev. 17: 12-14).

Antichrist will also Arise

as the great coadjutor of the Beast. He will be an apostate Jew, regarding not the God of his fathers (Dan. 11: 37), and will be the leader of the Jews in Jerusalem. The Dragon (Satan), the Beast, and the False Prophet (Antichrist) will form a trinity of evil (Rev. 16: 13).

The Last Week of Daniel's Seventy Commences

The Prince of the same people, the Romans, who destroyed the temple and city of Jerusalem, i.e., the Beast, will make a covenant with the leaders of the Jews for one week, a week of years, or seven years; this is the last week of the seventy of Daniel's prophecy that still waits to be fulfilled (Dan. 9: 20-27). This covenant is referred to in Isaiah 28: 14-20 as being on the part of the leaders of the Jews a God-defying covenant. They will at this time believe that they are at last firmly established in their land, and that an era of peace without God has been inaugurated. They will say, "Peace, and there is no peace." They will build a wall of protection about themselves, and daub it with untempered mortar, but a stormy wind will rend it, and great hailstones shall consume it in the wrath of God (Ezek. 13: 10-15).

The Great Tribulation

In the midst of the week the Beast will treat his covenant with the Jews as "a scrap of paper," to be scorned and torn according to his imperious will. The great tribulation will then begin, which will spend its greatest fury upon the Jews (Jer. 30: 7; Dan. 12: 1; Matt. 24: 8), but which will also try all that dwell upon the earth (Rev. 3: 10). During this period all will be compelled to receive the mark of the Beast and worship him, or suffer boycott and death (Rev. 13: 16, 17). A remnant will be preserved by the power of God (Rev. 12: 14, 16). The Church will not be on earth but in heaven during this period of greatest distress, for she is to be saved out of the hour of it (Rev. 3: 10).

The Remnant and their Service

At this time there will appear the two witnesses for God at Jerusalem, in the power of Elias (Rev. 11), and the remnant which keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus (Rev. 12: 17). To these Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21: 8-19, 25-33 will apply. The commission given to the apostles in Matt. 10 will be taken up again, and the sufferings and persecutions and martyrdoms there promised will be endured, and by this remnant a people will be prepared amongst the Jews to receive the Lord at His coming, and "they shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of man be come" (verse 23). Others will go further afield and preach "this Gospel of the Kingdom" "in all the world for witness unto all nations" (Matt. 24: 14).

Babylon the Great, the corrupt Church of Rome, overthrown

After the translation of the true Church to heaven, the false profession in Christendom will all be merged into the Romish Church, and this will become more powerful and greater than ever in the past, and as the scarlet woman, corrupt, blood-drunken, and splendid, she will ride upon the Beast, the political and military power, but she is to be destroyed by it as described in Rev. 17 and 18.

The Great Apostasy.

Then there will be no semblance of public religion in Christendom or in Jewry (for the Jewish sacrifice will be stopped by the law of the Beast, Dan. 9: 20), except the worship of the Beast himself, the exaltation of man above all that is called God. Then the great apostasy will have come to its head (2 Thess. 2: 3-12), and the abomination of desolation will be set up in the Temple at Jerusalem, probably an image of the Beast (Dan. 9: 27; Matt. 24: 15). At this sign those who are faithful to God amongst the Jews in Judea will flee to the mountains (Matt. 24: 16).

This complete apostasy from God will make men ready to fight against Him, and the

Invasions of Palestine will take place.

Towards the end of the second half of Daniel's last week the King of the South (Egypt) will invade Palestine, in order to attack Antichrist (the wilful king) at Jerusalem. Simultaneously the King of the North will sweep down upon the land and attack the armies from the south and overthrow them and compel the whole force from the south to submit to his will and support his campaign against Jerusalem (Dan. 11: 40-45). The King of the North is the Assyrian of Old Testament prophecy, the overflowing scourge.

The Gathering of the Kings for Armageddon

Revelation 16: 13-16 describes how the kings of the whole earth and of the world will be gathered into Palestine at this time, and Joel 3: 9-11 foretells that war will be the supreme business of all nations. "They will beat their ploughshares into swords and their pruning hooks into spears." Various political reasons will doubtless move these kings to march upon the Holy Land, but the object of Satan, who will move behind the scenes so as to involve all in this crisis, is to fight against the Lamb and hold Jerusalem and the Holy Land against Him. But God will turn all to His own glory. So that in reality God will gather them there (Zech. 14: 2), and will stain the pride of all militarism and glory of men, and smash it for ever outside the city which He has chosen to place His name there. The kings of the East, probably four, with an almost countless host, will also gather there (Rev. 9: 13-19; Rev. 16: 12).

The four angels that are to be loosed beyond Euphrates, seem to represent four great nations, in the east, and that river is to be dried up to make the way of these kings and their vast armies easy. This is probably the true "yellow peril," and the invasion of Europe the purpose. It may be that the armies of Europe under the Beast march into Palestine to withstand them. Anyhow these multitudes will be gathered in the valley of Jehoshaphat (Joel 3), not to destroy one another, but to be judged by the Lord.

The Coming of the King of kings and Lord of lords.

The sudden appearance of the Lord in this character has special reference to the Beast and false prophet and their armies, for the Beast will have assumed this place and title, which is the Lord's alone. These two devil-inspired leaders of men are cast into the lake of fire, and their armies are destroyed by the word of the Lord (Rev. 19: 11-21).

In Flaming Fire taking Vengeance.

Simultaneously all who had not obeyed the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, which they must have heard to be judged on this ground, whether with the armies of the Beast or not, will be destroyed at the glorious appearing of the Lord (2 Thess. 1: 7-9).

His Feet shall Stand upon Mount Olivet.

He shall appear for the salvation of the godly remnant of Israel who look for Him (Heb. 9: 28), and who have fled to the mountains according to His Word (Matt. 24: 16). In the same manner as, and from the same spot from whence He went up He shall return (Acts 1: 11; Zech. 14: 4). And then the Lord will sit to judge the heathen round about (Zech. 14. ; Joel 3: 12-16).

Israel Delivered and the Kingdom Established.

Those of the Jewish nation who have been faithful to Him during the great tribulation now brought to an end by the coming of the Lord will have a special place in His Kingdom, but He will gather His elect, not of the Jews only, but of the ten tribes also from north, south, east, and west (Matt. 24: 31), and all Israel shall be saved (Rom. 11: 26), The nation born again, and with the law written in their hearts, shall live unto God (Ezek. 37).

The Invasion of the Land by Gog and Magog.

This invasion of a mighty host from Russia and adjacent lands foretold in Ezekiel 38, 39, after the striking description of the restoration of Israel in chapter 37, appears to take place after Israel has accepted their Messiah, and when they "are at rest and dwell safely" (Ezek. 38: 11). The destruction of these armies is described in Ezek. 39.

The Judgment of the Living Nations.

The last section of mankind still alive on the earth to be judged of the Lord are those that have been farthest off from Him, morally and spiritually, and who have had the least knowledge of His will, the heathen nations. This judgment is described by the Lord in Matt. 25: 31-46. It is not as the Messiah of Israel that He judges these nations, but as Son of man, who is set over all things, and it takes place when He sits upon the throne of His glory in that character. The test for all who stand before Him then and there will be how they have treated His brethren (ver. 40), who had preached to the ends of the earth "this Gospel of the Kingdom," who had been the heralds of His kingdom.

Peace and Blessing

will follow which shall be earth-wide, having its centre on earth in Jerusalem (Isa. 2: 2-5). But all the light and wisdom and blessing will come through the heavenly Jerusalem, which is the wife of the Lamb, His helpmeet in the place of administration that is given to Him (Rev. 21: 24). This will be the Millennial age of which the Old Testament prophets spoke in glowing words, and in it will be made manifest to all the glory that is to follow upon the sufferings of Christ (1 Peter 1: 11).

Principalities and Powers and Dominions

other than those connected with the earth will have to be subdued by Him, and these vast spiritual dominions will by His power be reconciled to God (Col. 1: 20), for "He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death . . . and when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. 15: 25-28).

The Close of the Thousand Years

reveals the fact that millions who had been born during their peaceful course had not been born again, and that they will be in heart and character just what man has ever been since the fall, ready to rebel against God; which they do with great enthusiasm when Satan, who had been chained up in the bottomless pit during the millennium, is released for a little season (Rev. 20: 7-9). The devil is then sent to his eternal doom, the lake of fire (verse 10).

The Great White Throne.

This will be the last judgment, the judgment of the dead who have died in their sins, all who stand there have but one judgment; they are shut off from the God whose mercy they had refused, and cast into the lake of fire, where the devil is whom they had served (Rev. 20: 11-15).

The Eternal State.

The earth and the heaven having fled away from the face of the Judge upon the throne, a new heaven and a new earth come into being, and the "tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away. And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And He said unto me, Write: for these things are true and faithful. And He said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely" (Rev. 21: 3-6).

The coming again of the Lord Jesus, and consequent events, from other standpoints, is dealt with in "For This Cause", and "Jerusalem".

Anticipation

I read in the infallible Scriptures

Of a day that is yet to be,

When the glory and power of Jesus,

Men, angels and devils shall see;

His name above all names exalted,

All knees in His presence shall bend,

And tongues without number confess Him,

His praises as incense ascend.

Oh, sing ye, and publish the story;

Rejoice, for Jehovah doth reign;

Give honour, dominion and glory,

To God and the Lamb that was slain.

All eyes in the glory shall see Him,

The Lamb in the midst of the throne;

And thousands on thousands shall own Him

Worthy of the kingdom and crown.

For He hath prevailed, and He only,

To open the book of God's will,

Undo all the works of the devil,

And earth with God's righteousness fill.

All angels shall say, Alleluia!

All heaven shall add its Amen;

Let us shout and be glad and give honour

To Him who for sinners was slain.

For His wife hath made herself ready,

The long-looked-for marriage has come,

And heaven doth ring with His praises,

His foes at His footstool are dumb.

His kingdom shall come, and the prayers

Of His saints be answered at last,

And justice and mercy shall flourish,

Toil, grief and oppression be past.

His sceptre stretched out for the needy,

He'll feed all the poor with His bread;

And over all realms in His kingdom

Contentment and peace shall be spread. J. T. M.

Tune: The Great Judgment Morning. Awakening Songs. Pickering & Inglis.

"Ye are Christ's"

"Ye are Christ's"

Twelve Addresses given at Conferences for Younger Christians

J. T. Mawson

Contents

"My Disciples"

Adorning the Doctrine

Great Sights

At His Feet

"Ye are Christ's"

"Well-pleasing to Him"

Trading for our Lord

The Lord's Yoke

The Bright Shining of a Candle

Three Men

Blowing the Silver Trumpets

The Testimony of the Lord

"My Disciples"

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. Psalm 23.

My subject is discipleship, and I do not know a more heartening Scripture for disciples than Psalm 23. It is so well known that probably you could all repeat it without a mistake, but often those parts of the Bible that we know best yield to us the greatest good. May it be so now.

Disciples could not be without a leader, and our Leader is the Lord, the good Shepherd of the sheep. But no man is the Lord's disciple unless he is a saved sheep, and the first sentence of our Psalm involves that.

THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD.

On this sentence hangs every blessing in the Psalm, and they are many. But notice, it is not, The Lord is the Shepherd, but The Lord is my Shepherd; it is a personal matter, deeply and exclusively personal. A young man said to me one day, "I don't like the personal way you put things." "And that is the reason you are not saved," was my answer. If you cannot say "The Lord is my Shepherd," you are not saved. You do not know Him, and you are not a disciple of His. How can you come into this? A girl was very ill, and greatly troubled about her soul's salvation. Somebody sent her a Scripture text card by post. It ran, Jesus said, "My sheep hear My voice and I know them, and they follow Me, and I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand." She read those wonderful words, and said to herself "If only I could say that I was one of His sheep, I should be happy." But she could not say it, and threw the card down with a sigh. As the card dropped on the coverlet it turned over, and she saw through her tears that there were words on the other side that she had not noticed. She read them, and these were they. "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." Then the light broke in to her soul, and she exclaimed, "If I'm not a sheep, I'm a sinner, and Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and so He came to save me." Then she understood that the sinners whom Jesus our Lord saves are the sheep that shall never perish. How wonderfully safe are all you lambs of Christ's flock. He died to save you; He lives to keep you. The hand that smashed the power of death holds you in everlasting security. Eternal love and Omnipotence combine in the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for you. You are for ever safe.

He said, "I am the GOOD Shepherd." You may crowd into that adjective every quality that it will bear, all are true of Him. If you were to show me a man who claimed to be a shepherd and yet was always losing his sheep, I should say that he was a bad shepherd and not worthy of the name at all, for a shepherd is not a loser of sheep but a keeper of sheep. The Lord is the good keeper of sheep.

I had been speaking about the eternal security of the sheep of Christ, and at the close of the meeting a man said to me — a good man too — "I don't agree with you at all. You've been telling us that when once a person is saved he is saved for ever. Now I believe, that like the sow, I may return to my wallowing in the mire." "Oh," I said, "you are a pig then." He flushed and I thought he was going to be very angry, but his face broke into a smile that was good to see, as he said, "No, of course I'm not. I see it now, I'm not a pig, I'm a sheep."

There is all the difference in the world between a sheep and a sow. The sow that is washed is the man that has not been born again, but who is outwardly reformed. He has given up his bad habits — it may be he has become a teetotaller, and perhaps a little religious, but there has been no inward work of the grace of God in his soul. His nature is the same and we find him sooner or later back in the mire again. The pig loves the dirt. I remember reading of a certain Chinese Emperor who had an extraordinary predilection for pigs. He had one which was a special favourite. It had an attendant, and was dressed in a silken coat. One day it eluded the vigilance of its keeper, and grunted with delight in the mud, — silk coat and all. Why? It was the nature of the beast to do so. But when a man or woman comes to Christ, there is an inward work. They are born again, and receive a new nature that hates sin: they are His sheep.

The second sentence hangs upon the first.

I SHALL NOT WANT.

If we find the words, "Never perish" in John 10 we find "never thirst" in John 4. "Never perish," "never thirst." Those whom the good Shepherd saves, He seals. He gives to them the Holy Spirit. And the indwelling Spirit is the well of water that springs up into everlasting life. Christ is the giver of living water, so He told that tired and wretched sinner by Sychar's well, and His words abide for us. We are slow to learn our poverty of soul and utter dependence on the Lord for satisfaction of heart. Often we slip backward because we do not give up self wholly for Christ. We think that after all we can find some good in self and some satisfaction in what we are.

We are slow also to learn how liberally and bountifully He gives. "I shall not want." "Never thirst." There are great words for us to take hold of by faith, and then prove how real they are by the Holy Spirit's power.

HE MAKETH ME TO LIE DOWN IN GREEN PASTURES.

When the heart is satisfied there is rest and not before. The restlessness of the world is the result of the vain search for satisfaction. With what poignancy the Preacher tells in Ecclesiastes the story of man's vain search, and what a contrast we see in the Song of Songs, where the heart can say of the heavenly Bridegroom, for may see Him in this passage, "I sat down under His shadow with great delight and His fruit was sweet to my taste."

Jenny Lind, the Swedish nightingale, when at the zenith of her fame and popularity wrote,

"In vain I seek for rest

In all created good;

It leaves me still unblest

And makes me cry to God.

And sure of rest I cannot be

Until my heart finds rest in Thee."

She had learnt the weariness of the world, and the way of rest.

HE LEADETH ME BESIDE THE STILL WATERS.

The still waters speak of quietness of heart, not necessarily because circumstances are quiet, but peace and quietness of heart no matter what the circumstances may be. Do you remember that wonderful passage, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee," not "Thou wilt place him in the midst of a peaceful environment." It means that we may be in perfect peace in the midst of circumstances that seem all against us. We have an example of it in the Lord Jesus Himself. Recall that incident on the lake of Galilee, when a great storm arose. The winds blew and the waves dashed in their fury against the tiny boat in which He sailed, and it seemed as though it would be broken and wrecked by the angry tempest. All in that boat, seasoned mariners though they were, were in a panic of fear, save one: and

"His head was on a pillow laid,

And He was fast asleep."

Why did not the disciples stretch themselves by His side, and share the peace that filled His blessed heart? They awoke Him from His sleep, and with one word He brought those tempestuous billows in quietness to His feet as a man might bring his dog to his heel. But those disciples were just as safe in the storm as they were when a great calm laid itself upon the sea, and there was no reason why they should not have shared His peace. The Lord can give His peace to our hearts, but we shall need a pillow to put our heads upon or we shall not enjoy it. What pillow was it that Jesus put His head upon? The pillow of His Father's changeless love. He knew that His hand held the reins. Those wild tempestuous steeds were under His control, and in the knowledge of His Father's changeless love, He could rest, and He gives us that same love to rest upon. "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God." But we only enjoy the fact as He leads us; if we wander from His side, we are distraught and restless; as we keep near to Him we know the music and the rest of the gently flowing waters of quietness.

Safety, satisfaction, rest, and peace, these are the blessings that He bestows, and when our souls enjoy them we are free to go after Him who gives them; we shall go after Him if He who gives these blessings is greater to us than all that He gives. Then it will be true that

HE LEADETH ME IN THE PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE.

The path of discipleship is the path of righteousness. Once "ye were as sheep going astray; but now are returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls." Now yielded to Him, no longer turning to your own way, He will lead you, invigorating your souls by His grace every step of the way. Mark the words, "He leadeth me," He does not drive or drag, He leads. I was visiting a young mother. She was teaching her baby boy to walk, and as she led him across the floor, I noticed that she did not make him take the long strides that she could have taken, or go the pace she could have gone; she shortened her steps to his, and as he could go, she went, and spoke words of encouragement to him all the way; and as I watched the charming sight, I said to myself, "That is it, He leadeth me." Yes, young Christian, you may be weak, but He who leads you is strong, and His strength may be perfect in your weakness. His grace is sufficient for you. He is not a hard Master; His yoke is easy and His burden is light. He cares for His lambs with an infinite tenderness, so precious are they to Him. He will lead and not drive you in the paths of righteousness, He will not make you go beyond your strength, or lay upon you one thing that you are not able to bear.

But do not be surprised if the way winds at times through darkness and gloom. You may be called to walk THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. That does not mean when you come to your death-bed, it may of course include that, though countless Christians have proved that when they came to that crisis in their soul's history there was not even a shadow. This world is the valley of the shadow of death for the one who loves the Lord. "Where thou lodgest I will lodge, and where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried," said the Moabitish Ruth to her mother-in-law, and she is the example for all time of unselfish, devoted love. You said that to the Lord in your baptism, and in taking up your cross you carry that decision out in practical living. If you had seen a man carrying his cross in the day when the Lord was here you would have said, That man is as good as dead to this world, he is on his way to execution. That is it, he would be treading the valley of the shadow of death. But the Psalmist did not stop at "the valley of the shadow of death," he completed the sentence and he made the valley ring with triumph. Said he,

I WILL FEAR NO EVIL, FOR THOU ART WITH ME. THY ROD AND THY STAFF THEY COMFORT ME.

He had perfect confidence because he had blessed company, and the company yielded continual comfort. Here is little Tom. On his way home from school, some bigger and rougher boys have treated him badly and sent him home a terrified and tearful lad. He does not want to go that way again. But his father says, "Come, Tom, take my hand, I will go with you." He puts his hand into his father's hand and as he walks by his side, he seems inches taller. "There are the boys, Tom, are you afraid?" "Not a bit, father," is his ready answer, "for you are with me." His father is greater than his enemies and he fears no evil from them. So it is, young Christian. Whatever tests and trials your witness for Christ may bring you into, you may have this confidence. You may say, "Thou art with me," even in the presence of death. And notice well, no longer does the Psalmist talk about the Lord, he talks to Him; he has changed the third pronoun personal for the second, it is no longer "He" but "Thou."

"THY ROD AND THY STAFF THEY COMFORT ME."

As Aaron's rod that budded was the insignia of his priesthood, so the rod of the Lord points Him out as our great High Priest, who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and is merciful and faithful, able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by Him. The Epistle to the Hebrews shows us the Lord bearing the priestly rod, and in that same Epistle He is the "Great Shepherd of the sheep." His sheep are the sons of God and He is bringing them to glory. His priestly grace sustains them on the road. The staff, His strength, carries them on triumphantly. The table prepared, the head anointed, and the cup overflowing, all speak of blessings that none but our great Shepherd could supply. They are a feasting heart, a witnessing for Christ in the joy of the Holy Ghost, and a cup overflowing with blessing for others.

Goodness and mercy have followed you so far on your homeward way. You have not travelled far as yet, but suppose you are to live until the weight of a hundred years bows your head and bends your back, what then? You may face the future with confidence and say, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." Not one day a week only, but seven; not on the bright days only, but all the days of my life; through the enthusiasms of youth, the sterner years of middle age and into the infirmities of old age, it will still be the same. But you are not looking so far ahead, you are looking for the Lord, His coming draws nigh. We read, "The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; so shall we ever be with the Lord." (1 Thess. 4). We "shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."

Presumptuous man, this David! some would say; it would have been far more becoming if he had said, I hope I shall dwell in the house of the Lord. But if it had depended upon David, it would have been presumption even to hope. But it did not depend upon David, nor does such a glorious destiny depend on any one of us who can say "The Lord is my Shepherd." If the Lord is my Shepherd, I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. This Psalm, beginning as it does, could not end in any other way, it would not be perfect if it did. If the Lord is your Shepherd will He lose you on the way to His house? Impossible! You are too precious to Him for that. You are His Father's love-gift to Him. You are His for ever. The Shepherd is responsible for the sheep; He will lead them safely home. His honour is at stake, His pledged word and the glory of His Name; but best of all, He loves you too well to lose you. Who would not follow Him?

"O, who will follow the Nazarene?

O Lord, our hearts awaken!

May no false pomp Thy glory screen,

Thy life from the earth was taken.

And O, Thy Name is above the skies,

All past Thy toil and sorrow.

Though earth may woo, my heart replies,

That I wait the grand to-morrow."

Now let us hear the conclusion of the whole, matter; if any one will go after the Lord, he will find Him able to sustain him from the first step in the path of discipleship to the last; the difficulties in the path will only reveal more and more His inexhaustible resources of grace and power. "If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together." "If any man serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am there shall also My servant be: if any man serve Me, him will My Father honour."

Adorning the Doctrine

Exhort servants to be obedient unto their masters, and to please them well in all things; not answering again;

Not purloining, but showing all good fidelity; that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.

For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,

Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;

Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;

Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. Titus 2. 9-14

The doctrine of God our Saviour is THE GOSPEL. It tells us that God is good and doeth good. How glad we are that we ever heard it; without it we had lived without God, without Christ and without hope in the world; and what would such a life have been to us? And what should we have been?

"A walking shadow; a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more . . . a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing."

So much for a life lived without the knowledge of God, but when such a life is done, what then? "After this the judgment," when account must be given to God for it all. But the gospel has brought light and substance into our lives; we have something to live for now, as we shall see, and we have a glorious hope for the future. Let us thank God and rejoice that we ever heard the gospel. Now we are called upon to adorn the gospel. Adorn the gospel! how can we do that? Is not the gospel perfect in its beauty? Yes, so we thought it to be when first the light of it dispelled the darkness in which we groped, and we were right, and if it is already perfect, what can we do to adorn it? Truly we cannot add anything to it, we might as well try

"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,

To throw a perfume on the violet,

To smooth the ice, or add another hue

Unto the rainbow, or with taper light

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish"

But we can bring out in lives that have been renewed by it, the beauty that is in it. The world does not see any beauty in it, and we cannot wonder at that, for when He who is the theme of it was here He was despised and rejected of men, He was without form or comeliness to them, and when they saw Him there was no beauty in Him that they should desire Him, but "to you who believe He is precious," "the chiefest among ten thousand and the altogether lovely One." What Jesus was the gospel is.

Take a hyacinth bulb. A parcel of them was once left in a kitchen, and the cook, who mistook them for onions, said, "They had neither taste nor smell, so I threw them out." But plant that dry looking root, with neither taste nor smell, in a bowl; give it proper culture, and then behold it sending up its glorious spike of flowers and filling the whole house with fragrance. But all the beauty that cultivation brings into evidence was there in the bulb before it was disclosed. So it is with the gospel. We who have believed it must live out its blessedness before the eyes of our fellow men, to whom it has neither taste nor smell, and so adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things. What a responsibility yet what a privilege lies within the reach of us all! In this world that reeks with unholy savours and the stench of sin we may produce and shed abroad the beauty and sweetness of the grace of God, we may be imitators of God, going about doing good.

The exhortation was first addressed to servants, slaves who had been sold and bought in the public markets. And four ways in which they might do good was set before them. They were to be obedient to their own masters; and meek in their behaviour towards them, not answering again; and honest, not purloining their master's goods; and faithful, showing all good fidelity. OBEDIENCE, MEEKNESS, HONESTY, FAITHFULNESS! Practical qualities these, and how good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, and what a contrast to the spirit and the ways of the world as we know it.

Young men and women who have professed the Name of the Lord, see that you do not come behind in these things; it is up to you all to show what the grace of God can do in lives like yours. You do not need to go to the mission field for this; do it in the house where you live and in the place where you work.

Have you got your Bibles open at Titus 2? If so, notice that verse 11 begins with "For," and proceeds to give the cause which only can produce this desired effect, and it is this which we must now consider, "FOR THE GRACE OF GOD THAT BRINGETH SALVATION HATH APPEARED TO ALL MEN." The grace of God is the activity of His love towards those who deserved His wrath, and it subsists for us in our Lord Jesus Christ. We shall understand it better if we see it in Him, and we have not got it at all if we dissociate it from Him, for grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, and He dwelt among us full of grace. The grace of God which is salvation was not sent to us, but brought to us. It was not sent by an angelic messenger, it was brought by God's beloved Son. Many people look upon this blessing as they do upon a present sent to them by parcel post. There it is, they have got it, and are glad to have it, for is it not a token of the love of the distant friend? But he is not there; how different it would have been if he had brought it. And along with this mistake, these same people spell salvation IT; that is the wrong way to spell it, surely; it should be spelt HIM, for if you have Him, the Saviour, you have salvation. Moses understood it when he sang, "The Lord is my strength and my song, and He is become my salvation."

Is not this what the Lord meant when He said to the publican in the tree, "Zaccheus, make haste and come down, for to-day I MUST ABIDE at thy house." And as He crossed the threshold of that happy man's home, He said, "This day is SALVATION come to this house." Why? Because He had come to it, Jesus Himself was salvation. When He brings salvation to us, He comes to stay with us. It is as though He said, I love you so well, and I have sought you so long, I will never be parted from you. "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee." We have the blessing but we have the Blesser too. And now the grace of God has given to us the desire to adorn the doctrine; and in His salvation lies the power that can do it, for salvation is a great and comprehensive work. What we need now is instruction as to how to do it.

As the sun rises in the morning for all, so the Lord Jesus appeared for all men. Alas that so few appreciate the grace that He brought. But we are glad that our hearts have been opened to give Him a welcome. May we treat Him well who has come to us and show all good fidelity to Him. He has blessed us, He has saved us, we are His. But that is the beginning of the ways of grace with us. Grace saves us and also teaches and instructs us in the way of righteousness, as we read, "TEACHING US THAT DENYING UNGODLINESS AND WORLDLY LUSTS, WE SHOULD LIVE SOBERLY, RIGHTEOUSLY, AND GODLY, IN THIS PRESENT WORLD." We are now in the school of grace. Does the thought of school bring back memories of hard tasks and stern teachers? Those things belong to the old school and schoolmaster whose name is LAW; the school of grace is different, for the Saviour is the Teacher there. It is He who said, "Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light." If He is our Teacher, how attractive the lessons must be, and He teaches not only by His words but by His ways. He is our pattern and guide, and we are to be imitators of Him. We entered His school on the day that He saved us; we shall be in it until the end of our days on earth; then, and not until then, shall we graduate; may we all do it with honours for His joy.

The teaching is not theoretical but practical. We must know the doctrine, of course, if we are to adorn it, but in this school of grace we are taught to walk rather than to talk. We must learn how to behave ourselves in three spheres of life: in the inner, personal sphere we are to live soberly, in our relations with others we are to live righteously, and in our relations with God we are to live godly. Christ has set us an example that we should walk in His steps, and all this was lived out perfectly by Him when He was here.

Do you know the beautiful hymn, some verses of which are:

"O Lord! when we the path retrace

Which Thou on earth hast trod,

To man Thy wondrous love and grace,

Thy faithfulness to God.

Faithful amidst unfaithfulness

'Mid darkness only light,

Thou didst Thy Father's name confess,

And in His will delight"?

As we sit at His feet and consider Him, we admire and adore and sing:

"We wonder at Thy lowly mind,

And fain would like Thee be,

And all our rest and pleasure find

In learning, Lord, of Thee."

It all becomes so real and so wonderful, that we are glad to turn our backs upon our former life; we deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. These two things make up the life of the world; they mean, "We won't have God, and we will please ourselves." But for us, God has become so attractive through the gospel that we cannot live without Him, and His light has revealed to us how pernicious our own way was, so that we now choose His way instead of ours.

And grace has made us expectant, the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost has given us a hope of which we are not ashamed. We are "LOOKING FOR THAT BLESSED HOPE, AND THE GLORIOUS APPEARING OF THE GREAT GOD AND OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST." The blessed hope is the coming again of our Lord Jesus Christ, to fulfil His own word, "I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am there ye may be also." There are those who teach that only those who are faithful and watching will be taken when the Lord fulfils this word; they insist on what is called a "partial rapture" which will be a reward for faithfulness and labour. If that were so — which, thank God, it is not — this hope would no longer be a BLESSED HOPE; for who of us would care to lay his hand upon his heart and say, "I am one of the faithful"? If we have a true sense of our own frailty we confess that we are unprofitable servants, but this hope does not depend upon what we are but upon what God is; it has been given to us by the grace of God, IT IS ALL OF GRACE; but "to him that worketh the reward is not reckoned of grace but of debt." It is a blessed hope, not because it is acquired by fulfilled responsibility but because it has been set before us by sovereign grace.

The glorious appearing will follow that blessed hope; indeed, it is part of it. The glory of our Saviour shall fill the world in that day. It does not fill the world yet; this is the night in which our Lord is absent from the world and in which we have to shine as lights and be witnesses to the blessedness of the gospel, but the morning is coming when the Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings. The world will not rejoice when He appears; all nations of the earth shall wail because of Him, but we shall rejoice in that day. And what is it that has made the difference? The next verse tells us, "WHO GAVE HIMSELF FOR US." Such was His love, and because He loved us and gave Himself for us, we shall not be afraid when He comes in His glory, and because we love Him we shall rejoice to see Him exalted where once He was dishonoured.

He gave Himself TO REDEEM US FROM ALL INIQUITY. We were slaves, but He has set us free, and the price of our redemption was His blood. He gave Himself to deliver us from the bondage of sin and to lead us in the paths of righteousness, and "THAT HE MIGHT PURIFY UNTO HIMSELF A PECULIAR PEOPLE." He wanted us entirely for Himself, His own peculiar treasure, and for this He would separate us from every evil thing and from every rival and from every yoke.

It is blessed to be able to sing,

"Lord Jesus, Thine,

For ever to recline

On love eternal fixed and sure.

Yes, I am Thine for evermore,

Lord Jesus, Thine."

But there is more than that, we are to be ZEALOUS OF GOOD WORKS. We learn in secret, but we show our progress before the eyes of others. The Christian is not called to be a monk, wasting his days behind monastery walls, but as Jesus of Nazareth went about doing good for God was with Him, so are we called to follow in His steps, and to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour by good works. In this matter we must not be slothful. Our spiritual force and progress are not gauged by our intellectual knowledge of the doctrines of the Epistles, but by the way we carry out the exhortations in them.

I would press upon you that the schooling is in secret. Cultivate secret intercourse with the Lord; sit at His feet when no eye but His can see you, and He that seeth in secret shall reward you openly. You will gain wisdom and strength in secret, you will learn there what resources you have to draw upon when the test comes. I will illustrate this.

Acres upon acres of peach trees stretched themselves upon the hillsides of a fertile valley through which we were speeding in the Sydney-Melbourne express. A beautiful sight were those trees, clothed in pink and white blossom from the topmost branches to the lowest, and standing as a fair bride to receive the smiles and kisses of the sun which looked upon them from a cloudless sky like a radiant bridegroom. They adorned the whole valley and they were full of promise of delicious fruit for the multitudes in the crowded cities in the months yet to be. It was kindly nature, under God's supervision, preparing her stores of solace and refreshment against the day when the summer time would test the strength and mettle of the people with heat and drought and dust.

As my eyes feasted upon that lovely valley I held a silent communion with it. "Tell me," said my heart, "tell me peach trees, the secret of your beauty and your usefulness — why are you able to stretch out your charms before the sun to-day, and to promise hands and arms laden with fruit for the hot months that lie ahead of us?" And I got my answer definite and clear. "We should have neither beauty to-day nor usefulness to-morrow were it not for a process and power that the eye of man does not see. Our roots strike downwards, and hidden away from all interference we draw from the soil continually the stimulants and nourishment that give vigour to our inward life; thus it is that we are benefactors in the world. Our life within, sustained in secret, shows itself in its season as you see it. If this secret life of ours failed, or if it were interrupted by any intrusion from without, we should wither and die."

And as our train sped onwards I considered the peach trees, how they grew, and took out my Bible, and read, "Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly" (Matt 6: 6). Are any of us mourning our lack of fruitfulness? Do we feel that we are not adorning the doctrine, that we are not zealous of good works as we should be? We may be sure that the whole cause of it is the neglect, more or less, of the secret life with our Lord — we are not learners of Him in secret; and every one of us knows that it is so.

This parable of the peach trees enforced its lesson upon me from another side. I thought again of the testing time of the year for the southern land, when the sun blazes from the heavens in his summer strength, scorching and withering almost everything of lesser growth. Yet that same sun does but serve to bring the fruit of those trees to perfection, imparting to them a sweetness and bloom that they could not possess without it. So, too, it is with every test and trial of life; they all have their sure effect upon us. We are either scorched and withered by them, like the corn on the rocky ground that perishes when the sun is up, or they bring our Christian life and fruit to maturity; and which of these two effects is to be realised in our case is determined by our secret life with our Lord. If we are much with Him, striking our roots downward in the knowledge of Himself, and drawing our refreshment and strength from the hidden springs that are in Him we need not dread the trial; we may glory in tribulation, for it will but serve the will of God and work for our good, and enable us to stretch forth hands laden with sweeter fruit to the weary and distressed.

Then go forth to love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven (characteristically so): for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. So blessed and good is He!

Great Sights

Mine eyes have SEEN Thy salvation. Luke 2: 25-32.

He that SAW it bare record, and his record is true. John 19: 30-35.

We SEE Jesus . . . crowned with glory and honour. Hebrews 2: 6-11.

We shall SEE Him as He is. 1 John 3: 1-3.

I offer you a chain of four golden links. Four passages from the Scriptures for your consideration that show our Lord to us in four different positions. First, coming into the world; second, going out of the world; third, exalted to the highest place in heaven; fourth, coming again. In a manger, on a cross, upon a throne, coming again in clouds of glory. How different the circumstances, yet the same Person, admirable and perfect wherever He is seen.

HIS ADVENT.

Consider the first. The great hour had arrived, and He who had been promised had come. It was by God's own lips that His coming had been foretold forty centuries before, and faithful men had waited; their eager eyes had longed for the sight of Him, but He had not appeared in their day; they had died in faith but had passed on the great hope to their successors, who had treasured it and passed it on to others in an unbroken line of faith. But now the due time had come, and the Virgin daughter of David's royal house had brought forth her Firstborn, according to the Scriptures, and laid Him in a manger. The great Deliverer had appeared, but not as some had supposed He would come, with mighty hosts attending and with great power and glory to insist upon His rights and to exercise an undisputed sway over all nations on earth, but in weakness, lowliness, and unparalleled poverty.

Only the anointed eye could discern who He was, the eye of faith, for though the angels voiced the gladness of heaven and proclaimed the greatness of that Babe, His lowly birth and great humility made no appeal to men, except to such as Simeon who had the eye of faith. He was an old man, unknown and perhaps poor in the world, but rich in heaven's reckoning, and highly favoured of God. He entered the Temple and took the Babe, now eight days old, in his arms, and blessed God and said, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace: for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation." What an affecting scene was that! The aged saint who had waited until his natural eyes had grown dim for a sight of God's Salvation, looks upon Him at last and knows Him; his arms embrace Him, and he loves Him and presses Him to his heart, and is satisfied and at peace.

Yet things were not as a godly Israelite would have had them in the land. The nation was under the heel of a Gentile power; the proud leaders of it were as dead as corpses towards God, and darkness, demon-possession and disease held the people in bitter bondage; there was a great parade of external religion, but underneath the surface, moral putrefaction and death and everything that was hateful to God. Yet Simeon was at rest about it all, for though he saw not yet everything put right, he saw Jesus, and that was enough; the One who would put things right had come.

It is clear that only faith could have given him such rest; unbelief might have argued that some adverse force would appear that would shatter his hopes, or that the One upon whom his eyes rested with adoration and joy was but a helpless babe, dependent upon His mother, and she one of the poorest in the land, the wife of a village carpenter; but faith saw Him to be Emmanuel, God with us, and was satisfied.

Yet here, indeed, is a marvellous thing; the Babe that lay in the arms of Simeon was He who had created the hosts of heaven, and without Him nothing was made that was made. He had come forth from the Father, the Only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, and had come into the world, a human Babe. This is the mystery of the Incarnation. Who would dare to explain it? No creature mind can grasp the immensity of it, yet we can believe and rejoice and give thanks that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world, a Light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of His people Israel. Yes, He sent Him from heaven, and He came bringing light and life and love from thence to men in their misery and sin.

That old man with his keen eye and his steadfast trust is a pattern for us, and we might well covet the rest of heart that he knew. Things are not as we would have them in the world; confusion and chaos abound; and things are even worse in the church; but has our faith laid hold of the great fact that the Son of God has come, and that upon Him help has been laid, and that He can and will undo the works of the devil and bring heaven and earth into reconciliation to God? In the knowledge of this there is peace and rest of heart.

HIS EXIT.

Simeon seemed to have realized that the road upon which Christ's holy feet would tread for the accomplishment of God's will would be a rough one, and that men would be tested and exposed by His coming; and it was even so, as we well know who have read and believed the Divine record. We part company with Simeon beholding with adoration the lowly Babe, and we take our stand with John as, astonished and bewildered, he gazes upon a cross. Thirty-three eventful years had passed between the two, in the last three of which "Jesus of Nazareth went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed by the devil: for God was with Him," yet in spite of His life and ministry of love He was hated and despised by men; His way was no royal progress to a throne; instead

"His path, uncheered by earthly smiles,

Led only to the cross."

And John saw it and bare record that ye might believe. And herein is a strange thing, for what was it that John saw? He saw his Lord and Master, the One whom he trusted would have redeemed Israel, hanging upon a felon's cross, with thorn-crowned head bowed in death, and blood and water flowing from His spear-ripped side. That was a sight that shattered the faith of many and destroyed their hopes, yet John tells us that he bears record of it, that we might believe. What was there in that sight to command our faith? It looked as though the cause of the Lord was lost. His foes exulted in what they considered was His extinction. His disciples with the women who had followed Him thought that He had been utterly defeated, and they mourned and wept in hopeless sorrow. But the conclusions of foes and friends were hasty and wrong; it was not defeat but victory, as John had surely learnt when he bore record of it that we might believe. But what are we to believe? We are to believe that God's love is greater than man's hatred, and that there and then, when man's hatred of God broke all bounds and rose up to murder His Son and drive Him from the world that they claimed as their own, His love triumphed, and,

"The very spear that pierced His side

Drew forth the blood to save."

"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4). Seeing with the eye of faith what John saw we exclaim with rapture, "We have known and believed the love that God has for us, God is love." We see not only God's salvation, in His beloved Son whom He sent into the world, but we see in that cross the great atoning sacrifice, apart from which He could not have been the Saviour, we see Satan defeated, sin expiated and God glorified, and seeing it we believe, and admire and adore.

HIS RETURN TO GLORY.

And now we turn our eyes to the right hand of the Majesty on high, and there we see Jesus, crowned with glory and honour. Yes, the One whom Simeon looked upon, a lowly Babe at His mother's breast, the One whom John saw crucified and dead upon a cross, we see now in the highest place in the glory. God has raised Him from the dead and set Him there. Every Christian heart thrills at the thought of His exaltation, and yet that glory that has received Him has not made Him more glorious. It was the only place in the universe that was worthy of Him. His disciples anticipated the throne of David for Him, and He shall have it in due time, with every other throne; but there was only one place that was worthy of Him when He came forth from among the dead, and that was the Father's throne on high. The diamond is put in a golden setting, but its setting does not increase the value of the gem, it is the only fit setting for it; so it is with Jesus, whose Name is now above every name, and who is crowned in heaven with glory and honour; He is in His right setting there. God has said to Him, "Sit Thou at My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool." But He is not inactive there, but having passed through all suffering He is the fully-qualified Captain, or Leader, of God's many sons. I should like to deepen the desire within us to follow Him, and to awaken and stir up a holy enthusiasm for Him in the hearts of those He has saved.

Psalm 110 is a remarkable Psalm; it is quoted in the New Testament more often than any other. It begins, "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou at My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool," plainly presenting the Lord as faith sees Him now crowned with glory and honour. The third verse of it is very beautiful; it describes what is yet to be seen in Israel when the Lord shall rule in Zion, but I want to give it a present application which I feel is wholly just, and for this purpose I will quote it as it is translated in Darby's New Translation. "The people shall be willing (or offer themselves willingly) in the day of Thy power, in holy splendour from the womb of the morning shall come to Thee the dew of Thy youth." All His foes are to be subdued beneath His feet, and Israel shall surround Him, their Messiah and King, with loud hosannas, a new-born nation, never more to grieve Him. That will be a thing splendid to behold, but there is a greater splendour, and it may be realized and seen now. This is the day of His rejection by men; He is not wanted by the world, but those who love Him may come to Him with whole-hearted devotion; they may be filled with enthusiasm for Him, and, as a newborn race — the children of the morning — they may follow Him with steady steps and loins well girt; they may make their boast in the Lord. This in the eyes of heaven is "holy splendour," and nothing else than this can please our God.

We see Jesus crowned with glory and honour, and it is as the victorious and crowned Saviour that He is leading many sons to glory. Glory is our destiny, for we are following the One who is there. This is all real to men of faith but not to those who walk by sight, and we must be on our guard against the glamour of "the things that are seen" which dims faith's keen vision, and often betray the Christian into fearing men, or into admiring and following them. But the greatest of men can offer us no destiny. Death is their master, it mocks at their promises, and shatters all their hopes and ambitions. Every day is a witness to this.

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Await alike th'inevitable hour —

The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

There is no hope beyond the grave but in Christ. He has overthrown death, and destroyed him who had the power of it, which is the devil, that He might deliver those who through fear of it were all their life-time subject to bondage. And in Him we have a hope that maketh not ashamed. He will not fail us, nor be untrue to God who has entrusted His sons to His care. He is not only a great Leader, but He is "a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God," and He ever liveth to make intercession for us. And that brings us to another side of His activities for us in the glory. If the road is rough and the trials great, and if the fight waxes fierce and we grow faint, "He has said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee," and He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and knows how to sympathize with us and to succour us in our hours of need. He considers us and cares for us and provides the grace that we need, so that when we look to Him and come to His throne of grace, we find the help already prepared and waiting for us. Jesus is not only a glorious Leader but He is a sympathetic Friend. His Name is glorious, and His arm is omnipotent, but His heart is tender. He has won our admiration by His exploits, but He has won our hearts by His love.

HIS COMING AGAIN.

"We shall see Him as He is." That will be the climax of our joy and the consummation of all our hopes, when the stress and strain of our pilgrimage is over and the testing is complete. We shall meet Him and look upon His face; we shall see Him as He is. To the world He will come as the King of kings, and the Lord of lords, to judge and make war, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. But we shall not wail because of Him, for though we too shall see the splendour of His Majesty, we shall see Him and know Him as we have learnt Him here. What He is to us now He will be when we see Him. We shall not meet a stranger whom we fear, but a Saviour and a Friend whom we love; One who has been near to us in our sorrows and carried us through them, who is our daily resource and joy; as He is to us now, so shall we see Him then. What precious experiences have bound us to Him in this valley of weeping, what intimate links we have with Him, and these we shall never lose.

We shall see Him also as the One in whom the Father delights, the Object of the Father's love; and in this we shall have full communion with the Father, and this will be the supreme joy of the Father's house, where the Father's beloved Son is honoured and adored by all.

And we are to appear with Him when He comes forth to reconcile all things to God, and when His glory shall shine to the uttermost bounds of the universe that He has created. We shall see Him then, just as blessedly perfect as He was in the manger, and on the cross, and on His Father's throne, and every remembrance of Him and every fresh view of His glory will call forth fresh praise from our willing hearts and lips.

He is a great and glorious Saviour, and I wish that I could set Him forth in a worthier way, but this is at once my joy and my grief; my joy that I am able to speak of Him at all; my grief because my words about Him are so cold and dull when they ought to be words that would move you and thrill you and bring you in holy enthusiasm and full surrender to His feet. But a thousand times better than hearing of Him is to draw near and learn what He is for yourself, and that knowledge that you will gain of Him now you will never lose; it will be your prized possession for ever and ever.

At His Feet

And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner . . . stood at His feet behind Him weeping. Luke 7: 36-50.

Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard His word. Luke 10: 39.

When Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying unto Him, Lord if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. John 11: 32.

Then took Mary a pound of ointment, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. John 12: 3.

I want to tell you of a place where life's perplexities are solved and where the burdens of the soul roll away; it is at the feet of the Lord Jesus. To be at His feet is to be in the most blessed place in God's universe. I would speak of our sin, our service, our sorrow and self, and show how we may be at rest as to these great questions; they are all answered at our Saviour's feet. It is there that we learn His greatness, and He is greater than them all. There is no place like it for the guilt-laden sinner, no place like it for the perplexed or happy saint.

THE LORD JESUS IS GREATER THAN OUR SINS.

The first great truth that dawns upon the soul as we come into this place of blessing is that He is greater than our sins. It was this that the sinner of the city discovered in Luke 7. He had said: "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." It is more than likely that this tired woman had heard these words and, attracted by them, had followed Him to Simon's house. Should she enter it? What right had she to do that? The frowns of the Pharisee and his guests would have driven her far from the door if the One whom her soul sought had not reclined just within it, in the lowest seat of the feast. Her need of Him was greater than her fear of them, and two forces were at work which were greater than their hostility; these combined to bring her to His feet. His love drew her, her need drove her, and pressed by the drawing of His love and the driving of her need, she took the one step across the threshold that brought her to the only spot where her weary, burdened heart could find relief and rest.

At His feet she wept out her repentance for a sinful life, and she mingled tears of gratitude to Him with those penitential tears for the welcome He gave her. Simon would not have permitted her to touch him, his guests would have spurned her, but the lowly Jesus, the mighty Prince of Life, was not like them, He was the Friend of sinners. She discovered that He had a heart of infinite tenderness, that He could feel even for her, and that when He opened His mouth He spoke as no other man ever did or could speak: He spoke of forgiveness, of salvation, of peace, and surely, of all things on earth or in heaven none could meet the longings of a weary soul like these.

Her sins were many, the Lord who knew them all said so, but they were not too many for His forgiveness; where her sin had abounded His grace did much more abound. His words lifted the burden from her conscience and heart; in Him she found her salvation and her peace. She heard Him say, even to her, "Thy sins are forgiven thee; thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace." And who can describe the blessedness of one who has heard and believed such words as these? David could describe it; and so can I; and so can all who have come conscience-stricken, sin-laden, honest to God at last to the feet of this great Saviour. They know the relief from the burden, the peace after the storm, the deep, holy calm that fills the heart as the sense of forgiveness steals over the soul. Only at His feet can this be known. It all comes in and through Him, "in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins" (Ephesians 1).

THE LORD JESUS IS GREATER THAN OUR SERVICE.

I do not say that the beloved Mary of Bethany was the woman of the city — some have done so — but as the Scripture does not say so we had better not, — I merely point out that she dearly loved the spot where that woman's burden rolled away, and that every time we read of her she is at the feet of Jesus. The first of these instances is in Luke 10: 38-42.

We often admire Mary for taking the place of the disciple instead of the servant on this occasion, but may we not waste admiration upon her that ought to be bestowed upon the Lord? He it was who drew her into that place of subjection and blessing; she did but respond to His drawing as the needle responds to the magnet. Happy woman! He at whose feet Mary sat at rest and without fear was none other than Him before whom angels veiled their faces and cried, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts, but she knew Him in the revelation of His grace, as the One who had come into the world not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many. She had discovered that His heart found a peculiar and unspeakable joy in filling up the vacancies in human hearts with the knowledge of His Father and Himself; it was His meat and His drink to do this. She realized that it pleased Him more to have her there listening to His word than any service she could have rendered to Him could have done. And she knew that she could only serve Him intelligently and well as she sat as a learner at His feet.

He values our service and will most surely reward it, but He loves our company more, and we may neglect Him while we serve. He has more to say to us and do in us, than to say through us and do by us. He should be more to us than all we can do for Him, and we show that we know this as we sit at His feet and hear His word. There and then He can sanctify and cleanse us by the washing of water by His word, and can nourish and cherish us and fashion us according to His own good pleasure. "Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her" He said, not the better part as is so often said, as though there was a good part and a better one, but that good part. It stood alone in its blessedness and in His appreciation of it. May it ever be yours and mine.

THE LORD JESUS IS GREATER THAN OUR SORROWS.

The sisters at Bethany were bewildered and broken by a sore bereavement. They had hoped that their Friend, who loved them so dearly, would have hastened to their help, and healed their brother of his sickness when they appealed to Him, but He had not done so. It seemed as though He had failed them in this great crisis in their lives, for He had spoken no word and their brother had died and now lay within a sealed sepulchre, a corrupting corpse, and they sat at home without hope.

It was then that He came to them. Martha went out to meet Him and stood upon her feet and talked, and it must be confessed that she talked well, but when He called for Mary and she came to the place where He waited for her, she fell at His feet and wept. Behold her prostrate there. Listen as she pours out her grief before Him. See her as she looks up through her tears into His face. And, lo, He weeps. Amazing words, JESUS WEPT. What wonder must have filled her soul as she beheld tears upon His cheeks! How beautiful He must have seemed to her that day! What a revelation of His heart were those tears! How His sympathy must have swallowed up her sorrow! What intimacy with Him did her sorrow yield her! Would she ever forget it? Then He walked by her side to the resurrection of her brother, and in His company, with Himself so near, her heart must have said, All is well. Sorrowing saints of God, Jesus Christ is the Same yesterday, to-day and for ever! The same for you as He was for Mary.

Presently His voice of power broke through the power of death and set the captive free from its grip, and the multitude beheld and wondered; but Mary had learnt something more wonderful than the power that amazed them. His sympathy had poured its comfort into her soul; she had learnt that He was greater than her sorrow and nearer to her than it. Never would she have known how much He loved her, or how tender His heart was, or how all-sustaining His presence, had it not been for her great sorrow.

THE LORD JESUS IS GREATER THAN SELF.

The last we read of Mary is in John 12, and it is fitting that her life's record should close there. The pound of "spikenard very costly" would have distinguished her among her acquaintances. It was the sort of thing those eastern women reserved for the greatest day in their lives. She had not even poured it on her brother at his death, much as she loved him, but she poured it out upon the feet of Jesus, well knowing that He was going to death and burial. The world had nothing to give Him but a cross of shame and a grave with malefactors, and she only among all His disciples realised this, and she said by her action, He is worthy of the best I can give Him, all I have that would distinguish me shall go into His grave. The Lord interpreted that action as no man could have done, and said, "Let her alone: against the day of My burying hath she kept this," and, "Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done be told for a memorial of her." What she had done showed what the knowledge of His love could do. It had made the woman forget the beautifying of herself, and all that would distinguish her, it had made her risk the criticism and scorn of her friends who did not understand. To her henceforward Mary was nothing and Christ was everything. Mary wanted no place for Mary in a world that did not want her Lord.

It was to this point that Paul was brought when he said, "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I unto the world" (Galatians 6. 14). And to this point the Holy Ghost would lead us all. Soon every ransomed saint of God will bow before Him in His glory above, and cast their crowns at those feet that once were pierced in death for us, and worship and adore Him there for He is worthy. We shall cast our best at His feet in the day of His glory, Mary cast her best and herself also, at His feet in the days of His rejection and sorrow. If He will be worthy then to fill our hearts and vision without a rival, He is worthy now, for "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day and for ever,"

"Ye are Christ's"

All things are your's; whether Paul or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours and YE ARE CHRIST'S; and Christ is God's. 1 Cor. 3: 21-23.

O Father. . . . I pray for them . . . which Thou hast given Me; for they are Thine. And all Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine; and I am glorified in them. John 17: 9, 10.

"Ye are Christ's" (1 Cor. 3: 23). I invite you to dismiss from your minds all popular notions as to what our relations with Christ are, for the more popular a notion is the more likely it is to be false, and come back to the clear unmistakable words of Scripture. They are not, Christ is yours, but "Ye are Christ's." I am not aware of any passage in the New Testament that says, Christ is yours.

We are His possession; His claims are absolute; He is our Lord. This is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Many things are yours. Before we reach this arresting statement, we are told, "All things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours," and popular Christianity would crown this glorious wealth by saying, "And best of all Christ is yours." But the Scripture does not say that at all. What it says is, "YE ARE CHRIST'S, and Christ is God's." Just as Christ was and is and ever will be altogether at God's disposal, the willing Servant of His good pleasure, so are we to be at Christ's disposal, to be pleasurable to Him both now and for ever.

We did not choose Him, but He chose us; we did not buy Him, but He bought us, and great was the price He paid; and since He chose us and bought us we must belong to Him — spirit, soul and body. Yes, body as well as spirit and soul.

I know that it is preached and taught that Christ is the pearl of great price, and that we as merchantmen seeking goodly pearls must surrender all we have and purchase Him so that we may call Him ours, Matthew 13. But it is a fake interpretation of a great passage and sadly mars its beauty and power. Christ is the merchantman and His church is the pearl of great price. For it He sold all and gave Himself for it, that it might be His by unchallengeable and everlasting right. His church is His, and you are part of it if you have believed (Eph. 5).

That we are not our own but Christ's is emphasized later in this epistle when the apostle, full of surprise that his Corinthian converts were forgetting it, and of indignation at the conduct that resulted from their forgetfulness, urges "What, know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your bodies, which are God's" (chap. 6: 19. 20, N.T.). Our bodies belong to God because they are Christ's and Christ is God's. Not only purchased are we but taken possession of — purchased by the blood of Christ and possessed by the Holy Ghost. What else could be true but this, "Ye are Christ's"?

When first the apostles proclaimed that God had made this same Jesus both Lord and Christ, so real was it to those who yielded themselves to Him that they put all they possessed at His feet; they kept nothing back: lands, houses; everything belonged to Him for He was Lord, and they were His and without delay or regret they surrendered all to His disposal. Was that because they were a generous and large-hearted people? Not likely; they were Jews. It was because they wholly recognised the claims of Christ. Nor was the truth less effectual amongst the Gentiles who believed, for the churches of Macedonia, though in great poverty, first gave their own selves to the Lord and then placed what else they had at His command. So it is recorded for us in 2 Corinthians 8.

The Christians at Corinth had not fully owned the Sovereign Lordship of their Saviour. It is probable that they boasted that Christ was theirs. It seems certain that they did, for they were taking the benefits and gifts that they had received because they were Christ's and using them for self-exaltation.

They were laying hold of these benefits and saying they are ours, they were puffed up thereby, and producing all kinds of strife, and envy, and ill-blood where peace and love should have held sway. They were reigning as kings, these people who could boast that Christ was their's, while Paul and his fellow-apostles, men who fully owned that they were Christ's, were the offscouring of all things, for so we learn from chapter 4 of this epistle. Paul could not reign where Christ was crucified, he must be as his Lord.

The sort of Christianity that the Corinthians showed is the sort that is popular to-day, and just as they needed to have the truth pressed upon them that they were Christ's, so do we. There can be no advance in grace and truth, no walking and growth in the Spirit apart from this. "Ye are Christ's" must gain its proper ascendency in our lives if we are to be what the Scripture shows us that Christians really are.

Before proceeding to speak of the blessedness of this fact, let me say that it is not my intention to take from anyone any definite blessing or joy that they may have derived from thinking of Jesus as theirs. There is a certain measure of truth in that side of things; the trouble is that it is forced wholly out of its place to the detriment of souls.

It is true that the Lord Jesus has placed Himself at our disposal. He is our Saviour, our Advocate, our Priest, all the grace and love that fill His heart flow out without limit for us, in that sense He may be said to be ours; but was there ever a Christian who really got the joy and benefit of these things apart from owning the claims of the Lord over him? It is only as we own that we are Christ's that we can rejoice in what He is to us.

It is good to speak of Him as our Saviour. Yes, but what did He save us for? That we might belong to Him, "He gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify us unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works" — that we might be His peculiar treasure. We rejoice to speak of Him as our Lord; but that means not that He belongs to us, but that we belong to Him, it is not our claiming Him, but our owning His claims over us.

We delight in the fact that "The Lord is my Shepherd." True, but does the Shepherd belong to the sheep or the sheep to the Shepherd? His own account of this blessed relationship is very definite. "I am the good Shepherd; the good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep . . . I am the good Shepherd and know My sheep, and am known of Mine . . . My sheep hear My voice . . . neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand . . . My Father gave them Me." There is no part of Scripture that emphasizes the great fact that we are Christ's more than John 10, and oh, the preciousness of it; We are His because of the great love that fills His heart for us, love that has flowed forth and proved itself by His death for us. He gave Himself that He might possess us for Himself for ever without a rival. We are His because His Father gave us to Him, and we are more precious to Him because of this than thrones and kingdoms; we are the Father's love-gift to His well-beloved Son. We are His because He can keep us. He can hold us against the threatenings of every hostile power. In His right hand dwells omnipotence. The sheep belong to the Shepherd. "Ye are Christ's."

We may begin, and often do, like the bride in Canticles who sang in her new-found joy, "My Beloved is mine, and I am His," but if we advance in the knowledge of the Lord we shall speedily change our song as she did, and rejoice with a greater joy to sing, "I am my Beloved's and His desire is towards me." The first is a sort of half truth in which self has a place of prominence, the last is the whole truth, in which Christ is all. There the heart loses sight of all but the greatness and tenderness of Him who has been spoken of in poetical language as "this tremendous Lover." Then it is realized that the only response to love such as His is to yield ourselves to Him, and it becomes the joy of life to own that we are His.

This means much to Him; if we would know how much, we must measure the travail of His soul when He gave Himself to save us, and as we endeavour to do that which is impossible, we must remember that His joy in possessing us will compensate Him fully for ever for all that He has suffered to make us His. He will say in the day of His glory, The prize is worth the price,

But consider the Lord's intercession on behalf of His own in John 17. He is speaking to His Father, in that full and blessed communion that ever existed between the Father in heaven and the Beloved Son upon earth. He makes requests for His own. Hear Him say, "the men Thou gavest Me out of the world; Thine they were and Thou gavest them Me." . . . "I pray for them which Thou gavest Me for they are Thine, and all Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine. Keep through Thine own Name those whom Thou hast given Me."

When He spoke to His disciples, He could not tell them all that was in His heart, He was straitened and restricted, but when He spoke to His Father, what was in His heart could flow out without any reserve, and could anything affect us more deeply? Could we possibly listen to that wonderful prayer and not gladly and fully own that we are Christ's indeed? His because the Father gave us to Him, His because He bought us with a great price, His because possessed on His behalf by the Holy Ghost. Yes, the truth, the whole truth is this, "Ye are Christ's." Let it fix itself in our hearts and minds, and produce in our lives its own true and blessed fruit.

"Christ! I am Christ's and let that Name suffice you,

Ay, for me too He greatly hath sufficed;

. . . . .

Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning,

Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ,"

"Well-pleasing to Him"

2 Corinthians 5.

Wherefore we labour (or are ambitious) that whether present or absent, we may be well-pleasing to Him. (N.T.) Verse 9.

For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Verse 21.

For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Verse 1.

For the love of Christ constraineth us. Verse 14.

For we must all be manifested before the judgment seat of the Christ; that each may receive the things done in the body, according to those he has done, whether it be good or evil. (N.T.) Verse 10.

That may not appear to be a very suitable Scripture to read and speak from at a gathering of young Christians. What with the dissolution of this tabernacle, our body, in which we are said to groan, and the desire to be absent from it, and the word in the previous chapter about the outward man perishing, it does indeed seem to be old man's chapter, and so it is, but what is good for the old is good for the young, and Scripture adapts itself to every state and phase of spiritual life and growth.

Young as some of you are there is one sentence in it that I know will appeal to your heart if you love the Saviour; it is verse 9, and I will read it as it is given in a New Translation. "Wherefore we labour (or, are ambitious) that whether present or absent we may be well pleasing to Him." That is my text, The "Him" of it is the One who died for you, your Saviour and your Lord. You will all agree with me when I say that we could have no higher and more blessed aim or ambition in life than that, and also that we ought not to have a lesser one. No life can be right and successful that has not the right aim, and this is the Christian's right aim, to be well pleasing to his Lord. The life that has this aim will be a happy life; it will be a life moreover that will be useful and full of blessing for others, and most and best of all, it will glorify the Lord. Truly this aim must be yours; you will be hopeless and miserable failures if it is not, and we do not want you to be that. You must labour to be well-pleasing to Him, let it be your absorbing ambition, there are a thousand reasons why you must.

Now Paul, the writer of the epistle, speaking for himself and his fellows, says, We are ambitious to be well-pleasing to Him. We realize as we read the words that this is not a mere pastime, something about which we may be more or less indifferent, and take it up and put it down as the mood takes us. Paul was zealous about it; it was his great purpose in life and to it he bent all the vigour of his saved and devoted soul. It must be so with you if you are to make anything of this Christian living, for of a truth if you are not well pleasing to Him, you will please nobody worth considering, and if you are to please Him you will have to labour for it.

And that rules out other objects and pursuits; it means a bending of all your energies to this purpose.

If you are to do this you must, of course, be free from all anxious thought about yourself. Some of you may not yet have the assurance of salvation. You are happy sometimes, in the gospel meetings for instance, when the Name of Jesus is sweetly proclaimed, but at other times you are just as miserable and uncertain. If that is the case with any of you, you cannot labour to be well-pleasing to Him, for you are self-centred and thinking of your own blessing, and quite right too, until that question is a settled one with you. Look at the end of our chapter, "God hath made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." That wonderful statement ought to satisfy your anxious longings and still your fears. In amazing love to us God made Christ, our great Substitute, all that we were in our sinfulness, when He suffered for us on the cross, that we might become all that He is in righteousness now before God. He was charged with our guilt, for the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquities of us all, but more than that, He was made sin for us. He suffered for what we were as well as for what we had done, that there might not remain one stroke of judgment for us either because of what we were or had done, but that we might be received into everlasting favour.

And now for all who believe it is true, that though they were lost and vile indeed, to every sin a prey, and could do nothing else but sin because of the very nature that was in them, yet now as a result of and on the basis of that great Sin-offering they are made the very righteousness of God in Christ. God will be able to say to the intelligent universe, If you want to see My righteousness, the way I can act in blessing in complete consistency with My eternal justice, look at those who were once guilty sinners and Satan's slaves, but are now in Christ before Me.

Consider that great statement well, pray that you may understand it, and cast away your doubts and fears for ever.

Questions as to the future may trouble you and prevent you from labouring to be well pleasing to your Lord, you may be afraid of the changes that such an aim and purpose might involve you in. You don't know what His will might mean for you, and you shrink from wholly yielding to it. Well, the beginning of the chapter describes the greatest of all changes that will ever be in our life's story. "If our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." The greatest of all changes means the greatest of all blessings, and every other change in our lives which shall be according to God's will, will bring to us fresh blessing. We speak with absolute and unshakable confidence as to the final change; we cry with exultation, "We know," and we may have the same assurance as to every other change, for it is written, "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose." You then, young Christian, may look back on the past and view it in true Christian peace. You may face the future and press on to it in this blessed Christian confidence, and, free from all anxiety and fear, labour to be well pleasing to your Lord.

But others say, "These are not questions that trouble me, what hinders me, and what I deeply deplore is my coldness of heart. I never loved the Lord very well, but I seem to have lost what little love I had, and how can I labour to be well pleasing to Him when my heart is cold and fickle?" Look again at our chapter, verse 14 says, "For the love of Christ constraineth us." This love of Christ only will avail to rekindle the dying embers of love to Him in any heart, but it is enough. This love constrained Paul to labour and endure the most extraordinary suffering,

"He had no honour and no friend but Christ."

and it will act in like manner in you if you will let it.

I hope you all read Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, especially the second part of that immortal story; in it you will find much profitable talk, and especially from the mouth of Greatheart, the warrior pilgrim. Well, when in that story old Honest desired to join the pilgrim band, he had to give an account of himself to them, and he said, "I come from the town of Stupidity, it lieth about four degrees beyond the city of Destruction."

"I have often wondered," remarked Greatheart, "that any should come from your place; for your town is worse than is the city of Destruction."

"Yes," said old Honest, "we lie more off the sun, and so are more cold and senseless. But were a man in a mountain of ice, yet if the Sun of Righteousness will rise upon him, his frozen heart shall feel a thaw, and THUS IT HATH BEEN WITH ME."

"I believe it, father Honest, I believe it," cried Greatheart, "for I know the thing is true."

That is it: let but one ray of the love of Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, into your heart and it will thaw its iciness, and warm its coldness, and it will operate in constraining power, and you will not desire to live unto yourself but unto Him who died for you and rose again. The love of Christ! What a theme it is! How tender yet how strong it is! It passeth knowledge, and you can say, He "loved me and gave Himself for me"!

Yet still you plead your weakness; you have the desire, but how to realize it you know not. Turn again to our chapter. Verse 5 tells us, "Now He that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit." The magnificent destiny of verse 1 is certain, and that you might have no doubt about it, He has given to you the earnest of His Spirit. The Spirit of God dwells in you, to make the love of Christ a present and living reality to you, and to foster your desires to be well-pleasing to your Lord and to enable you to labour with that object in view. You are not cast upon your natural powers, for that would be vain indeed; the Spirit is in you as the power by which Christ strengthens you to do His will, and the Spirit does not work in vain.

Now to be well pleasing to any person you must know him, and it is even so with your Lord, and you cannot know Him intimately and well if you do not spend much time with Him. You must live unto Him and not unto yourself. I am sure you will gladly admit the righteousness of that, for if He died for you that you might live, the life you live should be unto and for Him. I am not talking now so much of your service, though He does appreciate your service. It pleases the Lord when a young brother stands up and out of a full heart tells what a dear Saviour he has found, and when a young sister gathers a few children about her to tell them of Him, but this must flow from acquaintance with Him if it is to have its full value in His eyes. Do you remember that when He chose His apostles, it was not that He might send them forth to preach, first of all but that they might be with Him, the preaching followed that. We are well pleasing to Him when we desire His company above all things else and when His love is better to us than wine. John was well pleasing to the Lord when he put his head down upon His bosom, and he was not an old grey haired brother when he did that; he was the youngest of the disciples, and as far as we can make out, not more than twenty at the time. He found his solace in a time of trouble on that breast, in which the tenderest heart in the universe beats, and when the great test came and all the older brethren fled, this youth of twenty with a few women stood by the cross of Jesus. And his Lord was able to trust him, to entrust to his mother, a most precious legacy, for to him, and not to Peter, He said, "Behold thy mother." Put your head on His bosom, there is room for it there and as you do you will live unto Him; you will be His friend and He will be able to trust you and when the test comes you will witness and your service will be well pleasing to Him. Yes, in these smoky towns where you live and work, with their sin and sorrow and misery, you will be well pleasing to Him.

Finally, the time is coming when He will show us everything as He sees it. "For we must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ; that everyone may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad" (verse 10). The review will take place and we shall all stand face to face with our Lord at last, and give an account to Him as to how we have lived. And some of you say, "I don't like the thought of the judgment seat of Christ; it makes me tremble." Well, it may not do you any harm to tremble a little; it may indeed be good for you, and make you seek the Lord more truly now and learn the infinite efficacy of His one sacrifice that gives a purged conscience and peace with God even in view of the judgment seat of Christ. And if His love with you is made perfect, you will have boldness in the day of judgment because as He is so are you in this world.

You will see everything in that day as He sees it, And you shall know as you are known; and it will give Him great joy to show His approval of all that has pleased Him in your life and to put the crown on your brow, which you will cast with gratitude and adoration at His feet.

How glad you'll be to have a crown to cast before Him then, then see to it that you labour for it now. There will be much that will not bear His scrutiny. The wood, hay and stubble will all be burnt up, and everything will be lost that has not been well pleasing to Him. Yes, with some there may be days, weeks, months, perhaps years of life — all lost. I was asked to visit a young man. He had professed the Saviour's Name as a boy, but when in his teens the world put in a claim for him and he yielded to it, and lived for sport and pleasure and forgot the Lord, and at twenty-nine he was dying of consumption. He was unresponsive to anything that I could say; the world had cast its chilly blight upon his soul and he seemed insensible to the Word. But that night or the next, he awoke out of his sleep in a state of great excitement.

And after a while he told his wife the cause of it. He had dreamt that he was in an exhibition of wood carving work. He was himself an expert in that branch of art, and many fine pieces of his own were there. Suddenly the building burst into flames and he managed to escape almost miraculously through a window, and only just in time, for the whole structure collapsed and buried in its ruins every bit of work in it. No wonder he was excited for he saw the meaning of his dream. His life was like that. He was going into heaven truly, his soul was saved, but all his life was lost. The thought filled him with regret. He might have lived those dozen years well pleasing to the Lord, but he had wasted them, they were lost years. It is true that his soul was restored, for the grace of the Lord is unbounded, but the joy was mingled with sorrow. A friend called to see him and he said "It is kind of you to come and see me, but don't stay. I am going to spend my eternity with Jesus and I know so little about Him; I want to spend all the time I can with Him now." In a few days he went home, through the merits of the Saviour's blood, but he left his wasted years behind, all lost . . . O gracious and living Lord, grant in Thine infinite grace that not one here shall have that bitter experience, but may we whatever our past has been live henceforth not unto ourselves but unto Thee, and so be well pleasing to Thee. For Thy dear Name's sake. Amen.

Trading for our Lord

And as they heard these things, He added and spake a parable, because He was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear.

He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.

And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come.

But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us.

And it came to pass, that when he was returned, having received the kingdom, then he commanded these servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading.

Then came the first, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds.

And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.

And the second came, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained five pounds.

And he said likewise to him, Be thou also over five cities.

And another came, saying, Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin:

For I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow:

And he saith unto him, Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow:

Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury?

And he said unto them that stood by, Take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds.

(And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds.)

For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him. Luke 19: 11-26.

My words are for you, Christ's young men and women. You have come into great wealth, and the question for you is, To what use are you putting it? To assure you of the wealth I will quote well known and greatly loved words. "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich." What will you do with your riches? Selfishly enjoy them? If you try that you will not enjoy them at all. I would remind you of that ancient word, "There is that which scattereth and yet increaseth; there is that which withholdeth more than is meet, and it tendeth to poverty." And you have surely read in wise old John Bunyan's book of that man,

"Whom some did count as mad,

The more he gave the more he had."

But in this matter you need to be instructed, and our Saviour is not only our Lord to command us, but He is our Teacher to instruct us, and happy are we if we know Him in this threefold way. The riches that He has given us are ours eternally, and yet in another way we are stewards of them, and with them we are to trade for Him. Most of you who hear me are in business life, but every one of us has been called to do business for our absent Lord, and this is taught us in a striking way in the parable of the pounds. It is of that that I would speak to you.

"A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom." I want you first to notice how the Lord describes Himself. "A certain nobleman." The One who has saved us and whom we are to represent and serve is THE NOBLEMAN. All true nobility is in Him. Where else can you look for it? God found it in Him. How absolute was His fidelity to God — ever obedient, ever dependent. He did always the things that pleased Him, so that God could say of Him, "Behold My Servant, the One in whom My soul delighteth." And how noble He was in His ways with men. No selfish motive ever moved Him, no hatred or ingratitude from men changed Him. He would not put forth His power for His own relief, but for others that power knew no limit or rest. He was the servant of all from early morn to the close of day. It is recorded that "all the people came early in the morning to Him." He was there waiting for them when they came; to teach them, to serve them, to heal them; and not until every man had gone to his own home did He retire, a homeless Man, to the Mount of Olives.

Everything that He did in His life of service was nobly done, beautifully done. See Him as He stands beside the widowed mother, weeping for her dead. His heart is moved with compassion for her sorrow, and His word rebukes the cause of it and makes her son alive again. Then He moves on without waiting for reward or recognition. He might have claimed that young man's life and service and have said to him, Follow Me, but He didn't, He restored him to his mother. See Him stoop to gather the children to His heart when the disciples would have driven them away — they were of no account to others, but how dear they were to Him! No need escaped His notice, no sigh reached His ear in vain. Self-sacrificing love placed Him at the service of all, and He served because love must serve in a world of sin and need. Wonderful Saviour! The true Nobleman! Our Lord and Master, who has saved us that we might serve Him!

"But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him saying, We will not have this man to reign over us." The next thing that we must note is that we are to occupy for Him in a world that has refused His claims. He is the rightful King of all, but He is the rejected King. The world of men did not appreciate His nobility, so ignoble were they. His meekness, gentleness, and longsuffering moved them to nothing save contempt and hatred. The world has not changed to acknowledge His goodness, and Christ has not changed to meet its ignoble standards. He is not wanted in it now any more than He was, and we are to represent Him and trade for Him where He is not wanted. It should be plain to us that the world will not, cannot help us in this our Lord's business. We cannot call upon its resources and we ought not to follow its ways. We are to serve in the midst of it as our Master did — doing good unto all men — but we must look outside of it for our supplies and direction.

"And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till come." It is not in this parable as in that of the Talents in Matthew's Gospel, where the number of talents were distributed according to the ability of the servants, but to each servant is given a pound. The pound is that great treasure which the Lord brought into the world. It is the knowledge of God in His grace. This is specially unfolded for us in this Gospel of Luke. It is both interesting and instructive to see that the special character of the truth which the Lord presents to men in each of the Gospels is that which is most opposed by them. In this Gospel of Luke the leaders of the people were continually finding fault with Him because of the grace which carried Him into the company of sinners. In chapter 5 they said, "He eateth with publicans and sinners." In chapter 7 they complained "He is the friend of publicans and sinners"; in chapter 15 they said, "This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them," and here in chapter 19 they find fault with Him because He had gone to be guest with a man that was a sinner. But it was this grace of God that could reach down to the vilest and most needy that He had come to show. He was here to reveal the grace of God, and in this He was doing His Father's business. How fully this grace was revealed in the Pharisee's house in chapter 7 when He said to the sinner of the city, "Thy sins are forgiven thee;" how blessedly it was declared in the threefold parable in chapter 15 in which we see Father, Son and Holy Ghost rejoicing over the recovery of once lost but repentant sinners; and what could exceed the glory of it, when the crucified Saviour said to the dying malefactor, "To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise."

The Lord brought the knowledge of God in His infinite grace to guilty men in the world, but when He went back to heaven He did not take it back with Him, He left it here with His servants that they might trade with it for Him. We find it in the commission which He gave to them after He rose from the dead. He said unto them, "Thus it is written and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem" (chapter 24).

The knowledge of God in the infinite grace of His heart is the silver pound, and our Lord has committed it to us. It is a great treasure and is so described in 2 Corinthians 4. "For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us." This is the silver pound, and we are responsible to put it in circulation on our Lord's behalf, and to trade with it for Him until He comes.

I ask you, happy young Christian, what can compare in value with the knowledge of the God of all grace? It has meant much to you. Without it you were without hope, without light, without peace; a wanderer, an orphan, an unforgiven sinner. But the gospel of His grace has changed all that, and you can say, "God is for us." You can wake in the morning with the thought that you know God, and that He loves you and cares for you. Your needs are many, but His supplies are infinite, and His mercies are renewed every morning to you. Just as the manna was always waiting, morning by morning, for Israel in the wilderness, and God was never late with His supplies of it, so now a full provision awaits you when the day's needs commence. What peace of mind, what quietness this knowledge should give you! The quietness of mind and contentment that the knowledge of God gives is necessary if we are to trade successfully, for if we are marked by worry and irritability and discontent, men of the world might well say to us, "What have you got that we have not?" But if they see that we have something that sustains us in trial and keeps us quiet amid the stress and tear of life, they may be ready to listen to our words. So shall we have joy of trading with our pound, of speaking to men and women of the God we know, and the words we speak will be words in season to them that are weary.

We may tell them that we know a God whose compassions are without limit, that never a cry to Him has been refused or will be as long as the day of grace lasts. We may tell them that God is moved because of their distresses, and that His mercy is poured forth to meet them in their misery. We may tell them that He has searched them, and that He knows them and their sins, and yet He will receive and save them; that He commends His love to them in that while they were yet sinners Christ died for them. What news is this for weary, sinful men! Strange it is that they care about it so little. Strange that we who possess the treasure should show such faint zeal in trading with it.

If a man is to trade successfully he must consider carefully where and how to trade, and this is surely not less important in that which is the chief business of the servant of the Lord, and every Christian is a servant. Doctors, mechanics, teachers, nurses, typists, clerks, and many other callings we may follow, but all these are secondary. We desire to be efficient in these secular duties, and that is right, but our chief concern is our business for the Lord, and we ought to know how and where He would have us serve. We ought to know where we can put the pound out at the best rate of interest. With most of us the Lord intends that we should continue in the calling wherein we are called and hold forth the word of life and shine as lights just where we are. It may be that He would have some of us to carry the pound in diligent labour into the streets and lanes of the city, or far out into heathen lands. In these things He, the Master, must direct; it is ours to obey, to serve, to trade.

"And it came to pass that when he was returned, having received the kingdom, then he commanded those servants to be called to him, to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much each man had gained by trading."

The absence of our Lord is not to be for ever. "Occupy till I come" links up the present with the future, and produces solemn thoughts as to what He will say to us when He returns. But there is encouragement for us in the parable, for we are sure that the Lord will not forget any bit of true service. Heaven's book-keeping is accurate. All that we have gained for our Lord is entered there, and it will give the Lord joy to acknowledge the faithfulness of His servants.

But there was one servant who knew not his Lord and cared naught for His honour and wealth, though he stood with the rest of the servants and appeared to be what they were. He never valued the pound, it was naught to him, so he hid it in a napkin and buried it out of sight; and if he did business at all, he did it with his own base coin, upon which the image and superscription of the King did not appear. There are many such: they have pledged themselves by solemn vows to serve the Lord, and to uphold and trade with the gospel of God as it is revealed in the Bible, but they have no intention of fulfilling their vows; they are ashamed of the gospel and desire to be popular in the world; they are unfaithful men, and are traitors to their trust, even though they still profess to be Christ's servants; but they are not vitally His.

This servant did not know the Lord at all; out of his own mouth will we judge him. "I knew," he said, "that thou wert an austere man." Did he know? Did he not declare his ignorance when he opened his mouth? Who among you who know the Lord will go down on your knees and say to Him, "I know that Thou art an austere man"? Nay, you have other things to say of Him. You have seen no frowns upon His brow; you have heard no hard words from His lips; the tenderest heart in the universe beats in His breast, and you have proved it so. Your service has been full of failure; often you have blundered, but those very blunders have become opportunities for the display of His grace to you. This man did not know the Lord, so we who do know Him must conclude. He was a wicked servant, who loved himself and despised his Lord and His pound.

"How much?" and "Of what sort?" (1 Cor. 3); thus will all our work be tested. But let us have neither doubt nor question as to this matter, by the pound alone can we gain by trading. The knowledge of God as revealed by Christ Jesus, now told out in the gospel, and this alone can bring men to God and subdue them to Christ. All else will fail, no matter how plausible and popular; the gospel alone is God's power unto salvation to everyone that believeth. Knowing this, may we earnestly desire to be kept diligently putting it into circulation "till He comes."

The Lord's Yoke

At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight.

All things are delivered unto me of my Father; and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Matthew 11: 25-30.

Of the Lord's grace and yoke I would speak to you. But as you well know we miss the full meaning and beauty of the great sayings of Scripture if we separate them from their setting, so I must first show you the circumstances in which He spoke these most wonderful of all His words recorded in this Gospel of Matthew. "At that time," we read. What time was that? It was a solemn time, a time of crisis. As we reach this part of the Record a sadness creeps over our spirits, we feel that we are entering upon the fulfilment of Isaiah 53. There is a quotation from that heart-moving chapter in the 8th of this Gospel. "Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses."

The King had come to His kingdom, He had come to dwell among His people, full of grace and truth. He was with them to pour out His mercy upon them in a healing flood, but they did not know Him; to them He was only a passing sensation. He had no form nor comeliness, and when they saw Him, there was no beauty that they should desire Him. WHY?

You have all read Bunyan's immortal allegory, and may remember that when the pilgrims on their journey to the Celestial City reached the house of the good Gaius, there they were entertained after a godly sort, and they had much profitable talk. The 53rd chapter of Isaiah was read, and old, white-haired Mr. Honest who was one of the pilgrim band enquired, Why was it that they saw no beauty in Him? And that is the question, surely, that must spring up in every honest, enquiring heart. Why? Now Greatheart who was the warrior and the instructor of the party — and no one can be a successful Christian warrior who is not instructed — answered, "Those of whom that is said lacked the eyes that can look into the heart of our Prince." That was a shrewd and inspired answer.

The wise and prudent of the day who formed public opinion, looked only upon what was outward, and for all their prudence they were deceived by the vain show in which they and their fellows paraded themselves, and Jesus was to them only "the carpenter," or "a Galilean," who "had never learnt." Away with Him! They were blind. Blind! Blind to the infinite, divine loveliness of Him, blind to what was in His heart. They were blinded by the god of this world whose willing prey they were, and as it was then, so it is now, even in this very day. Those who do not rally to our Prince are those that have no eyes to see into His heart. Did that heart, the tenderness of which they could not appreciate, feel it when they turned with contempt from Him? Yes, it felt it deeply, but for their sakes and not for His own. Behold Him stretching out His hands towards blind, rebellious Jerusalem, and saying, while tears of pity ran down His face, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not." His heart was broken because they had no eyes to look into it, and because they spurned the love that was there.

It was in that crisis, "at that time," when it could be clearly seen that they wanted neither Him nor His blessing, when they despised and rejected Him, that He lifted up His eyes to His Father. Did the Father care? He had sent His beloved Son into the world. "Having therefore one Son, His well-beloved, He sent Him also unto them, saying, They will reverence My Son" (Mark 12: 6). Was He indifferent then to the fact that His Son was despised and rejected? No, He was not indifferent, He looked down upon it all and passed His judgment upon these wise and prudent men who imagined that they could discriminate and discern, and He left them to their blindness and gave to the babes eyes that could look into the heart of His Son: He revealed His grace to them.

It is a most affecting thing to keep in mind that if we have been attracted to Jesus and can say to Him,

"Fairer than all the earth-born race

Perfect in comeliness Thou art,

Replenished are Thy lips with grace

And full of love Thy tender heart."

we have been the subjects of the Father's work. He has revealed these things to us. He has given us eyes that can look into the heart of our Prince. Our Lord was satisfied to have it so, since this was His Father's doing. There was no resentment in His heart, He accepted the situation, and spoke those memorable words of perfect submission, "Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight."

But though He was rejected by the people who ought to have welcomed and worshipped Him, yet His glory could not be hid. He is more than King of the Jews, He is Heir to and has been called and appointed to a universal throne, for He said, "All things are delivered unto Me of My Father." The Father has trusted Him, fully and for ever. Into His hands the Father has committed the maintenance of His limitless glory and the carrying out of all His will. His absolute and universal supremacy is assured; He has the disposal of every created being in His power, from the highest angel in heaven to the meanest demon in hell. At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven, in earth and under the earth. But His personal greatness is greater than all that He will do. He is the Son, and none can know the mystery of His eternal being, and of that eternal relationship with the Father, but the Father. And He knows the Father for He dwelt in an eternal intimacy of love in the Father's bosom, and He has come forth from the Father and become Man, that He might reveal to us men the Father's Name and love, that the fulness of joy and everlasting satisfaction that this Name and love afford might be ours, that we might share it with Him, who is to be the Firstborn among many brethren in the Father's house.

We are glad to have that glimpse of His greatness, but now we come to the other side, we make haste to reverently acknowledge the glory of His Name, but now we must open our eyes to look into His heart. His face is toward the multitudes now. He has accepted His rejection by Israel and now offers Himself as the Saviour of a needy world.

Oh! listen to His words. "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." It is an overwhelming word. Behold Him in the presence of the world's need. He knew everything; He measured everything; He had heard every sigh, seen every tear, weighed every burden; no heart was hidden from Him; the sin, the sorrow, the sordidness of men's lives was all uncovered before His eye, and He stretched out His hands to the world and cried to the world with its countless woes and claimant needs, "Come unto Me!" . . . Of course, we say at once that only God could speak like that. For who but God could soothe every fevered spirit, relieve every accusing conscience, bind up every broken heart and bless every troubled sinner! Only God could speak thus, and yet these words came from the lips of Jesus, the lowly, rejected yet unresentful Nazarene. God was manifested in the flesh!

Have you been arrested by these words? Then now you need eyes to look into the heart of the One who spoke them. If you can do this, wonderful things will be revealed to you. That heart cares for you, it pities you. He looks into your heart and knows its sins and hopes and fears, its shattered ambitions and hidden secrets and desires, He knows your burdens and every deep and unspoken longing of your soul. He knows

"The regret, the struggle and the failing!

The long days desolate and useless years!

Vows in the night, so fierce and unavailing!

Stings of your shame and passions of your tears."

As you look into His heart and see this you draw near, you are encouraged to commit yourself to Him, to trust in Him. Surely you may fully trust the One whom the Father has fully trusted, you may safely commit your soul and its everlasting welfare to Him to whom the Father hath committed all His glory. Yes, surely, but it is only as you look into His heart that you will really come. It is the grace rather than the greatness of His Name that attracts us, the tenderness of His heart rather than the glory. Here is rest for you, perfect rest. The only One in heaven or on earth who could undertake your case is willing to do it.

He appeals to you to come to Him, to come just as you are, and to bring all you are, with everything that is a burden to you; He invites you, and there is the yearning of divine love in His words, to cease your labours, and to rest in Him.

"Lay down, thou weary one

Lay down thy head upon My breast."

How can He do it, and be consistent with God's holy Name and righteous rule? That question we must ask as we draw near to Him and He answers it. Look upon the multitude to whom He calls. "There is not a man that sinneth not," said Solomon, as on bended knees he stretched out his hands in supplication to Almighty God. How can this question be met? Above that multitude of sinners a cross raises its rugged head, and to that cross Jesus went; on it He bore in His own body our sins; there He was wounded for our transgressions. And His great sacrifice and precious blood answer the question.

The Lord hath made to meet on Him the iniquity of us all, and our sins and iniquities are remembered no more. "I lay down My life for the sheep," He said, "I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of My Father."

Now it is this One who suffered for our sins, and whose grace has no limit, and who is now the risen Lord who invites us, in winning tones, to subject ourselves to His will. "Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls," He says.

Other lords have had dominion over us and the bondage was bitter. What a heavy yoke Satan lays upon the necks of his dupes and how he befools them. Artists have often portrayed Satan with a sardonic smirk upon his face, and they have not defamed him. He seems to take a pleasure in double-crossing his victims. We have examples in Scripture. He enticed Achan, and Achan saw and coveted the wedge of gold and the Babylonish garment, surely they were lawful plunder, but having got them what should he do with them? Bury them, that was all he could do, and he was soon buried with them beneath the avenging stones of an outraged people. And there was that servant of Elisha, who pursued Naaman because Satan had put it into his heart to covet his Syrian wealth and gay apparel, but do you think he would wear his ill-gotten finery with pride and satisfaction when with it went the rotting carcase of a leper? There are many examples both ancient and modern of this same thing: they warn us, if we need the warning, that the yoke of Satan is not easy and the burden of sin is not light, and that Satan lays his yoke upon the necks of his dupes with a sinister motive and a terrible purpose. How greatly we should rejoice if the hand of our Saviour has lifted that yoke from us and set us free. If the Son shall make you free ye shall be free indeed. But we must come under some yoke, and Jesus offers His. Shall we not gladly accept it as a great gift? If we have looked into His heart we can do no other, for we shall be persuaded that His will can only mean our blessing. His will is not against us, it is for us, and against everything that could do us harm. His will is our greatest blessing.

In this Gospel of Matthew He is the King, but the King rejected, but we will not reject His Kingship. We rally afresh to His banner with uplifted hands and with loyal hearts we cry

"Christ of God, our souls confess Thee,

King and Sovereign here and now."

How shall I speak for Him who invites us to yield to Him? He must speak for Himself. He says, "I am meek and lowly in heart." What is it to be meek? It is remarkable that Moses, the God-chosen leader for His people in the Old Testament, was the meekest man in all the earth; he was a figure of Jesus our Lord. God's leaders are meek, and that certainly does not mean weak. Meekness is not weakness. The meek man is the one who is subject to the will of God, and Jesus was so absolutely. "My Father's business," "Even so Father," "Not My will." This was the whole tenor of His life, and He has qualified by His great obedience to command us. In the meek man there is an absence of pride; meekness and lowliness go together.

There have been leaders of men who were haughty tyrants, men of unbounded pride, who brooked no challenge to their wills. Such were Nebuchadnezzar, Nero, Napoleon. But think of Jesus. He took the lowest place, even with those disciples who rightly called Him "Master and Lord." His love made Him their servant. He is not a hard Master, His commandments are not grievous, His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

"Learn of Me," He says. Some of us have rather unpleasant memories of teachers, and tasks, and schools. But who of us would desire to be excused from this school and from the lessons that our Lord would teach us? We learn of Him as we consider Him. His words are words of life to us; He teaches us by His ways also. Our wonder increases as we sit at His feet and learn of Him, and as we wonder we grow and worship. If we cease to wonder we shall cease to grow; we shall slip back and lose the joy of what we know. But as we learn of Him we wonder and grow and find rest to our souls. We rest in His perfect love, His perfect wisdom, His perfect way. We can take up His own words in all circumstances, "Even so, Lord, for so it seemeth good in Thy sight." And that submission to perfect love and wisdom means rest of soul.

But I have heard it said, "It is hard to be a Christian," and some of you have said it in your hearts if you have not confessed it with your mouths. A young Christian man said that to me once and he seemed very depressed about it. I met him about a year afterwards, and his face was radiant. "It was hard when I was half and half," he said, "but it's different now." He had yielded to the Lord's yoke and he was proving how true were the Lord's words, "My yoke is easy and My burden is light."

If your experience contradicts His word, it has not been true Christian experience, and can we discover where it is wrong. I once saw a man labouring with a mule. His desire was that it should go one way, its determination was to stand still just where it was. It was hard for the mule and hard for the master, for their wills were in opposition. If your will is opposed to the Lord's will, it is hard for you and it is not easy for Him, but that clash of wills will cease if you yield yourself wholly to Him. Do you find that difficult? Pray then for the single eye. Take your eye off the world's tinsel and its unsatisfying prizes, cease to consider for yourself and look into the heart of your Prince. Here lies the secret. It is easy to yield to perfect love and if you will look into the Lord's heart you will gladly yield yourself to Him, for His love for you is perfect, and you will find that His yoke is padded with love, it will not chafe or irk you. He will not lay upon you any burden you cannot bear. He lifts the heavy burdens, and puts a joyous burden on the necks of those who look into His heart. The burden He lays upon them is witness for Him; He wants you to bear Himself in witness to the world, to show to men what He is and how blessed a thing it is to belong to Him. It has been said "His burden bears those that bear it."

Take these words of shrewd old Bunyan with you and consider them well, "Eyes that look into the heart of our Prince," and take these words of our Lord and let them be a comfort to your heart and a soft pillow for your head. "MY YOKE IS EASY AND MY BURDEN IS LIGHT,"

The Bright Shining of a Candle

The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. Take heed, therefore, that the light which is in thee be not darkness. If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light. Luke 11: 34-36.

What sort of eye is yours? It is certain from these solemn words of the Lord that everything depends upon the answer to the question. I ask you to face it fairly. It is plain also that there are two sorts of eyes, and not three; the single eye, which means a good eye that can bear the light, or an evil eye, an eye that shrinks from the light, that cannot bear it. When David said, "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Psalm 139: 23, 24), he spoke as a man who had a single eye, that did not shrink from the light; when those scribes and Pharisees went one by one from the presence of the Lord, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last (John 8), they showed how men act who have the evil eye, the eye that cannot endure the light.

Now let us consider this matter, being assured that the whole secret of free and vigorous Christian living lies in it. The light is not something that we possess in ourselves, it does not exist in the eye. The eye is the organ that admits the light from without, and it must be a good and sound eye that does not shrink from the light if the light is to be of any use to us. The thing of first importance is the light, the candle, of which the previous verse speaks; the light and the eye go together, we must not divorce the one from the other, for the Lord has joined them together, and what the Lord Jesus has joined together let no man put asunder.

First the light and then the eye. He said, "No man when he lighteth a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light." The candle is first lighted, then everything depends upon the eye, whether it can bear the light or not. What is the light? No, we will not put it that way, for we want to make an appeal to the heart as well as the conscience. We ask, WHO IS THE LIGHT? for it is a Person. The Light, the Candle that has been lighted for us by God's own hand is the Lord Himself, our Saviour. It is Himself of whom He spoke in the parable. "I am the light of the world," said He, on another occasion. He is "the bright shining of a candle that doth give thee light," and since He has come every man is tested by Him. It is made manifest by His coming into the world whether our eye is good or evil.

This is a great theme and we must pursue it, for light is good. How those great men of Old Testament times longed for it! When Moses cried, "Show me Thy glory," he was yearning for the light, and when David prayed "O send out Thy light and Thy truth; let them lead me; let them bring me unto Thy holy hill, and to Thy tabernacles. Then will I go to the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy." — he was praying for the light, but I do not suppose that he knew how his prayer would be answered, or that God's light and truth would come forth in the person of God's beloved Son, but so it was, for He was the true Light that, coming into the world, shineth for every man (John 1: 9. N.T.), and He is the truth for all those whose eye admits the light.

But let us work back a little further in our Scripture, that we may understand it better, and miss nothing of its solemn meaning to us. It was an evil generation to which the Lord came and in which the light shone (verse 29), its eye could not endure the light; it did not perceive that He was the light, so it asked for a sign. The light was shining, yet it asked for light, for that is what a sign meant, something that would make plain to them who the Lord was, and leave them in no doubt about it. It was as though a man came into a room at midnight in which a candle shone brightly and declared that he must have a sign, some definite proof that it was a candle. But why were they like that? The light that shone made their evil eye to smart and they did not like it, they wanted something that would make them comfortable in their sins, something that would suit themselves and not God; their will, not His. So they rejected the Light that shone so brightly and showed them how evil they were, and just so far as that disposition lurks in the heart of any of us and we yield to it, so far have we the evil eye, an eye that does not want the light.

The Lord quotes the cases of the men of Nineve and the Queen of Sheba as condemning that generation. Jonas carried light — a partial glimmer it was to the great pagan city of Nineve. That light shone in the dense darkness of their idolatry and sin, and lo, they admitted it to their hearts. They had the single or good eye, and repented at the preaching of Jonas. They were honest with God and He was gracious with them. He never turned His face away from a man who bowed before Him in true self-judgment, in repentance. But no man ever did that who had not a sense in his soul that there is forgiveness with God that He may be feared. The light that exposes the sin, reveals the God who can pardon it. But in the men of Nineve we have the negative side of things, we see in them what the light delivered them from; in the Queen of the South we have the positive side. She came out of the darkness of her native land to the great light that shone in Israel, and no selfishness, no national pride kept her from owning the light that was there in Solomon's wisdom, her eye admitted it and the light illuminated her; every hard question that troubled her vanished as she listened to Solomon, and she was filled with wonder and worship to God, as the story in 1 Kings 10 shows. And I may remark, by the way, that those who have the single eye and admit the light are ever wondering, the light is so marvellous, and the things that they see in it are so great that they must wonder, and while they wonder they grow and worship.

But a greater light than ever shone in Nineve or Jerusalem is shining now, for a greater than Jonas and Solomon has come, even the Lord Himself. He is the light. Have we seen Him? Do we love Him? He is the great test. Have our eyes admitted the light, and has it searched us and illuminated us, until our whole bodies are full of light, having no part dark?

There are two sides to this wonderful illumination, at least so it seems to me. There is the measure of our blessing in it, and there is the character of our practical living. God's purpose is that the last should be consistent with the first, nothing but this could suit Him. Alas, that we should so often be satisfied with less than this! As to the first, the true light is now shining; happy indeed are all those who have the eye that does not shrink from it. Of old a great light shone at Sinai, but Israel could not bear it, it exposed what they were and condemned them. It showed what God's demands were, but they neither could meet those demands nor did they desire to do so. Hence we read that Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of it. The light made their eye smart, they could not endure it; the end of it was condemnation, and Moses, who represented it to them, and in whose face the light of it shone, had to put a veil over his face. All this we learn from 2 Corinthians 3. But a greater light is shining in the face of Jesus. God in the fulness of His nature and character is revealed there. The light that will fill the universe of bliss so that there will be no part dark within the limitless bounds of it, shines now in Jesus' face. Can we look into His face with unveiled face? Yes, for, wonderful fact, that light shines not for our condemnation but for our salvation. The rays of light that shine from Him are life-giving, not death-dealing, and if we look we live, and into our hearts the light shines to give the knowledge of God, and "We have this treasure in earthen vessels." We have the light of life and walk no more in darkness; and what a treasure is this!

The light condemns what we are as men in the flesh and brings us to true self-judgment, that Christ may be everything to us — wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. We see this illustrated for us in men of olden times. It was when Job had seen the Lord, when he said, "Now mine eye seeth Thee," that he cast his own righteousness in the dust and said, "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42). And Daniel also beheld the glory of the Lord in a vision, and said, "I saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me; for my comeliness was turned into corruption" (Daniel 10). But these men had the single eye, they did not refuse the light, they let it search them and show them what they were and the end was blessing for them both; like the men of Nineve they owned the truth as to themselves, and the light that showed them themselves also showed them that God was greater than their sin and corruption and was a God of blessing who had a great care for them.

This self-judgment there must be; "I know that in me, that is in my flesh good does not dwell" (Rom. 7. N.T.) is the soul's confession when the eye admits the light, but we may also behold the glory of the Lord and discover that the righteousness that we do not possess in ourselves is in Christ for us, and is ministered to us from the glory into which He has gone, and that we become the righteousness of God in Him, for He was made sin for us with this end in view. Those who have admitted the light, and been searched by it, have ceased from the weary and useless struggle to be what they feel they ought to be, they have given up the disappointing search for goodness in the rubbish of their own lives and they have turned the eye to Christ. They have changed ashes for beauty and mourning for the oil of gladness. They have had the ashes and the mourning of repentance and self-judgment, for the light has shown them what they are, and they have been honest with God about it, but they have also seen the glory of the Lord who is greater than Solomon, and in Him their need is met, by Him their hearts are filled.

So the light reveals the blessing and the measure of it, but what then? Why, it must become also the measure of our practical living. We are glad to have seen with the eye of faith the great salvation that is in Christ for us, and the perfect righteousness that is ours in Him, but God would have us consistent with that in our lives and work, and for this we must admit the light. How often we would cling to our own way, how often we would like to hide something of self in our bosoms, some secret ambition, some hope that in some future and favourable time we might attain to something that our hearts have desired and which we feel the light condemns now. We cannot be comfortable in the light when such is the case, and we need the warning, "Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness." God must have reality, He would have us to be honest with Him at all times and about everything and we are that as Christ is our standard. If I have an eye for my own gratification and pleasure it will not bear the light and is so far evil, for that is self, and no man can serve two masters. The light exposes self and selfishness and shows us Christ instead, and when we are right and the eye is single, the test is, not, is this right or that? but, is it Christ? What a wonderful thing it must be to have the whole body full of light, having no part dark, all clear and open and honest before God, and so a conscience void of offence before men. It was so with Paul when he said, "For me to live is Christ." Then the bright shining of the Candle gave him light, and so it may be with us, and if so ours will be the path of the just that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. God grant that we may so love the light and rejoice in it that we may ever say, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

Three Men

And SAUL eyed David from that day and forward.

And there was a javelin in Saul's hand.

And Saul cast the javelin; for he said, I will smite David even to the wall with it. 1 Samuel 18.

And the soul of JONATHAN was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. 1 Samuel 18.

And Jonathan, Saul's son arose and went to David in the wood . . . and said to him . . . Thou shalt be King of Israel, and I shall be next unto thee. 1 Samuel 23: 16, 17.

And MEPHIBOSHETH the son of Saul, went to meet the King, and he answered, My lord and king . . . All my father's house were but dead men before my lord the king: yet didst thou set thy servant among them that did eat at thine own table. 2 Samuel 19.

David, the son of Jesse, was chosen of God to be the saviour, shepherd and king of His ancient people Israel, and in these respects he foreshadowed our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only Saviour of men, and the coming King. Being God's chosen man, it followed that all in Israel who were subject to God would think well of him and yield him obedience; indeed, he became the test in his day as to how far every man understood the thoughts and ways of God. There were three men — Saul, Jonathan, and Mephibosheth — who were brought into direct contact with him, and the way they treated David is illustrative of the way men are treating our Lord Jesus Christ in our day; and this is my subject.

David was not the man whom Israel would have chosen, for he was but a shepherd-lad, without any pretension to greatness. They chose Saul because of his outward appearance, and even Samuel, the prophet of God, would have repeated their mistake when sent to the house of Jesse, by pouring the anointing oil upon the head of Eliab, because of the beauty of his countenance and the height of his stature. But "the Lord seeth not as man seeth: for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart" (1 Sam. 16: 7).

To the natural eye there was "no beauty" in Jesus, and so "He was despised and rejected of men," but He was infinitely lovely and lovable in the eyes of God, for He loved the Lord His God with all His heart, and the heart is the mainspring of every action.

Yes, Jesus was the Man after God's own heart, His Anointed, who fulfilled all His will.

Israel discovered in the day of their distress that God's chosen man was the only one who could deliver them. When the great Goliath threatened them, and Saul and Eliab trembled before him in their helplessness, they had need to look elsewhere for salvation. It was then that David appeared, and girded with the strength of the God of Israel he overthrew the giant and set the people free. Then they proved what was stated of the shepherd-lad at his anointing, that he was "goodly to look to."

The enthralling story of David's victory is recorded in 1 Samuel 17, and shows us, in figure, the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ over our mighty foe, the devil — a victory told in the words of Hebrews 2: 14, 15: "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage."

How complete was David's victory, and how glorious; yet how surprising to both Philistine and Israelite, for Goliath was a man of war, invincible as he thought, and armed to the teeth, while David was a stripling, with no other weapons than five smooth stones and a simple sling. But by these was that huge mass of boasting flesh brought to the dust, and there, "by his own sword," was the giant spoiled of his head, so that even the most fearful and timid in Israel might join in the glad shouts that rang out triumphantly from the heights of Pas-dammim. The Lord was crucified in weakness; He went out against the powers of darkness and the devil on our behalf, and as He hung rejected and gibbetted upon a malefactor's cross it seemed as though He had met with utter and irretrievable defeat. But it was —

"By weakness and defeat

He won the meed and crown;

Trod all our foes beneath His feet

By being trodden down."

And by His death, death's dominion has been overthrown, and the devil's power annulled, and this so completely that our risen Lord can say, "Fear not I am the first and the last: I am He that liveth and was dead: and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and death" (Rev. 1: 17, 18).

"Triumphant saints no honour claim,

The conquest was His own."

SAUL.

After the overthrow of the giant, David got a measure of recognition in Israel, for we are told in 1 Samuel 18 that "he was accepted in the sight of all the people" (verse 5); the women sang his praises (verse 7); all Israel loved him (verse 16); and "his name was much set by" (verse 30). But Saul stood out in base and brutal contrast to the rest of Israel; there sprung up in his heart a bitter and undying hatred towards the people's deliverer; he eyed David with a jealous eye, and sought to destroy him (verse 9, 10). Saul represents the unconverted man, the man in the flesh. We read a great deal about the flesh in the New Testament. It is that evil principle within the heart of man that shuts out God and Christ, and will always make SELF the supreme object of the life in opposition to Christ. The flesh will have religion, and meetings, and sometimes tolerate Christians, but it will not have Christ. When He came into the world it betrayed Him for the price of a slave; spat upon His sacred cheek; and nailed Him to a cross. It has not changed in the course of the centuries, and the Christ of God is still rejected and hated by it. The unconverted man is in the flesh; he has no love for our Lord Jesus Christ, and his position is terrible, for the Scripture saith, "If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema; maranatha" (1 Cor. 16: 22).

Indifference to Christ and His rights may seem a small matter to some, and they may be surprised that it should call down the anathemas of Almighty God upon them, nevertheless it does; and the justice of it will be evident to you, I believe, if you see its baseness illustrated in Saul's attitude towards David. Israel owed everything to David, for the Philistines threatened not only to seize their lands and wealth, but to make every one of them — men, women, and children — their absolute slaves. And Saul could not deliver them, nor Jonathan, nor Abner, and the people were at their wits' end. It was then that David appeared, and, taking his life in his hand, he overthrew the great foe and delivered the people from his power. David was undoubtedly the one man in the realm whose right it was to reign, and Saul's conscience told him so, but in his selfish pride he refused to surrender to David. Saul was first in his own thoughts, and he hated David because he knew that David ought to be. Yet David did not suffer in the fight that he waged for Israel; protected by the mighty hand of Jehovah he came through it without a scar. How different it was with our Lord Jesus Christ when He came to deliver men; His visage was so marred more than any man's, and His form more than the sons of men. His hands and feet were pierced and nailed to the tree; every sorrow found its centre in Him, and He drank to the dregs the bitterness of death. He has won an everlasting deliverance for sinful men at great cost to Himself — a deliverance from Satan's power, from the fear of death, and from eternal hell; and the preaching of the wonderful love that made Him do it should have prostrated the whole race at His feet. How base is that ingratitude that refuses to love Him! How sinful that selfishness that will not yield homage to Him! How terrible the pride that will not have the blessing through Christ crucified!

Alas! "All of self, and none of Thee," is the answer that thousands are giving to the claims of Christ.

JONATHAN.

Saul hated David, but Jonathan loved him as his own soul; and no wonder, for he had watched the fight in the field of Elah, and as he saw David go forth against the enemy he could say, he has undertaken that conflict for me; and when the victory was completed, he could say, he has destroyed the foe for me. He had also beheld him in the tent of the king with the head of Goliath in his hand, and there David won his heart, so that he stripped himself of everything that distinguished him, and made a full surrender to him. David was victor in the battlefield; he was also victor in the tent of the king; the trophy of his first victory was the head of Goliath; the trophy of the second was the heart of Jonathan. Have we known an epoch like that in our lives? Has the Lord Jesus captivated us? Do we love Him and have we made a full surrender to Him? Four lines from Charlotte Elliot's sweet hymn express this surrender perfectly:

"Just as I am, Thy love I own

Has broken every barrier down;

Now to be Thine, yea, THINE ALONE,

O Lamb of God, I come."

How beautiful was the devotion of Jonathan to David! And we learn how greatly David prized it by his touching lament at Jonathan's death: "I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women" (2 Sam. 1: 26). Yet Jonathan was slain in Saul's company by the hands of the Philistines, and he did not see the glorious kingdom of his well-loved friend. I have often wondered why this was; why the one who shone like the rising of a brilliant star in his love to David at Elah should have set in darkness at Gilboa. I believe I have found the reason in 1 Samuel 23: 16-18.

We have a heart-moving scene there. David and Jonathan met in the wood, as they had met before in chapter 20: 41, 42, and there they bade each other a last farewell; and Jonathan, moved by love to his friend, and the knowledge that God was with him, renounced all claim to the throne in the words, "THOU SHALT BE KING . . . AND I SHALL BE NEXT."

It was there that the strength of Jonathon's devotion declared itself; it was there also that he betrayed its weakness. David first, but "I NEXT." Oh, why did he not put a full point after he had declared that the kingdom was David's, and then been silent as to himself! Why did he not leave the appointment of his place to his king? for surely the king alone had the right to say who should be next unto him. It was the introduction of the capital "I" — his thought for himself — that was the undoing of Jonathan. This carried him back to his father's court, where his friend was hated, and where in former days he had been persecuted for his friend's sake. How different his history might have been if he had said: "David, thou shalt be king, and I will share thy rejection until thy rights are publicly owned; whither thou goest I will go. I am wholly thine, command me as thou wilt." It would have meant for the time being the cave, and the mountain-side, and the scorn of all time-servers instead of popularity and the palace of the king. But it would also have meant a place of honour in the kingdom of David instead of ignominy and death at the hands of the uncircumcised Philistines.

How solemn is the lesson that this story teaches. It is possible to begin well and yet to fail in that full-hearted response to the Lord's love which alone is right and well-pleasing to God; it is possible for thought of self to come in and make us careful for our own ease and safety, and, as we often falsely judge, our own present advantage.

The believer is not in the flesh but in the Spirit (Romans 8: 9), but the flesh is still in the believer, and whenever it is consulted or allowed to control us, it will find room for self, and in so far as it does this our lives are not wholly for Christ.

David in his rejection prefigured Christ in His rejection; and be it clearly understood that Christ is just as much rejected now as when men cried, "Away with Him." His rights are not acknowledged; the world does not put its crowns upon His brow; men do not want His interference in their affairs, and those who truly follow Him must heed the words of the One whom they follow: "If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept My sayings they will keep yours also" (John 15: 19, 20).

This is our life, and the treasure we have found in His love should make us welcome it.

"Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands our soul, our life, our all."

And "if we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him."

But I must add here, that all who love the Lord will see His glory, and in the day when He reigns they shall be with Him, and He will remember every pulsation of love to Himself, and every act of faithfulness to Him, and this should constrain us as well as His love to us, to live wholly for Him, and to refuse all the clamouring of self and the flesh for a place.

MEPHIBOSHETH.

The good start in devotion to David that Jonathan made was carried on in perfection in his son Mephibosheth. He was a very different sort of man to the Gadites with "the faces of lions," who were "swift as the roes upon the mountains," and "could handle shield and buckler," and were "fit for battle" (1 Chron. 12: 8). David needed such men as they were, for he was a man of war, but he was also a man with a heart, great and tender, and he valued above all things devotion to his person; and who shall say that the crippled son of Jonathan did not give him more pleasure in the long run than the fearless veterans of his old guard.

One thing is certain. David found great pleasure in showing him kindness "for Jonathan's sake." He called what he did "the kindness of God," and seemed happier in doing it than in slaughtering his foes. In this one incident he stood out prominently as the man after God's heart, for we know that God finds His delight in bestowing blessing upon needy, helpless men. That part of Mephibosheth's contact with David is beautifully told in 2 Samuel 9.

The question is, How did Mephibosheth react to David's great kindness? He could not do great and brilliant things, he would have been useless and a burden on the field of battle, yet there was something he could do — he could appreciate David's kindness and he could keep a heart loyal to him. He certainly seems to have been grateful to David for all the benefits he bestowed upon him, but sometimes a man may appreciate favours and have very little true love for the benefactor. It may even be so with us; we may value the blessings that come to us through Christ and yet not have much loyalty of heart for Him. It is a sad thing to contemplate, but it may be so, and assuredly the test will come.

The test came to Mephibosheth. Absalom, the favourite and spoiled son of his father, rebelled against him, and David had to flee the city of Jerusalem. There never had been such a day of sorrow for David in all his chequered career, he reached then and there the very nadir of his fortunes, and the strange thing was that Jerusalem seemed glad to see the back of him, and to welcome the traitor son. What would Mephibosheth do? When the full story is told we learn that he would have shared the sorrow and evil of the king if he could have done so, but it was not to be. Robbed and slandered by his servant, he was forced to remain behind in the city that had cast off David. The city rejoiced, it held high revelry, but Mephibosheth did not join in the festivities; he held himself in strict separation from it all and mourned for the absent king. He "neither dressed his feet, nor trimmed his beard, nor washed his clothes, from the day the king departed until the day he came again in peace" (2 Samuel 19: 24).

Do we realise, O Christians, that the true King is rejected by the world, and that the devil has usurped His throne, and is both god and prince of the world? This the Scriptures teach most plainly, and since this is true, what should we do, who are left in it? If we are devoted to the Person of our Lord as Mephibosheth was to David we shall feel that a great moral gulf lies between us and it, that we have nothing in common with it, and that practical separation becomes us.

"Its grand fete days, and fashions and ways

Are all but perishing things."

Yet not because of this only, but because it is enmity against God and Christ, and lieth in the wicked one, we must go through it as Christian and Faithful went through Vanity Fair in John Bunyan's book.

It is exceedingly interesting to see what Mephibosheth said to David when he returned in triumph to his throne and city. He rejoiced that the king had come back to his own, and he wanted nothing for himself. The king's rights and not his own were everything to him. He claimed nothing for himself, but he made his boast in David's grace and in David's word. Hear what he says, "All of my father's house were but dead men before my Lord the King." Dead men have no place or rights; they cannot claim anything, especially when they are dead under the sentence of a righteous law. And it was this that this grandson of Saul, David's great enemy, meant, so it seems to me. But if he could claim no place in the King's palace and favour because of what he was, he could rely on David's word and boast of his kindness. "Yet," he said, "didst thou set thy servant among them that did eat at thine own table." David had said that he should eat bread continually and always at his table as one of the King's sons, and he knew that the King's word would stand and he wanted nothing more.

Moreover, Mephibosheth declined to put in a claim for any possession in the land, for when the question arose as to Ziba his servant sharing the land that formerly belonged to him, he said, "Yea, let him take all, forasmuch as my lord the king is come again in peace unto his own house."

He struck the right note, and it is happy for us if we can tune our boasting to the same key. We had no claim upon God, for we were all dead men before Him, but He is rich in mercy, and for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, He quickened us, and saved us, and set us among them that eat at His table. In the exceeding riches of His grace and His kindness toward us He has made us His children in an unchanging, everlasting relationship. Shall we not boast in this? Mephibosheth could not forget David's kindness. In this last incident in his life's story it stands out as the one thing that dominated him and expressed his relationship to his king. And can we forget? It would be a strange and unnatural thing if we did.

As we consider Mephibosheth, his moral greatness grows upon us. He was no whining, time-serving sycophant, thinking only of his own advantage. His loyalty to David in rebellious Jerusalem was great; the entire absence of self-conceit and self-seeking on David's return increases our admiration for him, and his reliance on David's word and his boast in what David had done for him were evidence of true gratitude. His joy at the King's return in peace was so great that he does not even ask that his slanderous, thieving servant should be punished. He desired no property, he sought nothing for himself. The person of the king was everything to him, and that the King should have his rights was all his desire. Everybody may not agree with me, but I set Mephibosheth, lame and apparently useless to the King as the greatest of all the King's men, and I am inclined to think that in those closing years of the king's life he found more pleasure in Mephibosheth than in any other.

We are looking for the time when our Lord will come into His rights, when the long years of His rejection shall close, and the nations shall own Him as King of kings and Lord of lords. It will be the day of His glory, and a happy day for us if some of the traits of Mephibosheth are showing themselves in us now. Glorious and happy day will this be for all those who love Him.

But how do we stand in this matter? Let us put the treatment that David received from these three men together and test ourselves as to our attitude to the Lord Himself.

SAUL — Saul everything, David nothing.

JONATHAN. — David first, Jonathan second.

MEPHIBOSHETH. — David everything, Mephibosheth nothing. In one of these classes we stand.

Lord —

"Take Thou our hearts, and let them be

For ever closed to all but Thee;

Thy willing servants, let us wear

The seal of love for ever there."

Blowing the Silver Trumpets

And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Make thee two trumpets of silver; of a whole piece shalt thou make them: that thou mayest use them for the calling of the assembly, and for the journeying of the camps. And when they shall blow with them, all the assembly shall assemble themselves to thee at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And if they blow but with one trumpet, then the princes, which are heads of the thousands of Israel, shall gather themselves unto thee. When ye blow an alarm, then the camps that lie on the east parts shall go forward. When ye blow an alarm the second time, then the camps that lie on the south side shall take their journey: they shall blow an alarm for their journeys. But when the congregation is to be gathered together, ye shall blow but ye shall not sound an alarm. And the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall blow with the trumpets; and they shall be to you for an ordinance for ever throughout your generations. And if ye go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you, then ye shall blow an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before the Lord your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies. Also in the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, and in the beginnings of your months, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; that they may be to you for a memorial before your God: I am the Lord your God. Numbers 10: 1-10.

What is it that we need first and most if the life that lies ahead of us, if the Lord will, is to be fruitful in the things that are pleasing to God? How are we to fulfil the relationships of life, and in them adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things? What is it that lies at the basis of all spiritual life and service, and without which we can only fail in every sphere of life? With the exercises that come to most of us, as we face the future, we may well ask such questions as these, and if we do we shall find that there is but one answer to them, and it is this: What is needed first and most and continuously, and without which we know nothing of the art of Christian living, is THE FULL AND UNRESERVED ACKNOWLEDGMENT THAT WE BELONG TO GOD. Without this we build without a foundation, we waste our energies, and live unreal and useless lives. Now if we belong to God His claims are paramount; since He is God, that must be so, but the fact that He has redeemed us gives Him a double title; and for our blessing as well as for His glory we must own His claims, and obey the word, "YIELD YOURSELVES UNTO GOD."

This great and indispensable truth is remarkably illustrated for us in the use of the silver trumpets. They figured largely in the every-day life of Israel, for never a day passed when they did not make their appeal to that people. They were blown on God's behalf for the people to hear, and they were blown on the people's behalf for God to hear. It must be noted that they were made of silver. Every Israelite that was numbered from twenty years old and upwards had to bring half a silver shekel as an offering to Jehovah; no more and no less. It was called atonement money. It was the acknowledgment on their part that they belonged to God who had redeemed them by blood and power out of the bondage of Egypt for His own pleasure, and the silver thus offered was devoted to the service of the sanctuary, and of part of it these trumpets were made (Exodus 30).

When the priests blew long and loud upon these trumpets they proclaimed to the uttermost limits of Israel that the people belonged to God, that He had redeemed them and had rights over them that could not be challenged. They were to hold themselves at His disposal. It mattered not with what they were engaged — God's call was imperative, and their own pursuits must take second place; must be abandoned in fact, and that immediately what time the silver trumpets sounded out their assembling call.

Let us give attentive ears to the truth that the silver mouths of these trumpets proclaim, for their story has been written for our learning. Do we not hear the sound of them in the New Testament in such words as these in 1 Cor. 6: 19, 20? "What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, AND YE ARE NOT YOUR OWN? FOR YE ARE BOUGHT WITH A PRICE," and again in 1 Peter 1: 18, 19 "Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." In clarion tones these words call to our souls. Yet there is nothing discordant in their sound to him that hath ears to hear and a heart to understand; for they do not only tell of an insistent claim but of a great love, a love that paid the price and shed the blood, that it might possess us righteously and without a rival.

The words themselves are pure like silver, for "the words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times" (Psalm 12: 6), and obedience to the words of the Lord purifies the soul; for we read, "Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit" (1 Peter 1: 22). For practical and continuous purity of heart and life we must keep the great fact that we belong to God before our souls. It is the word of God to us morning by morning. The silver trumpet of His Word proclaims His redemptive rights over us, and the way of blessing for us is to respond in a glad subjection to His will.

1. CALLING THE ASSEMBLY.

The first use to which these trumpets were put was "for the calling of the assembly." The Tabernacle was the God-appointed centre for His redeemed people in those ancient days, and from that centre His words went forth, and to it He summoned them when He would. That was the shadow, the picture; Christ is the substance, the reality; and if we are obedient to the word of God, Christ will be our one and only centre. Hear, then, the call of the silver trumpet of the Word in this respect. "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them (Matthew 18: 20). "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more as ye see the day approaching" (Hebrews 10: 25). "This do in remembrance of Me" (1 Cor. 11: 24). If lethargy of spirit has come over us, or if indifference of any sort has crept into our hearts in regard to these matters, may the words of God awaken us from it! And let each of us take heed to himself and not be influenced by another, for "the manner of some" must not affect us, but the Word, and the appeal that the Word makes is a personal one.

Suppose that when the priests at the Tabernacle blew upon the silver trumpets calling the people together to hear the Word of the Lord, they were so engrossed with other matters that they did not heed the call. Suppose that Judah had a quarrel with Benjamin, and they considered their quarrel to be of more importance than the call of God, and so did not respond together to it. Suppose each tribe had made a centre for itself, with its own laws, creed, and regulations. Suppose some were too busy with domestic, commercial or personal matters to hear the summons. What then? Would God be indifferent? No! The call would continue until some were aroused by it, and from first one tribe and then another there would come forth those who felt and owned God's claim. And there they would stand at last in the God-appointed meeting place, where He could speak to them and commune with them. Not many, we will suppose, only two or three when compared with the multitude of the people, but obedient to the call of God and united in that obedience! Would the Lord despise them? Would He refuse to say to them what He would have said to the whole of Israel if they had been there? We may be sure that the Word would not be less rich, or the meeting less blessed because not all were there! And so it is and will be as long as God's Word abides, and those who obey it, though but two or three, will prove how faithful He is to it. He cannot deny Himself.

2. THE JOURNEYING OF THE CAMPS.

The people were pilgrims in that great wilderness and they had not to settle down and make their home in it. They were travelling to Canaan, and need was that they should be reminded of the fact. So when the time came for them to pass on, an alarm was blown; the trumpets kept them on the move, and this we need also. How soon we can stagnate and sleep, and forget our heavenly home and calling! Yet God is gracious, and His Word awakes us to renewed spiritual energy. It blows an alarm and says to us, "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light" (Eph. 5: 14). "Set your affection on things above, not on things on earth" (Col. 3: 2). "Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1: 13). In such words as these do we hear the silver trumpets sounding an alarm, lest we should mind earthly things and forget our high destiny and our Father's house. For these two purposes the trumpets were blown on God's behalf in those times of old, and for us in these last days the word comes to us saying, "He that hath ears to hear let him hear." and "be not hearers of the Word only but doers of it."

3. WHEN IN CONFLICT WITH THE OPPRESSOR.

Then the priests had to sound the silver trumpets on behalf of the people that they might be remembered before God. They had to do this when they were in conflict with their foes, for foes they had to meet, and they were never by their own prowess equal to them, and God made them like that, that they might in time of stress depend upon Him. They could not do without God. He was their refuge and resource and strength. When they blew the trumpets in the day of battle it was as though they said: "O God, we are Thine, for Thou hast redeemed us, undertake for us against the oppressor." And God ever responded to their appeal. And will He disappoint us if we take up this stand in faith? Let us test Him and see. How fierce are the struggles in which some Christians engage! They desire to do right and be overcomers when sore temptations beset them; they yearn after the victorious life, but they seem to yearn in vain; hope and disappointment have alternated in their experience, and the outcome of it is that, finding the foe too strong for them, they are discouraged and ready to give up the fight. Let all such learn to use the silver trumpets. Let the great fact that they are redeemed of the Lord get a firm hold upon their souls, and let them tell it out to God. Let their cry be: "O God, I am Thine, full of failure I am, often defeated I have been, yet I am loved by Thee, and redeemed by Thee, and at so great a cost; I cannot fight this battle, fight it for me, my foes are Thy foes and Thine are mine; I hide in Thee and own that only through Thee can I be more than a conqueror."

The Christian life is not a life of ease. It is not described in the Word in the language of the bedchamber, but of the battlefield. The world, the flesh and the devil are opposed to us if we belong to God. If we lose the sense that we belong to Him we cannot prevail in the fight; but when we blow the trumpets before Him, then will the Word be fulfilled: "Ye shall be remembered before the Lord your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies."

4. ON THE DAYS OF YOUR GLADNESS AND ON YOUR SOLEMN DAYS.

These sons of Jacob were to acknowledge God in all their circumstances. Whether they were exalted or brought low, whether they prospered or suffered adversity, whether they rejoiced or wept, the redemption note had to be dominant. And how else shall we be kept from independence of God when things go well with us? We are safe in the days of gladness if we rejoice before the Lord, and own Him as the Giver of every mercy, and if we hold ourselves and His gifts for Him, the Giver to whom we belong. And we are comforted and sustained if we call upon Him in the day of sorrow. If we blow the silver trumpet and say —

"LORD I AM THINE, though sorrows gather round me,

And death's dark shadow thwart my path is thrown;

Saviour Divine, Thy outstretched hand upholds me,

And, being Thine, I shall not walk alone.

5. AT THE BEGINNINGS OF THEIR MONTHS.

The beginnings of their months spoke of the constant changes in this life. At every change it is our privilege and our safety to depend upon God and to do His will whose we are. "Ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live and do this, or that" (James 4: 15). No change in our circumstances ought to be contemplated, much less completed, without the use of the silver trumpets. "O God, we belong to Thee. Guide us in all our ways," should be our cry. The young man entering business, young Christians forming friendships, associations, new relationships, should let the great fact that they are bought with a price control them, and pour out the joyous notes of this blessed truth in the Lord's ear. Thus will they be spared many sorrows and preserved from great disaster. "Acknowledge Him in all thy ways and He shall direct thy paths."

6. OVER THEIR BURNT OFFERINGS AND PEACE OFFERINGS.

With these sacrifices the people approached unto God. The burnt offering was a type of our worship, and the peace offering of our fellowship; our worship which has Christ, the beloved Son of God who went into death, as its subject, and our fellowship which finds its life and its food in Him also. But we cannot approach to God for worship except as redeemed by the blood of Christ. Vain and presumptuous is the notion of the "modernist" that he does not need this; "without the shedding of blood is no remission." And the blood that has redeemed us gives us boldness before God, so that we can in holy fellowship unite in worship before Him, His redeemed ones. Hence we sing the new song unto our great and blessed Saviour "Thou hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood."

"I AM THE LORD THY GOD," is God's final word in the instructions given for the use of these trumpets. He can brook no rival. He must be supreme. For His pleasure He has redeemed us, and His will for us is good, perfect and acceptable. It is not against us, but for us. It is against all that could do us harm, and has nothing but blessing for us, and as we own Him and live as those who belong to Him, as we daily, hourly, blow the silver trumpets, we shall prove that His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

The Testimony of the Lord

God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power and of love, and of a sound mind. Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God. 2 Timothy 1: 7, 8.

My appeal is specially and definitely to the young disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am not in this minimising the importance of those who are older in the faith; a great responsibility rests upon them, and theirs is a great privilege. As they increase in the knowledge of God, they give stability to practical Christian fellowship and testimony, but they must be watchful lest they lose their spiritual vigour and enthusiasm for Christ. If they fail in this they will not help but hinder those who are coming after them, and nothing could be more serious than that in these perilous times in which the whole truth of God is being challenged. But my appeal is to the young Christians; to them I say, Rally to the banner of our Lord and be not ashamed of His testimony.

Consider the position: — the time has "come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth AND SHALL BE TURNED UNTO FABLES" (2 Tim. 4: 3, 4). God only could have given to Paul the prophetic vision that enabled him to describe so graphically and without mistake what these last days would be like. In this farewell letter to young Timothy, his son in the faith, he tells us all about it. It is a God-inspired letter, as all Scripture is God-inspired; read it and it will keep you from being discouraged and dismayed, for if God foresaw the condition into which Christendom would fall, He has not been taken by surprise by it, nor need you be surprised. To be forewarned is to be fore-armed, and God, who foresaw it all, has instructed you how to act in the midst of it. He has given to you the Spirit, not of cowardice, but of love, and power, and of a sound mind; and all the grace that you require is in Christ Jesus for you, so that you need not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord. Christian, be enthusiastic for Christ, and the faith that is His.

Your choice lies between the testimony of our Lord and fables. The testimony of our Lord is not popular and the fables are. They are labelled "scientific discoveries," they are propounded by university professors and preached by bishops, and they please the people who love pleasure more than they love God; but they are fables, nevertheless — God-dishonouring, soul-damning fables. While they puff up the fleshly mind they save no soul, but your souls have been saved and blessed and made free and glad by the testimony of the Lord; by that testimony you must stand, and in standing by it suffer ridicule if needs be, and be looked down upon as being ignorant and behind the times. You will be told that on the other side are the wise and the mighty and noble, and that on the side of the testimony are the nobodies. Be it so, that is just what we should expect as we read such a passage as 1 Cor. 1: 26-31. But one thing is certain, one man with God is better than ten thousand without Him, and God will ever be with the testimony of the Lord. Be the one man if necessary.

The perilous times have arrived, and the faith once delivered to the saints is being assaulted and opposed by many evils. There is the form of godliness in which the power that convicts men of sin and brings them with repentance to the feet of the great Redeemer, and changes their lives, is denied. Leaders of religious thought are turning away from the testimony of the Lord and offering the sacraments instead of the living Lord and Christ as the means of life and blessing, and are drifting back into popish superstitions; and others, drunk with the wine of modernism, have made an unholy alliance with "science, falsely so called," and are casting aside the Word of God as an obsolete thing and overthrowing the faith of some. Formalism, Ritualism — these be the gods of an apostatizing Christendom, but they are as false as Baal and Ashtaroth and Chemosh, the gods of the Canaanites! "O Timothy," wrote Paul, the aged, in view of these days, "Keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith" (1 Tim. 6: 20).

But God, who,"in the beginning created the heavens and the earth" as Genesis tells us, still reserves to Himself thousands who have not bowed the knee to these modern gods and whose lips have not kissed them, — you through the grace of God are among these, and the obligation that is laid upon you is not to be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord. The time has come when you must be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and turn away from those who have turned away from the truth, for the command is clear, "Let every one that names the name of the Lord withdraw from iniquity" (N.T.). It is at once your responsibility and privilege to stand for and to preach the word, to be instant in season and out of season.

What is the testimony of our Lord? It is the word of the Lord as given to men at any given time. The first of which we have any record was given through Enoch, the seventh from Adam, who prophesied saying, "Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints to execute judgment", and in that first testimony we have proof enough that evolution is a fable. If man had struggled up through the ages, overcoming the most extraordinary difficulties and rising superior to a baffling environment, until at last he emerged from an ape ancestry into a noble manhood, why should he be judged? Surely instead of judgment the Almighty might well and righteously congratulate him upon his achievement, and encourage him to still greater efforts. But if, on the other hand, he was created in the image and after the likeness of God, and if he has fallen from his high estate: if he is a degenerate Adam instead of a glorified ape: if he was made a moral being with responsibilities towards his Creator, and if he has broken down in those responsibilities and set at naught the will of God and pleased himself, how just it is that he should be called to account and that judgment should await him. "As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then, every one of us shall give account of himself to God" (Rom. 14: 11). But how great is the mercy of God that warns men of the certainty of judgment before it comes, and calls upon them to repent in view of it. I repeat that the fact of coming judgment exposes the modern doctrine of evolution to be not truth but a profane and vain imagination of man's mind. It is a fable and not the testimony of the Lord.

It may be objected, You are quoting from Genesis, and Genesis is now held by "all scholars" to be unauthentic, and these stories of Enoch and others are legendary, or at the best allegorical. I am not quoting from Genesis at all, but from Jude, a short epistle written at least 3,000 years after the translation of Enoch to heaven; but Jude corroborates Genesis. If Enoch did not live and walk with God, as Genesis tells us, then he did not prophesy as Jude tells us; nor did he please God before he was translated, as the author of Hebrews tells us; nor did he beget Methuselah, as Luke tells us. If these three New Testament writers are untrustworthy on one point, we cannot accept them as reliable on any point; their writings and Genesis stand or fall together, and those who try to hold on to the New Testament and yet discard Genesis in their haste to compromise with these so-called scientific discoveries, and to appear progressive in the eyes of their fellows and congregations, are, to say the least, very inconsistent men.

The testimony that Enoch gave from the Lord has not been cancelled, the judgment of which he spoke will surely come, but it has been postponed for God is longsuffering to usward, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance; and in the meanwhile the testimony of the Lord is going out to men. It comes from the God who cannot lie, and it tells us what He is; it is a testimony of grace, yet it does not hide the fact of judgment to come. When we come to this testimony, we are not dealing with theories, speculations, and hypotheses, but with facts, and these facts are three: —

1. Christ has been here.

2. He is no longer here.

3. He is coming back again.

John says, "We know that the Son of God is come. . . . This is the true God and eternal life" (1 John 5: 20); and again, "Every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ come in flesh is of God" (chap. 4. 2, N.T.); and again, "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (verse 10). The Son of God has come and His coming was the manifestation of God's love to men. He did not come as a Judge, but "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them" (2 Cor. 5. 19). He was announced at His birth as a Saviour by heavenly heralds. How did men treat Him when He came? They ought to have hastened to the manger where He was cradled, as the shepherds did, they ought to have brought their worship and their gifts to Him as did the wise men from the East, but they did not. All Jerusalem was troubled at the news of His birth, yet He did not turn back. He had come as the pledge of God's love to men. He was the Father's sent One and the light of the world. He came to show and to tell that, "God is love."

But when Christ came, He was not wanted. There was no room for Him in man's scheme of things. There was room for Caesar in his Imperial purple, tyrant though he was; there was room for Herod and Pilate, for priests and publicans, for scribes and sinners; there was room for Barabbas, but no room for Jesus. He was despised and rejected of men. Not only rejected — a man may be rejected because of his proposals and yet respected because of his personal qualities — but Jesus was despised, and rejected because He was despised. Men despise that which they think beneath them, something contemptible, despicable — such was Jesus in their eyes. They could not endure perfect goodness, they would not have the Son of God, and with wicked hands they crucified and slew Him.

If the cross of Christ revealed that "God is love" — and it did, for "God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" — it also exposed the heart of man. The cross of Christ was the proof that there was not a chord in man's heart that would respond even to God's tenderest touch. The cross was man's defiant answer to the most blessed advance that God could make to him. The best that God could do only laid bare the incorrigibility of man's nature, and put beyond all controversy for ever the fact that he MUST BE BORN AGAIN. The princes of this world crucified the Lord of glory and they acted for the race, they showed that men loved darkness rather than light and preferred Satan to God, even though God is love.

How wonderful it is that that same cross shows us how God can be a just God and a Saviour, who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. If you hold fast this, you may be charged with holding "dry-as-dust" and "out-of-date" theology. But is it dry-as-dust theology? It is the most glorious testimony that ever sounded on mortal ears — "There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time." Is this testimony out of date? Nay, this is the due time in which it must be made known. A multitude of dying saints have been filled with triumph in the very face of death because they believed it, and were persuaded that nothing could separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. But they could have known nothing about it if the Son of God had not come,

CHRIST IS NO LONGER HERE. He is the Stone that the builders rejected, nevertheless He has become the Head of the corner; this is the Lord's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes. God has intervened for His own glory and raised Him from the dead. This is the dominant note of Peter's gospel in Pentecostal times; it rings triumphantly in Paul's gospel. God has given His answer to man's foul act. He has justified His Son whom men condemned, and Christ risen and exalted is God's new beginning of the creation of God. We must stand either with the world that crucified Him or with God who has glorified Him. God has bound us up with Christ in glory by the Holy Spirit whom He has given to us, and by so doing has separated us from the world. God's purpose of blessing for men far exceeds anything that they can imagine for themselves, but this purpose is in Christ Jesus our Lord; not in the first man, Adam, but in the Second Man, Christ, for the first man was made of dust and to dust he goes, but the second Man is out of heaven (1 Cor. 15: 47, N.T. and in Him, God gives to all who believe life and incorruptibility and an inheritance, "incorruptible, and undefiled, and unfailing, reserved in heaven for you" (1 Peter 1: 4, N.T.). "Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4: 12).

HE IS COMING BACK AGAIN. "The Lord saith unto my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand, until I make Thy foes Thy footstool" (Psalm 110: 1; Acts 2: 34, 35; Heb. 1: 13). The rights that were refused Him when He came in grace, will be secured by the power of God when He comes in glory, and "at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2: 10, 11). The testimony of our Lord is incomplete if we leave out this. The hopes of the saints of God were always centred in Christ and His coming to establish righteousness in the earth. Of this Enoch spoke; the vision of this rejoiced the heart of Abraham; it was part of the testimony that God established in Jacob; that they might set their hope in God and not forget His works (Psalm 78); it has been revealed to us in the testimony of the Lord in its greatness and detail. Man after the flesh who is not subject to the law of God must give way before Christ, who was ever obedient, and He shall be glorified as Redeemer, Judge, and King. HE IS THE FAITHFUL WITNESS (He has been here); THE FIRST BEGOTTEN FROM THE DEAD (He is not here), AND THE PRINCE OF THE KINGS OF THE EARTH (He is coming back again). (Rev. 1).

"We have not followed cunningly devised fables, (that exalt man in his pride, and dishonour Christ, and deny the revelation of God) when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eye-witnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to Him from the excellent glory: This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard when we were with Him in the holy mount" (2 Peter 1: 16-18).

The fables to which so many have turned make men comfortable without God, they give to them a false hope, a fool's paradise, and encourage them to trust in themselves and their own efforts. The testimony of the Lord exalts Christ who is the theme of it. In it GOD COMMANDS ALL MEN EVERYWHERE TO REPENT: "because He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that HE HATH RAISED HIM FROM THE DEAD" (Acts 17: 30, 31). This testimony cannot fail, and the foundation of God standeth sure, but on our part we must keep it pure and not mix it with fables of men. We must "hold fast the form of sound words which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. 1: 13). Only thus can we be "faithful men." "Consider what I say; and the Lord give thee understanding in all things. Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel: wherein I suffer trouble, as an evil doer, even unto bonds, but the word of God is not bound" (2 Tim. 2: 7-9). "Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of the Lord nor of me, His prisoner, but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel ACCORDING TO THE POWER OF GOD."

The Holy Ghost

The Holy Ghost.

His Coming. His Personality. His Activities.

"But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me." John 16: 26.

By J. T. Mawson.

It is important to see that the coming of the Lord Jesus into this world introduced an entirely new era in the ways of God with men, and that this new era is marked by the presence of the Holy Ghost in a way that was never known before. In Old Testament days the Spirit of God visited the earth and energized men for certain great exploits, or moved them to write the Holy Scriptures, but He never dwelt here as He does now. John 7: 39 will be sufficient to prove this.

"But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive: for the Holy Spirit was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified."

Mark what is here stated. Believers on Jesus were to receive the Spirit; but for this they had to wait until Jesus was glorified, and He could not be glorified until His death and resurrection were accomplished. The order of events was as follows:

1. The Incarnation of the Eternal Word, the only begotten Son of God (John 1: 14, 18), for the declaration of what God is.

2. The death of Jesus, by which the love of God has been fully revealed and sinners redeemed (1 John 4: 9, 10).

3. The resurrection of Jesus, the signal proof of the completeness of the work of redemption and God's seal upon that work.

4. His ascension to the right hand of God; the undeniable evidence of God's perfect delight in Him and in the work that He had finished.

5. The descent of the Holy Ghost; to gather men out of this world and unite them to Christ, so that He may have His church for Himself and reap the full harvest of His travail and death.

The two great facts of this present period are that the MAN CHRIST JESUS sits on the throne of God in heaven, and that GOD THE HOLY GHOST dwells in men on the earth.

THE COMING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

The Lord Jesus often talked with His disciples about His death and resurrection, but they always failed to understand Him; they expected to see Him sit upon the throne of David and make Israel glorious in the earth. So that when He allowed men to put Him upon the cross, and died without resisting their violence, these poor disciples were dismayed and heart-broken. They thought that the Lord had been utterly defeated and that His mission was a complete failure and that all their hopes were for ever blasted. But just as the rising of the sun at morn flings back the gloom of night, so the resurrection dispelled the darkness into which the death of Jesus had plunged them; their doubts and misgivings vanished when they saw the Lord, and they knew that what they thought was defeat was glorious victory. As He instructed them in things concerning Himself from the Old Testament writings (Luke 24) they must have realized the blessed fact that He had gained more glory upon the cross than He could have done had He taken the throne, and that only by that death of suffering and shame could God's purpose of blessing be brought about in the midst of the children of men.

It is scarcely needful to call evidence as to the Lord's resurrection, but as the coming of the Holy Ghost was entirely dependent upon it, it will be well to note that He was seen and handled and heard by many of His disciples on many occasions after He rose from the dead. They had looked into His grave, and found it empty, they had handled Him and found that He had a body of flesh and bone, which no spirit has; they saw in His body the wounds which were made at the cross, and never afterwards did they doubt the fact of His glorious bodily resurrection; it became the central fact of their testimony. To deny this is to attempt to overthrow Christianity, for it is written: — "And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins" (1 Cor. 15: 17).

If Christ is not raised, it is proved that He was unequal to the task which He undertook, that our sins were too many, and death too strong for Him, that God Himself has been defeated, and that the devil has gained a supreme and final victory. If Christ is not raised the work of redemption is not accomplished, and consequently the presence of the Holy Ghost in men is an absolute impossibility, for He can only dwell in those who are redeemed.

But now is Christ risen from the dead, and in that resurrection we see the mighty triumph of God, and the irrefutable pledge of blessing for men.

It was on one of the occasions on which the Lord revealed Himself to His disciples after His resurrection that He spoke very definitely to them as to the coming of the Holy Ghost.

In Luke 24: 49, it is recorded that He said —

"And, behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you: but tarry ye in Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high."

And Luke, who also wrote the Acts, tells us in the 1st chapter, 8th and 9th verses of that Book, that He also said —

"But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

"And when He had spoken these things, while they beheld, He was taken up; and a cloud received Him out of their sight."

Now these disciples, believing the word of the Lord implicitly, abode together in Jerusalem, and continued in one accord in prayer and supplication, awaiting the fulfilment of the Lord's promise.

They had grasped the fact that they were to represent the Lord during His absence and to spread the fame of His mighty victory; they were evidently also conscious of their own inability for this great work, and so they waited in earnest supplication upon the Lord for the coming of Him by whom they were to receive power, that in His strength they might go forth and bring men as captives to the feet of Jesus.

Turning to Acts 2, we find there the account of the coming of the Spirit.

"And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.

"And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance."

Peter explains all this to the multitude that gathered together, in verse 32.

"This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.

"Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear."

This is the account of the actual coming of the Holy Ghost to take up His dwelling place upon earth, and He remains with us to-day. His presence has never been withdrawn.

THE PERSONALITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

Before dealing with the mission and activities of the Holy Ghost on earth, let us see what the Bible says as to His Person. We often hear Him spoken of as an influence, or a power, but this is certainly not the teaching of Scripture. It is true that He exercises an influence, and is the power by which God operates in the souls of men, but He is a Person, and not only a Person, but the third Person in the Godhead — the Holy Ghost.

In Matthew 28: 19 we read —

"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,"

The Holy Ghost is co-equal with the Father and the Son.

THE FATHER is the source of love and life, the spring of all good and blessing for men.

THE SON is the perfect expression of the Father, the Revealer of all this good and blessing to men.

THE HOLY GHOST is the One who, by His power and wisdom, interprets that which has been revealed, and makes the revelation a reality in men.

The three Persons in the Ever-blessed Godhead work together for the salvation of men, and if we keep in mind the three prepositions "for," "to," and "in" in this connection, they will help us to understand the relative position of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the carrying out of this gracious purpose.

THE ACTIVITIES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

We will now turn to John 3: 3.

"Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto Him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God."

Two things stand out clearly in this statement. (1) The badness of men by nature. (2) The goodness of God in undertaking to make a new start in them for their blessing. "Ye must be born again." This is an absolute necessity, and this statement gives the lie direct to the vaunting boast that good dwells in every man and merely requires development.

Let us note the fact that these words were not spoken to an outwardly gross and vicious man. Nicodemus was a model for his fellows, upright and correct in his conduct, but with startling clearness the truth is set before even him: flesh is flesh, there must be a new start. "Ye must be born again."

We are told that what humanity needs is to be cultured, educated, religionized; that men ought to be placed in better environment, their standard of life raised. It is argued that a change from the slums to garden cities, that suitable recreations and the like, will bring them up to the platform that will make them satisfactory to themselves and their fellows, and pleasing to God. Well, I for one would like to see all slums disappear, and the lot of man made easier; the miseries and hardships of multitudes can give no pleasure to the Christian; but these things are the foul brood that sin has begotten in the world. Man has a fallen sinful nature, and to make him more comfortable in this world and to change his environment will not change that. We must not lose sight of the fact that the fall took place amid the most beautiful surroundings that human eyes have seen on earth, and that the foulest crime that ever stained the sad annals of humanity was perpetrated in a garden. It was in a garden that the traitor kiss was put upon the cheek of Jesus, and the man who did that dastard deed had been in company with Him for three years. He had been taught, and fed, and protected by Him, and in spite of these circumstances and conditions, the best that man could have, his heart remained unchanged. And the truth must be told, though it may hurt us to hear it, the heart of Judas was but a sample of yours and mine.

If you demand my authority for such an assertion, I will turn you back to Jeremiah 17: 9.

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"

Or further back still, to Genesis 6.

"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

It is useless to plead that great progress has been made since those far-off days, for the Lord Jesus said

"That which is born of flesh is flesh." "Ye must be born again."

All are corrupt alike by nature, from the mansions of Mayfair to the hovels of Shoreditch; from the highest grade of society to its lowest dregs; flesh is flesh, and nothing but this absolutely new start which God's Spirit alone can produce, can make men acceptable to God. "Ye must be born again."

The truth as to the fall and the utter badness of the heart is not pleasant to the unregenerate man; it suits the pride of his heart better to believe that he has descended from the ape, and that the ape arrived through various stages of evolution from the lowliest form of life, for then he can reason that if he has made such wonderful progress, in the past, the future is big with possibilities. But, alas! it is the Edenic lie, "Ye shall be as gods," which he has believed. This is the will-o'-the-wisp that is leading him through the night of his ignorance, to the black doom of eternal despair. Happy is the man who accepts God's truth as to himself and owns that he is a fallen sinner, for then he is ready for the unfolding of God's great plan for his blessing.

On the side of God's goodness in this matter we have "the water and the Spirit." The water certainly is not baptism, it is that which cleanses — not the guilt of a man, the blood does that — but which gives him a new and clean nature; it is the truth of God applied to his heart, which produces repentance in him, and makes him turn from his evil way to God. It makes him hate the sins which once he loved, and long after those things in which he once found no pleasure. In short, it is the introduction of an entirely new nature, not produced by the will of man, but by the word of God which liveth and abideth for ever. Psalm. 119: 9 will be sufficient to prove this interpretation of the use of water.

"Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to Thy word."

And Ephesians 5: 26 is even clearer still.

"That He might sanctify and cleanse it by the washing of water by the word."

And speaking to His disciples in John 15: 3, the Lord said —

"Now are ye clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." The water is the word.

The truth of God is applied in convicting power by the Spirit of God to the consciences and hearts of men, for just as He moved upon the face of the waters in the days of creation, so He moves now upon the souls of men to bring form out of chaos, to make the light shine where the darkness has reigned, and to bring life out of death. He is the untiring Servant of God in this gracious work, and happy is the man who yields to His influence and power.

Having quickened the soul out of death, the Spirit of God turns the eye to Christ as the only hope and Saviour; and faith in Him settles the question of guilt for ever, for God, "is just, and the Justifier of him that believeth in Jesus." It is verily a glorious day for a man when he casts himself unreservedly upon the Lord Jesus Christ, for then a complete change of ownership takes place, he is no longer the slave of Satan, but he belongs to the Lord, and as a result receives the Spirit of God.

Two passages from the Epistles will make this clear. Eph. 1: 13, 14.

"Christ, in whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise."

Also 1 Cor. 6: 19.

"What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body."

In these two passages three important questions are answered.

1. Who are indwelt by the Spirit?

2. When are they indwelt?

3. Why are they indwelt?

WHO?

"The immanence of God in humanity," is a favourite phrase in the mouths of some, and by it is meant that God dwells in, and manifests Himself through all men. But Scripture teaches the very opposite. Notice the Lord's own words in John 14: 17.

"The Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him; but ye know Him, for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you."

How clearly the distinction is here made between the world of men and the believing "YOU." Those who are addressed in the verses quoted had "heard" and "believed the gospel of our salvation"; they are addressed as "saints," and "faithful in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 1). They are "sanctified in Christ Jesus" (1 Cor. 1: 2) and are included in the "us who are saved," verse 18.

In 1 Cor. 2: 14, we read —

"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."

But nothing could be plainer than 1 Cor. 6: 9, 10, 11.

"Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,

"Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God."

Now mark well the next verse.

"And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God."

These are they who were indwell by the Holy Ghost, their bodies had become the temples of God, but they had first to be washed, sanctified, and justified; in this way they were prepared for this wondrous indwelling.

"Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His" (Rom. 8: 9).

WHEN?

The "When" of the indwelling is equally plain; it was "after that ye believed", or  'having believed' (N.T.) ye were sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise.

This is plainly illustrated by the case of Cornelius and his household in Acts 10: 43, 44. For while Peter bore testimony to Christ in those blessed words: "To Him give all the prophets witness, that through His Name, whosoever believeth in Him shall receive the remission of sins," the Holy Ghost fell upon all who heard the word. Faith came by hearing, they believed the glad tidings, and were at once sealed by the Holy Ghost, as belonging to the Lord.

When a man thus believes the gospel, and surrenders himself to the Lord Jesus to-day, he become His property in deed and in truth, and receives the Spirit at once. When a farmer buys sheep in the market he puts his own mark upon them, he does not go about marking other men's sheep, but he stamps those that his own money has purchased. In like manner the good and great Shepherd marks off His own sheep by the indwelling of the Spirit.

WHY?

Of equal importance is the "Why?" of the indwelling, and for this we must look at 1 Corinthians 6: 19. It is here that the Lord's rights are emphasized. Are you a believer on the Lord Jesus Christ? Then you are God's property. "Ye are bought with a price," and the greatness of that price no mind can grasp, no tongue can tell. The love of Christ was so great, His desire to possess us so strong, that He endured the speechless pangs of Calvary and shed His precious blood. More than this He could not have done, and no lesser price would have availed.

Now every believer on the Lord Jesus Christ is the rightful property of God. A man has money to invest, and with it he purchases a row of houses; as soon as they pass into his possession, he advertises that the houses are "To let." He has purchased that property to let it out to others. But here is another man, who also purchases a house, but instead of advertising for tenants, he resides in it himself. Now judging by the conduct of some Christians we should be led to the conclusion that God had acted according to the former, for they have given much room within their hearts and lives to the world, the flesh, and countless other things. But the truth is that Christians have been chosen, purchased, and redeemed by God, that He might dwell in them Himself, and by the Holy Ghost He has taken possession of that which He has purchased. It is His will and His right to occupy us altogether. He would have us, spirit, soul and body, yielded up to His control. This is the "Why?" of the indwelling. He claims our bodies as His temples.

THE COMFORTER.

We will turn again to the Gospel of John, for the Spirit is mentioned more often in that Book than any other, except the Acts of the Apostles.

The reason for this is that a very full unfolding of Christianity is set before us in it. It will pay you well to search out all the times that the Lord uses the personal pronoun "My" in John. You will find it to be the characteristic word of the Gospel. He says, "My Father," "My Father's house," "My Father's name," "My joy," "My peace," "My glory," "My love," "My name," and so forth. From these blessed possessions He derived infinite joy, and true Christianity simply means that those who are His own  — those whom He can call "My sheep," "My friends," "My brethren," — share these things with Him, for He gives not as the world, but shares all He possesses with His loved co-heirs. But these things cannot be understood and enjoyed apart from the Holy Ghost, hence the place He occupies in the Gospel.

In John 14: 26 the Lord Jesus says —

"But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."

John 15: 26.

"But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me."

John 16: 7-15.

"It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you. . . Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of Himself; . . . He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shew it unto you."

Every word that fell from the lips of Jesus is of the utmost importance, and I would ask you to note particularly how He speaks of the Holy Ghost. He does not speak of Him as the Comforter merely, but "Another Comforter." That means, on the face of it, that He was to take the place of One who had already acted the part of Comforter. That One was Jesus Himself.

He had been their Teacher, Guide, Protector, and Friend. He had guarded them in danger, comforted them in sorrow, and made Himself altogether indispensable to them. Now it was expedient for them that He should go away, then the Holy Ghost would come and fill the Lord's place in all this wondrous activity of love.

And this brings before us in a vivid way the character of the Spirit of God. We are apt to dwell upon the fact of His holiness, and it is most necessary that we should, for He is the Holy Spirit of God; but do not let us forget His love and tenderness. We see in Jesus the embodiment of tenderness and love, for every beautiful grace dwelt in Him; but in all this He was the perfect expression of the character of God. Now the Holy Ghost is God, so that dwelling within us is One who, though intensely holy, is exactly in character what Jesus was when here on earth. He is with us as the Comforter. How shall we illustrate this blessed office?

Upon the curbstone yonder there stands a timid little girl; she must cross that crowded thoroughfare, but she is filled with fear at the sight of the whirling traffic. She dare not venture alone, and she looks about for guidance and help. Presently there comes along one whose face gives her confidence, and he, seeing her standing there, divines her need, and taking her small hand in his strong palm, he leads her safely through all the dangers and sends her on her way, light of heart and happy. He is a comforter. That is the place that the Holy Ghost takes with regard to us, and it will be with exceeding joy that He presents all the blood-washed ones at last to the One who bought them in the eternal glory of God. By Him they are kept through faith unto salvation.

But the Holy Spirit is not only here to guide and lead God's people through all the difficult ways in life: He is with them to minister constant comfort and joy to their hearts by unfolding the glories of Christ. If a beam of sunlight is allowed to shine through a transparent prism, it is decomposed into its constituent rays, and we are able to admire its glories in the red, green, blue, gold, and purple. Now the Bible is the prism through which the Holy Spirit makes the glory of Christ to shine, and as we are taught of Him, we are able to discern the golden ray of the divine glory of Jesus the blue ray of His heavenly character and grace — and the red ray of His suffering and death; and as we are engaged with the all-varied glories of Him who is so precious to us, we are comforted, helped, and greatly rejoiced.

The natural man cannot see or know these glories, it is the work of the Holy Spirit to reveal them to us, as is plainly stated, in 1 Corinthians 2. It is in this way that He turns the affections of God's people from the trifles of earth, and fixes them upon the glorious and ever blessed Man who sits at God's right hand.

OTHER RESULTS OF HIS COMING.

The Holy Ghost is also the Spirit of sonship. Those whom He indwells are the sons of God. This is plainly put in Paul's letter to the Galatians.

"For ye are all the sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3: 26).

"And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father" (Gal. 4: 6).

Suppose the King pardoned a poor criminal, lying under a death sentence, that he set him at liberty, and finally took him to the royal residence at Windsor. We can understand how grateful the man would be for His Majesty's clemency, but we can also see that he would be very uncomfortable in the palace, he would be more at home in the prison than there, for he has had no training for court life.

But if the King could give him the spirit of the Prince of Wales, everything would be changed, he would then be able to enter into the King's ways and thoughts, and he would be perfectly at home in the presence of his benefactor. Now what the King could never do, God has done. He has given the Spirit of His Son to all who have truly believed in Him. Apart from this they could not have been at home in the Father's presence, but since they have received the Spirit of His Son, they in measure are able to enter into the thoughts of the Father, they can appreciate and reciprocate His great love, and understand that they are placed in His sight in all the favour and love that belongs to His dear Son, and this will be their joy in heaven for ever.

Now mark well the character of God's love. It is so great that He will have us who are saved with Himself in heaven for ever. But He loves us so much that He will not keep us waiting until we get to heaven to enjoy it; He has given to us His Spirit, that the ineffable bliss of heaven might fill our hearts now.

Now it is evident that as the Lord alone could accomplish the work of redemption, so none but the Holy Ghost can give effect to that work in the souls of men. The work of God is beyond the power of men; the power of the Holy Ghost is alone competent for it.

The things of God are beyond the range of the wisdom of men; the wisdom of the Holy Ghost alone can search them out and reveal them to us, and no man can understand them apart from the teaching of God the Holy Ghost.

If this were understood, Christians would be delivered from reliance upon the strength and wisdom of nature, and become useful vessels in the hands of the Spirit. They would be satisfied with that which was from the beginning, and be able to detect and reject as spurious every doctrine that is not of God.

Thus far we have confined our thoughts to the individual aspect of the Holy Spirit's indwelling, but it is also most important for us to see that His presence on earth has bound all God's people into one compacted whole. This must be so if one Spirit dwells in all. Hence we read in 1 Cor. 12: 12 — "For by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body."

Every one who has truly believed the gospel, which proclaims the forgiveness of sins to men, is indwelt by the Spirit, and by this same Spirit is united to Christ the glorified Head of the body, and every member thus united to Christ is necessary to all the rest. Each has his place in this wondrous unity, even as the members of a human body have each their place and function in the body in which they are placed. But space fails for further reference to this great aspect of the truth, but if you will prayerfully consider 1 Corinthians 12, where it is unfolded for us, you will be convinced of its importance.

Oh, that this truth may lay hold upon heart and conscience in these days of cliques, and sects, and divisions, and that all of us who love the Lord might have grace to depart from iniquity, and endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.

Finally —

"Grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.

"Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:

"And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you" (Eph. 4: 30, 31, 32).

Life after Death

Life after Death

Revised Report of a Lecture given in the Winter Gardens, Harrogate, by J. T. Mawson.

Answering a Lecture by Sir A. Conan Doyle, given in the same town, entitled "Life after Death."

Ladies and Gentlemen, — The first part of my task to-night will be to examine some of the statements made by Sir A. Conan Doyle in his lecture entitled "Life after Death," delivered in this town on Wednesday last. I shall select those statements which appear to me to be of the greatest importance, as the time at my disposal will not permit me to deal with his points seriatim.

Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

1. The lecturer complained that texts from Leviticus and Deuteronomy were used against the practice of communicating with the dead, and more than once in the course of his lecture he endeavoured to discredit these parts of the Bible. In this endeavour he quoted correspondence that had appeared in a Bradford newspaper after a visit of his to that city. Someone had based his objections to necromancy, and other mediumistic practices, upon the stern denunciations against these things in these ancient books. But someone else pointed out, he told us, that the very next verse to one of these denunciations was, "Cursed be he who weareth cloth made of two kinds of stuff." The whole trade of Bradford consists of making cloth of two kinds of stuff, he informed his audience; and it was ridiculous to make an objection on one text of the Old Mosaic Law, when all the time they were neglecting other things laid down by that law in their own daily lives. A public lecturer owes it to those who attend his lectures to be as accurate as possible in his quotations, but Sir A. Conan Doyle had evidently taken no trouble to verify this one. He must either be lamentably ignorant of the Scriptures himself or else he presumed upon ignorance of the Scriptures on the part of his hearers, for in repeating this statement he passed on to them a double lie. (1) There is no text in the Bible that says "Cursed be he that weareth cloth made of two kinds of stuff"; what is said is, "Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woollen and linen together," and (2) the texts that forbid the wearing of garments made of linen and wool are not at all in close proximity to those solemn utterances about spiritism and necromancy.

Sir A. Conan Doyle is surely aware that there are major and minor enactments upon every Statute book. It is the law of this land that we attach an appropriate postage stamp to every letter that we commit to the post, it is also the law of the land that a man who wilfully murders another shall hang by the neck until he is dead. So in the "old Mosaic law" there were definite instructions as to what the people should wear and eat, and these were to teach them lessons, and us also if we are ready to learn; but there were also laws forbidding great crimes under terrible penalties, and the very things that Sir A. Conan Doyle is following with such ardour are found in this category. But further, the laws relating to what the people should eat and drink were for Israel alone, while those that forbade consultation with familiar spirits and with the dead were of universal application, for we learn that because the Canaanites practised these abominations God drove them out of the land before the Israelites. Moreover these things are called abominations in the sight of the Lord God, and I ask you if it is conceivable that God would tell His chosen people at one time that certain things were an abomination to Him, and at another urge them to do these very things? If he is a God who acts in that way He is not the God that some of us have learnt to reverence and love; He is not the same from everlasting to everlasting, who changes not, and He is of no use to me, for how do I know that He will not condemn me tomorrow for doing that which He commanded me to do a week ago?

The Lord Jesus and Mediumistic Powers.

2. Sir A. Conan Doyle told us, and may God pardon the repetition of the blasphemy, that our Lord Jesus Christ simply possessed great mediumistic powers, that He was, in short, a great medium. He quoted two incidents in the life of our Lord to back up his statement. 1st. That when the woman with the issue of blood touched His clothes, He said, "Virtue is gone out of me," and he told us that the healing-mediums used practically the self-same words when they undertook to relieve people of their diseases. So they may, but are their patients immediately healed? She would be a very bold and presumptuous medium who would say, as the Lord said  to that long-afflicted woman, "Daughter, be of good comfort thy faith hath made thee whole: go in peace." Such words could only be spoken by Him who was Lord of all. 2nd. In Nazareth He could do no mighty work because of their unbelief; which thing, said Sir Arthur, constantly happened in spiritist seances. The presence of an unbeliever hampered the medium and often prevented manifestations. But the unbelief of the Nazarenes did not reduce the Lord to impotency, His power was not paralysed by their lack of faith, they were the losers, or what about that other passage referring to Jerusalem. "Though He had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him" He worked on where there was no faith.

He told us, and told us twice, that he had seen with his own eyes nearly every kind of miracle mentioned in the New Testament performed by mediums, except the raising of the dead. Did he tell us the truth? If so, how is it that we have not heard of these marvels? He has an able pen; could he not have written himself of these miracles, and given us a volume or two more enthralling than the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes? Of old, the whole country in which they were done was moved by the report of the works of our Lord Jesus. Would not the world itself be moved by a repetition of such works? Do you think that that popular newspaper The Daily Mail would have been silent on the subject, or The Weekly Despatch? The paper that could give half a page of its valuable space to supposed signals from Mars by wireless, and can give columns to the potentialities of the thyroid gland, would surely have been able to find some space for the record of such wonderful works as these?

Come, Sir A. Conan Doyle, prove the truth of your assertion. If such powers lie in this cult of yours, take with you your miracle-working mediums, and go to Central Europe, where we are told millions of children are starving; take with you also five loaves and two small fishes, and with them feed at least 5,000 of these children who are suffering for the sins of their fathers, and then carefully gather up the fragments that are left to satisfy the remainder. Come with me; I will take you to a leper colony in the West Indies, where I have preached the Saviour's grace to a crowd of pitiable creatures, rotting limb by limb to the grave; let your mediums touch the foul leprosy and restore the mutilated limbs and distorted features to their youthful strength and beauty. Come, weary not in this mission of mercy; there are thousands of men who will never again see the light of day in this land. The great war has robbed them of their precious sight. Have your mediums who can perform these great works no pity? Command them to touch these empty sockets and restore to these brave but sadly stricken men the gift which they have lost!

I beg of you, ladies and gentlemen, to read the Gospels, ponder over the things that are written in those Books. Note the never-wearying mercy of Jesus, the Only-Begotten Son of God, see how all-sufficient He was to meet the needs of every man, woman, and child that came to Him. Behold the great heart of God pouring forth its compassion in human tears as He sees the sins and sorrows of the people, and hear Him say as He stretches forth His hands to men, "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." He healed the sick, cleansed the leper, opened deaf ears, unloosed dumb tongues, restored sight to the blind, and raised the dead; and all His works were signs that He had a new and a full revelation of God to make to men. Read the story until your heart and knees are bowed in adoration before Him, and then turn to the record of wonders that Sir A. Conan Doyle has to give you; a record of rapping tables; flying tambourines; of stones thrown without hands; of spirits, that, like mischievous boys, delight in playing tricks upon the uninitiated; and then tell me, are you prepared to give up the blessed, glorious revelation that the Bible contains for the drivel of this new revelation?

I am sorry to have to say it, but I do not see what else can be said, when he told us that he  had seen with his own eyes nearly every miracle performed that is recorded in the New Testament but the raising of the dead, Sir A. Conan Doyle did not speak the truth.

The Powers of Pentecost.

3. He told us that he had witnessed all the powers of the Pentecost. This happened in the city of Gloucester or was it Glasgow? — the former I believe. There he called upon a journeyman tailor, who would not receive any money in return for the exercise of his mediumistic powers. They went into an upper room, and in this respect, certainly, we have one feature of Pentecost. The room was darkened, and here Sir Arthur took the trouble to explain to us, that for reasons that they had not yet discovered, certain psychic phenomena could not be shown except in the dark. If he would read John 3. 19, he might solve at once the difficulty, for there we read: "Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil." Here the analogy to Pentecost broke down, for that great event took place at 9 o'clock in the morning of a brilliant Eastern day, and I'll guarantee that the blinds of the upper room were not drawn. Then, said the lecturer, a wind began to blow, so strongly that it blew his hair about, and then there appeared in the darkness egg-shaped flames like — listen, and I will tell you what he said they were like — "like will-o-the-wisps." In his own description of this séance Sir A. Conan Doyle told us twice over that the wind blew his hair about, and he saw flames in the darkness, egg-shaped flames like will-o-the-wisps. What are will-o-the-wisps? They are ignes fatui — foolish fires, lights that flit about over marshy land in the darkness, and lure the benighted travellers from the hard highway with promises of warmth and shelter, only to leave them to struggle and perish in some impassable bog. Sir A. Conan Doyle spoke truer than he knew when he described these lights as being like will-o-the-wisps.

Then, as an awful hush fell upon the company, a voice, not the medium's, spoke to each sitter there. And this, to Sir A. Conan Doyle, was a manifestation of all the wonderful phenomena of Pentecost. Let us read from Acts 2, and see what really happened then.

1. And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.

2. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.

3. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.

4. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

5. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven.

6. And when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.

7. And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galileans?

8. And now hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?

9. Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia,

10. Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes,

11. Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.

But the greatness of Pentecost did not stop there; 3,000 from out of that wondering multitude were turned from their sins to the Saviour, from darkness to light, and death to life. 3,000 souls were swept into the circle of eternal blessing, owning Jesus Christ as their Lord. Compare the glory and the power and the blessing of that wonderful event with the puerile imitation of it that so marvellously affected Sir A. Conan Doyle, and then say whether, since he is an honest and intelligent man, anything else can account for his folly but "a strong delusion."

Is Spiritualism Opposed to Christianity?

4. The one thing that Sir Arthur seemed most anxious to impress upon his audience was, that Spiritism does not oppose Christianity but strengthens it; that it is not to supplant it but to fill up the blanks in it. He told us that the materialism of the Victorian era had shaken it to its foundations, and that Spiritism had become an absolute necessity to its preservation. The only conclusion that I can come to is that he does not know what Christianity is. I speak now of "the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints" and for which I stand upon this platform to contend. Its foundations stand sure, the gates of hell cannot prevail against it; it is founded upon Christ Himself, and He is the Rock of Ages. Sir A. Conan Doyle has no need to fear for the true faith, it will stand every shock; but what we fear is that many will be led away from the faith by his activities, led away from the rock and the light into the bog and the night, where shine the fitful and false lights of the will-o-the-wisps of which he has spoken; hence this gathering tonight. Spiritism is not Christianity; there is not a single point of contact between the two; if Spiritism is true, Christianity is false.

The Christian faith rests upon the two great facts, (1) Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, (2) and rose again from the dead according to the Scriptures. Spiritism denies these two great facts. The very life of Christianity is the knowledge of God, for "This is life eternal, to know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." And Sir A. Conan Doyle tells us that the spirits say that they do not know God. The eternal Deity of Christ, His perfect, sinless humanity, His sacrificial death, glorious resurrection, and return to judge the quick and the dead, are the great articles of our Christian faith, not mere dogmas, but great realities, profoundly affecting every life that comes under the power of them; but Spiritism and Sir A. Conan Doyle deny all these. No, you cannot hold the Gospel according to Conan Doyle, and the Gospel of the Lamb that was slain, at the same time. They belong to opposite camps, they are in deadly conflict; the one is from the pit, the other from God. Spiritism is the last great attack on the faith before the end of this age.

Does the Devil know his job?

5. He told us that if Spiritism were Satanic, if the messages that had come through from the other side were of the devil, then the devil does not know his job. But what is the devil's job? Two passages from the Bible will be enough to answer the question. Our Lord likened the preaching of the Gospel to the sowing of seed, and in explaining the parable to his disciples He said, "Now the parable is this: the seed is the Word of God. Those by the wayside are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved."

And again, St. Paul, speaking of those who did not believe the Gospel that he preached, said, "The god of this world [the devil] hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ should shine unto them." Evidently the devil's job is to hinder men from being saved if he can, and in order to do this he takes away the Word that is sown in their hearts and blinds their minds to the truth. He is the great destroyer of souls, but he is also called "that old serpent," and what can that name mean but that he is full of subtlety? Has Sir A. Conan Doyle never read, is it not plainly writ in the Word, that Satan transforms himself into an angel of light? Does that mean that he changes his purpose? Certainly not; it is his methods that he changes, and this change of method has deceived Sir A. Conan Doyle.

By what more effectual way could the devil destroy the souls of men than by sending them such a gospel as was preached last Wednesday evening. There are no "miserable sinners" now, the average citizen is a good man, and whatever his religion is — Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, or Buddhist — it matters not, so long as he is climbing some ladder. There is no judgment, no death, really, for the old Edenic lie "Ye shall not surely die," rang clearly throughout the lecture. What we call death is a pleasant experience, a passage into another region where everything is very much alike what it is here, except more beautiful, and where we shall know nothing more about God than we do here, which according to the spirits is practically nothing. That is not the gospel that Paul preached! That is not the Gospel of Calvary! There is no divine and all-conquering love told out in suffering on the cross in that gospel; there is no solace in it for souls that are sin-sick and weary. It is an accursed gospel! St. Paul, inspired by the Holy Ghost, wrote, "If any man preach any other gospel unto you, let him be accursed," and with God-given pre-vision he saw that not only men would do this, but that it would be attempted by spirits also, so that he joined in that curse angels as well as men. The fact of the matter is that Sir A. Conan Doyle does not know the devil's job.

Do the Dead Communicate with the Living?

I turn now to the question, "Do the dead ever communicate with the living" There is one instance of this given in the Old Testament Scriptures. It is the notorious case of King Saul and the witch of Endor. You may read the story in 1 Samuel 28. Notice, First, that God refused to speak to the King because of his persistent disobedience to His will. It was a God-abandoned man who sought out the poor medium of Endor. Second, the woman expected one of her familiar spirits to appear; instead, to her astonishment and terror, Samuel himself appeared, permitted of God for special reasons. Third, Samuel complains of being disquieted, by being called up. Some of you mourn your beloved dead, whom you believe are with Christ. Supposing it were possible for you to communicate with them, which it is not, would you care to disquiet them? Fourth, Samuel appeared merely to pronounce upon Saul the solemn doom that was to come upon him; and, finally, in Chronicles 10 we read that because of this crowning crime of a disobedient life, God slew him. "So Saul died for his transgression which he committed against the Lord . . . . . and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, and enquired not of the Lord; therefore He slew him." Study that story and tell me if there is any encouragement in it for you to visit a medium?

The New Testament also contains one instance of the dead appearing to the living. When upon the Mount of transfiguration, Moses and Elias talked with Jesus about His death. Sir A. Conan Doyle has likened that wonderful scene to a modern séance, showing plainly how blinded he is to the glory of Christ, and the teaching of the Scriptures.

In the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16), the Lord draws aside the curtain and teaches us the condition of those who have died. Lazarus was in the place of supreme blessedness, and he was not permitted to go and communicate with the five brethren of the rich man, and the rich man was in the place of misery and could not go; hence we conclude, and rightly, that the spirits of dead men do not communicate with the living.

Consider what it is that Spiritism proposes to you, whose hearts are sorely bereaved. In order to communicate with your beloved dead you must go to a medium, a woman, perhaps of doubtful character, and pay her a fee, and sit in the dark until she passes into a state of trance; then you may receive some communication purporting to come from the one whose voice you wish to hear; but, even if it were not the abomination that I believe God says it is, you have no guarantee that you are not being grossly deceived, either by the medium herself or the so-called spirit-control, or both. Is that like God, the God of all comfort, of whom the Scriptures speak? Do you not think that if it were possible and permissible, mother, for your boy to communicate with you, God would allow him to do it directly to you? The more I consider the cruelty of this awful system the more I am appalled at it. Sir A. Conan Doyle says, "If this is of the devil, then the devil does not know his job." I reply that the devil's character is written so large across every part of this system that only those who are blinded by him fail to see it.

But you want comfort in your sorrow; seek it from God and not from the devil; go to the Holy Scriptures and not to the planchette or the medium. In one of the great passages where God forbids these abominations to Israel, Moses says, "The Lord thy God will raise up a Prophet from the midst of thee of thy brethren, like unto me; unto Him ye shall hearken." That prophet is the LORD JESUS CHRIST. I beseech of you to hear His voice. I am addressing some who are broken-hearted and bewildered. I urge you tenderly to come to Jesus; He who wept with Mary of Bethany knows your sorrow. He says to you, "Come unto Me, and I will give you rest." Here everything is certain and sure; here there is no cruel deception; here there are no fees to pay; here there are the mercy and compassion of God, and all for you.

This Thing is Forbidden of God.

I can understand Sir A. Conan Doyle's objection to Leviticus and Deuteronomy, for here are some of the solemn words written therein. "Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God." Leviticus 19: 31. A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones; their blood shall be upon them; 20: 27. "And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people." 20: 6; and finally, in Deuteronomy 18, Moses says: —

9. When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.

10. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that maketh divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch.

11. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.

12. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee.

13. Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God.

Some of these are the things that Sir A. Conan Doyle is doing, and he is using his great talents and reputation and influence to induce all that he can to follow in his wake. Turn from it entirely; do not tamper with it; therein lie grave dangers for time and Eternity. You may not discern where and what the evil is, but be sure of this, it is there, or God would not so solemnly and under such penalties have warned His people of it. Along this road lies degradation of mind and body; now Sir A. Conan Doyle denies this, but the evidence is against him, as a remarkable book recently published by Dr. A. T. Schofield, a Harley Street nerve specialist, clearly shows. Along this road lies the damnation of the soul for ever, for it leads away from light and truth and God, and puts those who follow it under the power of a strong delusion, so that they reject the truth in the love of it, and embrace the lie. 2 Thess. 2: 10-12.

Who are the Spirits, and what do they want?

This Spiritism is a new revelation from God, we are told, and the rapping tables, dancing crockery and flying tambourines, and all the pranks and fantastic tricks that obtain at the seances, are but signs that the great God is trying to make us understand that He has something to communicate. If these things are of God, then I say that He has descended from His high and glorious wisdom and is doing things unworthy of Himself, and insulting the intelligence of men made in His own image and likeness.

But Sir A. Conan Doyle tells us that these things are only the ringing of the telephone bell; and here I am in full agreement with him. When the telephone bell rings we enquire "Who is it?" And that is the important matter now. Our beloved dead, says the Spiritist, are seeking by these means to attract our attention. But by what means will you make sure of this? Spiritists themselves have confessed that there are millions of malignant spirits of which we must beware. Have you any guarantee that these are not responsible for these apparently foolish and futile phenomena?

Sir A. Conan Doyle urged you to try the spirits, and backed up his plea by quoting Scripture: an old device that; but how shall we try them? By joining in these mediumistic practices? No, for that would be to do what God says is an abomination to Him. We can test them by the doctrines they bring, and 1 John 4 gives us that test as the one and only test, and by that test they are proved to be not the spirits of the departed, but seducing spirits, demons. "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils." 1 Tim. 4. We have already considered some of these doctrines; we need not consider more. But whether these doctrines come via Sir Conan Doyle or the Rev. Vale Owen, or whoever else, and however much they disagree in minor points, they all agree in denying the Gospel of the grace of God. They deny the Deity of Christ, His Lordship as Man, and His precious blood that alone can cleanse our sins. There is no need for repentance towards God, nor faith in our Lord Jesus Christ; there is no judge external to us, and it is not true that the name of Jesus is the only name given under heaven by which men can be saved. The whole truth of Jesus Christ coming in flesh and the purpose of His coming are denied. They are not the spirits of the dead that communicate such anti-christian doctrines as these, but they belong to that vast legion of fallen spirits under Satan's leadership, who are the enemies of God and good, and of Christ and men. They are from the bottomless pit, and they have a king over them whose name is Apollyon.

Do the Dead Live?

We have no need to dabble in this thing to assure ourselves that all survive death; it is plainly told us in the Word of God that they do. This has been a fundamental article of the faith of all who have believed in God from the very beginning. David knew that his dead son could not return to him but that he would go to him, when he said, "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." And the New Testament abounds with plain passages which are full of assurance as to this. How definite and comforting to every Christian heart are the words, "For we know that if this earthly house of our tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." And those other words of St. Paul's, "To depart to be with Christ is far better."

Turn to the truth of God's Holy Word, to the clear revelation that He has given of Himself in Christ; there you will find every need of your soul well and truly satisfied. I know that from experience, for,

"I came to Jesus as I was,

Weary, and worn, and sad."

And He made me feel that He was glad to see me; He took the burden from my heart, and put peace into my soul, and gave me a sure and certain hope for the future.

Turn away from this great delusion; it can only deceive you now and destroy you hereafter. The Lord Jesus Christ has peace and salvation for you now, and eternally. His sheep shall never perish, and none shall pluck them out of his hand, either in this life or the next; for all who believe on Him, it is true that, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's.

At a fishing village on the Northumberland coast, one glorious summer day, I handed a Gospel tract to an old Scotch fisherman. He read the title, "A Friend in need is a Friend indeed," and added, as his old face brightened into a smile, "Yes, and the best friend is Jesus." I asked him how long he had known the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour. He told me, more than forty years. He said he had passed through stormy seas in that time, but the Lord had never failed him. As the tears began to roll down his rough cheeks I thought he must have a tale to tell, and so he had, and this was it.

He said: We had four sons and we lost them all in two years. They were 28, 26, 24, and 21 years old, but they were all the Lord's, and we shall meet them again.

When the last of them came to die, his mother and I were sorely troubled, and he said to me, "Father, you and mother look very down; what's wrong with you? "

"Why," I said, "my boy, we don't like the thought of losing you; it's that that makes us down."

"But," he replied, "you're not going to lose me, dad. I belong to Jesus, and I'm going home, and you'll come soon, and we'll all be united again; but give me the hymn-book, and I'll sing a hymn to cheer you a bit."

"You're too weak to sing, my boy," I said; but he at once replied, "Give me the book and let me try."

And so the book was given to him, and he opened to that sweet hymn, and began to sing:

"Jesus, Lover of my soul,

Let me to Thy bosom fly."

He got through the first verse of it, and then found that what his father had said was true, he was too weak to sing.

So he pushed the book back again, and said, "You sing the next verse, father, and I'll wave my hand to the tune."

With halting notes the father sang,

"Other refuge have I none,

Hangs my helpless soul on Thee."

And while the father sang, the dying lad, with a glad light upon his wan face, waved his hand to the tune, but ere the father had finished the verse, that feeble hand fell, and the ransomed spirit rose to be with the One who had gilded his bed of death with light.

Your spiritism could not have made that dying boy sing in the presence of death. Your planchettes and flying tambourines could not have given him that triumphant entrance into the presence of the Lord. It was the knowledge of an Almighty Saviour who died and rose again that did that. Neither could these emanations from the prince of darkness, these mediumistic practices and doctrines of demons, have so comforted the bereaved and sorrowing parents as these parents were comforted; such comfort could only come from the living Christ. Oh, every one of you who does not know this Saviour yet, Come to Him now. Come to Jesus, for He can save you; His precious blood can cleanse you from every sin and give you fitness for heaven.

"Though your sins are red like crimson,

Deep in scarlet glow,

Jesus' precious blood can make them

White as snow.

Precious, precious, blood of Jesus,

Shed on Calvary,

Shed for rebels, shed for sinners,

Shed for me."

The Grace of the Lord and the Women

The Grace of the Lord and the Women

J. T. Mawson

The grace of the Lord Jesus was active towards all who came to Him when He dwelt here among men, but He seemed to have had the greatest consideration for the women. They are "the weaker vessels" and were not of much account in the estimation of the men. They had a proverb in those days, "Better burn the words of the Law than teach them to a woman," and even to this day in the Jewish Liturgy the men give thanks to God that they were not born women. But in contrast to the proud spirit of man the Lord stooped to the weak, the despised, and the neglected, and the greater their need the greater was His compassion for them.

When He saw the weeping widow following the corpse of her only son to its burying, He was moved with compassion, and never before had a great sorrow been so swiftly soothed as hers, when He said unto her, "Weep not." But power and authority were in Him as well as compassion, and He came and touched the bier and the funeral procession stood still, arrested on its march to the grave. Then He said to the young man, "I say unto thee ARISE; and he sat up and began to speak. And He delivered him to his mother." He might have claimed the life that He had restored; He might have said to him, "Follow Me," but He did not. He knew that the lad was his mother's only support and hope, and He gave him back to her (Luke 7: 11-15). — Such was Jesus!

The woman of the city could have expected nothing but scorn and rebuke from the Pharisee and his guests; then why did she venture across his threshold? Jesus was there and the grace that was in Him drew her to His feet, and that same grace broke her heart and moved her to repentance and saved her from herself and her sins. With what wonder she must have listened as He talked about her, and approved her conduct and held her up as an example to the proud man at the other end of the table. She had been a great sinner, but He spoke even to her, for He would not let her go away without the comfort and assurance that only His voice could give; and what wonderful words she heard, never would the music of them cease to sing in her soul. "Thy sins are forgiven. Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace." No wonder she loved much, for of all the people at that dinner, and of all those that crowded round the door of that house, she, the most despised and sinful, was the chiefest object of His gracious consideration that day (Luke 7: 36-50). — Such was Jesus!

The woman who had been long plagued with the issue of blood was hopeless of any cure and bankrupt of all her resources. Who would care for her, the victim of a loathsome malady, robbed of all her charm and wealth, and a burden to her relatives? But Jesus came to the town where she lived her unhappy life, and at the sight of Him faith awoke within her, and she said, "If only I could touch Him!" She knew that she might touch Him, her heart told her that He would not resent it, and He knew what was in her heart; and in response to her outstretched hand He healed her of her plague.

She would have gone away satisfied with that, but He would not permit it. He intended that she should carry into her brighter future, not the effect of His power in her body only, but the knowledge of His deep personal interest in her which would be an everlasting link between her soul and Him. So she saw His face and heard His voice, saying unto her, "Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace" (Luke 8. 43-48). — Such was Jesus!

It is not hard to understand the agony of Jairus and his wife as their little daughter, their only child, lay at the point of death. The Lord Jesus was their only hope, and the father sought for Him and besought Him to come and heal her. While He tarried on the road the end came and she died. But at last He came to the house of sorrow and death, and taking her by the hand said, "Maid, arise," and she arose straightway. No wonder that her parents were astonished at that word of power and so bewildered that they seemed incapable of action, or was it that in their joy at receiving their only child alive again they forgot all else? He did not forget, He knew her needs and cared for them, and she but a girl! Did He ever use His power without revealing His heart? "He commanded to give her meat." Even the mother did not realise in her wonder and joy that the child needed food, but He did, He was more considerate for her than the mother (Luke 8. 49-56). — Such was Jesus!

Hear the indignant words of the ruler of the synagogue as he cries from his pulpit, "There are six days in which men ought to work; in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the Sabbath Day." What had aroused the man's wrath? A poor creature bowed down with a sore infirmity had dragged herself to the synagogue on that Sabbath, for Jesus was there. For eighteen years she had suffered, bound by Satan, and never once during those weary years had she been able to raise herself to look at the heavens above her. What cared the great man in the pulpit for her? She was only a woman, unattractive, deformed, a cripple. But to the Lord she was a daughter of Abraham, a needy woman held by Satan's power, an object of mercy with longings for deliverance from the fetters that bound her. He interrupted the service for her sake, He broke in upon its miserable formality and called to her. He singled her out and addressed her personally in that crowded congregation, saying, "Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity." And He did more, He laid His hands upon her, not one hand but both, and immediately she was made straight and glorified God (Luke 13. 11-17). — Such was Jesus!

It has been thought and said that He treated the woman of Canaan with a strange harshness when He appeared not to hear her cry for mercy, but that was not so. She cried to Him as the Son of David, she a woman of the accursed race. "Cursed be Canaan," had been said of old, and such was the corruption and iniquity of that race that Israel was sent into the land to exterminate it. If He had acted towards her as Son of David He must have rejected her plea, she had no claim upon Him under that title. As the Son of David He was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But she would not go without the boon she sought, and He would not send her away empty as the disciples urged. She knew that He had what she had longed for, and He held the blessing in reserve for her until she took her true place before Him. A crumb from His table would make her a happy, a blessed woman, and He had for her her whole desire and exceeding abundantly more than she could ask or think. It must have been one of those moments of great joy to Him when He said to her, "O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt"; and her devil-possessed and sorely vexed daughter was made whole that very hour (Matthew 15. 21-28). — Such was Jesus!

There was Simon's wife's mother who lay sick of a fever, and no wonder, with such a headstrong, impetuous son-in-law. "And anon they tell Him of her. And He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up." When He entered that inner chamber the moanings of the sick woman ceased and as He took her by the hand her pulse steadied, her temperature slid down to normal; she was instantly calmed. One touch of the sympathetic but almighty hand changed everything; contact with Jesus assuaged the fever, "and He lifted her up." He did not leave her in a state of helplessness, and there was no period of convalescence. His touch and His look were enough; whatever had troubled her and induced the fever troubled her no more with Him at her side. She stood up, the fever gone and ministered unto them" (Mark 1. 29-31).  — Such was Jesus!

Of all the women of the Gospels that appear and pass with one mention only, not one commands our interest more than the woman of Sychar, for the Lord's way with her shows us how He prepares a soul for blessing; and He made revelations to her, ignorant and degraded, and a Samaritan though she was, that He did not make to Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.

What a day that was for her when she came to the well, as she used to come daily to draw water, and met the Shepherd of her soul. He was there before her, waiting for her in the midday heat, and He being wearied by His journey sat thus on the well — a wearied man and hungry and thirsty withal! But His need was the opportunity and the way of approach to her. It was not merely to open the conversation that He said to her, "Give Me to drink." He needed the cool water from Jacob's well, He who had created the mighty Amazon and every river on earth! But this woman had not the grace of Rebekah who at the like request from Abraham's servant said, "Drink my lord," and hasted and let down her pitcher upon her hand and gave him to drink (Genesis 24). Her sinful life had destroyed her womanly sympathy, and her racial prejudice had hardened her heart and she preferred an argument to a kindly act. Only the patience of the Lord and the grace  —  wonderful grace! that was in Him could deal with such a case as hers.

He spoke to her of God, and of God's gift of living water, which for ever satisfies the thirst of those who drink. He was revealing to her what God is, but that revelation did not and could not illuminate her dark soul until He had exposed what she was. He had to probe her sinful life; the light shone until all things that ever she did lay bare before her eyes, yet such was His grace that she did not fly from His presence. He spoke to her of the Father and at last He revealed Himself to her, and that revelation revolutionised her, she was a transformed, a converted woman from that hour, and a witness to the Christ who had blest her.

The disciples came and marvelled that He talked with the woman, and well they might for the grace that made Him do it was marvellous. That grace looks for no merit in its objects, but blesses them because of what it is itself. They besought Him to eat, for they knew how weary and hungry He was when they left Him to buy meat but an hour before; but He said to them, "I have meat to eat that ye know not of." "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work." In blessing that woman whom all men despised He had been rested and refreshed. The Shepherd had found His sheep; the Father had found one of the first of those worshippers who would worship Him in spirit and in truth, and the Father and the Son rejoiced together.  — Such was Jesus!

How did the women respond to the grace that was in Him? It is not recorded that ever a woman spoke a hard word about Him; even the wife of pagan Pilate would have saved her husband from the guilt of condemning Him, if he had hearkened to her; and tears flowed down the faces of the daughters of Jerusalem when He was led away to His crucifixion. But what of those whom He bound to Himself by His grace and made His disciples? Some of them had been "healed of evil spirits and infirmities." Amongst these was Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils — she was not a woman of the streets as is popularly supposed, hers was a worse plight than that  —  a sevenfold malignant Satanic power had enslaved her and Jesus had set her free — and with her there was Joanna the wife of Herod's steward, and Susanna and many others — we are not told from what particular evils they had been delivered, but they joined together with the Magdalene in the happy grateful service of ministering to Him of their substance. They had something to give and they gave it to Him willingly and joyfully. Rich men came and ministered to Him in His death, but these women of substance cared for Him in His life (Luke 8. 2, 3).

We read that "every man went to his own house, Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives." There was not a man in all the city of Jerusalem that said to Him at nightfall, "Sir, Thou art a stranger in the city and weary with the labours of the day, come home with me and rest Thee for the night." The mountain cave was His refuge, and the cold earth His bed. The men shewed Him no hospitality, but there was a certain woman named Martha who had a house not many miles away, who when she came to know Him received Him into her house, and served Him with devoted love!

The women stood by the cross when all the men who had protested their devotion to Him had fled away, except John. The women were the last at His sepulchre on the night of His death and the first there on the morning of His resurrection, and to them He revealed Himself alive, before any of the men knew of His resurrection. And Mary Magdalene was chiefest among those women and the first to see Him.

But there was one woman of whom special mention must be made, and that because the Lord commanded it. He said of her, "She hath wrought a good work on Me . . . She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint My body to the burying. Verily I say unto you. Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her." She had sat at His feet and heard His word, she had brought her sorrow to those same feet and He had wept with her. Yes, Mary had seen His tears! How beautiful He must have seemed to her that day as she looked into His face and learned that His sympathy was greater than the greatest sorrow could be. And now she bent at His feet again and poured upon them the costly contents of her alabaster box. That "pound of spikenard" would have distinguished her among her acquaintances. It was the sort of thing that those eastern women kept for the greatest day of their lives. She might have poured it on her brother at his death, but she did not, much as she loved him. She had kept it for the feet of Jesus, well knowing that He was going into death. She had not used it for her own distinction. An eloquent writer has said, "She loved her Lord more than her own beauty," she loved Him more than she loved herself. The pouring out of the Lord's life for us was the supreme sacrifice, and next to that comes that that Mary of Bethany did. Her act of adoring devotion is bound up with the story of His great sacrifice by the Lord's own command, and to be spoken of wherever that story shall be told.

It was waste in the eyes of the disciples, it was "very costly" in the eyes of the Holy Ghost, who has recorded the act. What she did shows what the Lord's love can do in the heart of one who knows it. It made this Mary forget herself, and risk the criticism and scorn of her friends who did not understand. The world had nothing for Him but a cross of shame and the death of a felon, and she only of all His disciples realised this. To her henceforward Mary was nothing and Christ was everything; she would seek no distinction where He was dishonoured. She wanted no place in a world that did not want her Lord.

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We wonder at that devotion which we but feebly understand. But why should we wonder? If we see Jesus as Mary saw Him, and know Him as she knew Him, we shall cease to wonder; her act of loving devotion will not seem extraordinary to us, but we shall bow with her at His sacred feet and pour out our hearts' adoration and surrender ourselves there. And the frowns and criticism of brethren, who think themselves more practical and wiser than we, will not disturb us at all.

What a triumph for our Lord over all the subtlety and wiles of the devil was this. He had succeeded in Eden in seducing the woman from her allegiance to her God, but now how complete was his defeat. The Lord found in the women of His day the most fitting vessels for His mercy, and the truest devotion to Himself. And why should it not be so to-day?

The first person in Europe to bow in full surrender to Jesus was a woman. Her heart was opened to attend to the things that Paul spoke of Him, and these things included the great facts that He "died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and was buried and was raised again from the dead the third day according to the Scriptures." "For when we were yet without strength in due time Christ died for the ungodly . . . But God commendeth His love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5. 6, 8).

To Mary of Bethany, Mary Magdalene, and many another Mary since their day Christ has been everything and all. Christ and His cross!

"Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning,

Christ the beginning, and the end is Christ."